Funding Opportunities and Research Databases - Research Funding and Support Resources - Funding Opportunities and Research Databases

Funding Opportunities and Research Databases

SPIN: Funding Opportunities Database

The Office of the Vice President for Research provides a campus-wide subscription to SPIN which aggregates over 40,000 funding opportunities from more than 10,000 global sponsors. SPIN provides intuitive and easy access to funding opportunities geared towards both individual and administrative users.

Watch a recorded webinar on how to use the system here.

Learn how to use the SPIN funding opportunities database to create personalized email funding alerts by following these instructions.

Step 1: Create your SPIN profile while on campus (OSU Wireless or campus network), step-by-step instructions are available.
Step 2: Watch for an email with login instructions from spinsupport@infoedglobal.com. (Access may take up to one business day; the user-validation process requires an overnight administrative process.)
Step 3: Login to SPIN and create and save searches that generate customized funding alerts.

Need help with your login/password?

To access publicly saved searches, visit our web services page. To request a new search or for questions, please email Jeff Agnoli (agnoli.1@osu.edu).

Some simple search suggestions when using SPIN:

Place quotation marks around a key phrases within your research topic/discipline, e.g., "breast cancer"
Use "AND" to search for multiple words, e.g., psychology and adolescent will return results with both terms in the record
Use "NOT" to exclude terms, e.g., STEM not "stem cell*" will return results with only STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)
Use ~ before any word to search throughout a funding opportunity record, e.g., ~cancer - will search all sections of the funding record not just the abstract

Additional information for Finding Funding is available.

Additional Research Funding Search Tools

If you are unable to find funding for your research project using SPIN, here are some additional tools you can try.

Duke University Research Funding Database
The Office of Research Support at Duke University provides this extensive, on-line database of funding opportunities as a resource.
The Grant Advisor
A newsletter which provides a valuable source of information of grant and fellowship opportunities for U.S. institutions of higher education. The newsletter covers all federal agencies except NIH plus many independent organizations and foundations.
GrantsNet
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) provides this site which offers an extensive searchable database of fellowships, grants, and sources of support for training in sciences and science education
Grants.gov
This is a site maintained by the Federal government that has the ability to search for Federal government-wide grant opportunities.
National Science Foundation
NSF provides a searchable system of information about grants programs.
Grants by Location
U.S. by Metropolitan and Non-Metropolitan Reports - grant data sorted by the Fiscal Year, Organization, State, and County Classification.
U.S. Federal Government Challenge website
The Federal gov. agencies offer prizes to researchers for finding innovative solutions to various types of problems.
Trialect
A global platform for biomedical/health professionals. This resource includes: grants, fellowships, courses, observerships, mentorship opportunities and clinical trials for those that are seeking opportunities and those that are promoting opportunities.

Funded Awards

Here are the current public portals for searching funded awards from NIH, NSF, and other federal agencies.

Federal RePORTER
Federal RePORTER is a collaborative effort led by STAR METRICS® to create a searchable database of scientific awards from agencies. This database promotes transparency and engages the public, the research community, and agencies to describe federal science research investments and provide empirical data for science policy. Users can search across multiple fields in both the Smart Search and Advanced Search functions-including across agencies or fiscal years, by the award's project leader, or by a text search of a project's title, terms, or abstracts.
NIH
Information on grants awarded by NIH may be searched by using the Research, Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT). RePORT provides access to reports, data, and analyses of NIH research activities, including information on NIH expenditures and the results of NIH-supported research.
NSF
Research Spending & Results gives the public, the scientific community, and Congress insight into federally funded research. Research Spending & Results provides information about how federal research dollars are being spent, what research is being performed, and how the outcomes of research are benefiting society as a whole. Anyone can easily access, search, and sort information in new ways through Research.gov. Currently, information is available for NSF and NASA awards.

Citation Chasing with Research Databases

Another powerful funding search strategy is to review articles within your research topic to determine the sponsor of the project, i.e., identify the source of funding in the acknowledgment section.

Get to know these major research databases. (Reference Librarians are available to assist you with these research tools.) Another resource is your subject librarian, they can provide assistance with research queries, reference questions, buying a book for the collection, recommendations of journal titles, and any question related to library services. Additionally, Visit Ohio State's Health Sciences Library for resources on measuring scholarly impact, identifying collaborators, and how best to present your scholarship to sponsors as well as promotion and tenure reviewers.

These databases allow you to search multiple journals simultaneously.

ISI Web of Knowledge – Interdisciplinary, predominantly journal articles; search across science, engineering, and social sciences topics.
Scopus - Interdisciplinary, provides access to abstracts; citation database containing both peer-reviewed research literature and quality web sources. With over 18,000 titles
Medline, Pubmed – Medical, Biological Sciences and Health
PsychINFO, Social Sciences Abstracts – Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
WorldCAT (default search item on the Home Page of OSU libraries), everything, books, articles on any topic
For Humanities, use ISI, Social Sciences Abstracts and WorldCAT

The Ohio Third Frontier Program
To accelerate the creation and growth of investable and scalable technology and tech-enabled companies, the Ohio Third Frontier provides access to essential business assistance, capital and talent resources. The Ohio Third Frontier is a thriving statewide community of expert people and organizations dedicated to increasing the odds of success of your entrepreneurial enterprise.
Grant Resources & Requests for Proposals

Using Google Scholars and Google Alerts

Google Scholar provides access to scientific articles and books. It is useful when full-text articles are not available and some resources are posted on the web by the authors’ themselves, not publishers. Access Google Scholar from the “More” link on the Google search menu and selecting “Scholar”

Google Alerts are a simple way to monitor key search terms as soon as something is posted to the web, e.g., it is very helpful when monitoring a private foundation sponsor's web site announcement, or key phrases in your area of research. Access Google Alerts from the “More” link on the Google search menu and selecting “Alerts”

Learn to search "like a pro" with this easy to follow guide.

Graduate Student Funding Opportunities (Fellowships)

Ohio State's Graduate School maintains the following links to other sources for funding a graduate degree.

Contact Us

For questions, please reach out to:

Jeff Agnoli
Education, Funding, and Research Development
agnoli.1@osu.edu | 614-292-6269

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Research Funding and Support Resources - Funding Opportunities and Research Databases

Citation Chasing with Research Databases

Using Google Scholars and Google Alerts

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