COS - Community of Science

January 2012 update

Pivot YouTube Channel - Find the information about this new module from Community of Science

We now have nine videos on YouTube channel:

• Creating your COS Pivot Account
• Claiming your COS Pivot Profile
• Updating your COS Pivot Profile
• COS Pivot Funding Quick Search
• COS Pivot Funding Advanced Search
• COS Pivot Funding Search by Sponsor
• Navigating your Pivot Funding Search
• Creating Groups to Use When Sharing
• Pivot Home Page: Pivot Advisor

Queen's University is a member of the Community of Science (COS), an international research network that covers the humanities and the physical, social, and life sciences. The COS Funding Opportunities database contains over 400,000 research funding programs.

Expertise:

The COS Expertise database contains almost 480,000 research profiles from more than 1300 universities, government agencies and other R&D organizations.

Researchers can use the network to publicize their research capabilities, identify peer reviewers, discover prospective collaborators for ongoing research projects and manage their CVs online.

All faculty members, research associates, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at Queen's are eligible to have published research profiles in the Expertise database.

The COS Expertise database allows you:

• Search by Queen's expertise
• Search all expertise
• Search by specific institution
• Add a new record
• Update your record
• Funding Opportunities Search

Use of COS Funding Alert expected to grow rapidly

The less structural funding universities receive for research, the more important external sources of funding become. For the past month Queen’s University has had a subscription to the Community of Science (COS), a database that notifies researchers of funding and subsidy opportunities relevant to their field.  The use of COS is expected to grow rapidly.

Room for growth

COS is a useful tool, available to everyone involved in research within Queen’s University. The system is not primarily focused on a single domain.  It can be used by sciences, humanities and arts researchers to expand their network. 

Gradual increase

The functionality of the database increases as the usage becomes more regular and more intensive.  COS currently reports mainly American and Canadian funds and is only now starting to identify European funds.  There is still a whole world of funding opportunities to conquer.

Carefully defined search question

Our experience with COS is that there are many sources of research funding, from very small funds to major ones.  If you create an email alert with your search question, you will automatically receive an email with information on the funds available.  It is important to define your search question carefully, otherwise you will get too many hits, which is very demotivating.

Limited knowledge of funds

From practice we know that researchers are generally familiar with a couple of large funds, often close to home: possibly one or two funds which are typical for their research field. And that's as far as it goes.  But academic research is an international activity and it is logical to look internationally for funding.  COS is also well suited for individual researchers and students to search for funds for smaller activities such as international working visits, fieldwork, help with financing publications and visits or organizing conferences.  For a large, internationally active research university such as Queen’s, a facility such as COS should be part of the standard university research infrastructure and the use of it should be equally standard practice.

Effect

COS organized the evaluation of the COS database to assess whether users are satisfied with the system and what their reactions are.  An important question is of course whether it has had any measurable effect: how many applications have been made and how much funding has been acquired as a result of using the COS database. Unfortunately it is not possible to measure the effects of COS in terms of extra applications and increased income. However we have seen an increase in the number of registered users.

Funding opportunities in your mailbox?

Would you like fast and easy access to all the available subsidy and funding possibilities for your research? If so, the Community of Science (COS) database can help you.  The funding opportunities can be emailed to you weekly, selected according to specific fields of expertise.   

COS Funding Alerts link the expertise profile of the user to relevant news announcements which are then provided by email.  This allows researchers to keep up to date with subsidy and funding possibilities, and it is also easier to search for new sources.  Researchers with a specific personal profile can share their expertise with others via this database, which is a way for experienced researchers to give their young colleagues a helping hand.  A researcher can also add funds.   

The database is available for use by all staff and students of Queen’s University and the Office of Research Services gives workshops on the use of COS.

For more information, contact Tom Herra, Queen's University COS Liaison, at herra@queensu.ca or tel:613-533-6000, ext.77433.

More information about COS    

Using COS Funding Opportunities

Using COS Funding Alert

COS Funding opportunities Enhancements - October 2009