COS Tutorial

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• Publié par: Lekos
• Nombre de lectures: 59
• Langue: English

Extrait

Using COS to Search for Funding Opportunities

Registration

Although you can search COS without creating an account, there are advanced features that you

will have access to by registering, including saving your search results and automated e-mail

alerts. To create a new account, start at the COS homepage (

http://www.cos.org/

) and select the “New User, Register

Free” link on the left side of the page. Select “Join” and then follow the instructions to complete the registration

process. Use the drop-down boxes to select “Purdue University”, your “School” and “Department”. If you notice that a

category is outdated, missing or incorrect, please contact Sue Grimes at

[e-mail]

so an update can be made

from the administrative site.

Searches

You can run searches for funding opportunities by selecting the “Search COS Funding Opportunities” tab at the top of

the page and then entering a keyword such as “fiber optics”, “DOE”, “Recovery Act”, etc.

Advanced Searches

Use the “Advanced Search” link to the right of the search box if you wish to narrow the scope of the search and get more

targeted results. Note: before entering criteria, click the “Clear Fields” button on the right side of the page. This will

ensure that you don’t have some limiting criteria in your search that you didn’t intend.

Next, enter the keyword(s) you are interested in. For example, if you want to search for Recovery Act funding

opportunities through the Department of Energy, you can specify “ARRA” as your keyword in the “Title” field and, in the

next box, specify “United States Department of Energy” as the keyword in the “Sponsor” field. Note that as you start

typing a sponsor name, a pop-up box will appear giving you choices.

Note: some federal agencies start with “United

States…”.

Above the boxes, you see “Match Any Field” or “Match All Fields”. If you want to see all opportunities labeled as “ARRA”

AND all opportunities labeled as “United States Department of Energy”, you would select “Match Any Field”. If you want

to see only those ARRA opportunities within the Department of Energy, select “Match All Fields”. So, for this example,

we would need to select “Match All Fields”.

Other search limiting criteria can be found under “More Search Fields” including:

•

Deadline

•

Internal Coordination

•

Amount

•

Keywords

•

Activity Location

•

Citizenship or Residency

•

Funding Type

•

Sponsor Type

To select any of these options, click the link and a dialog box of choices will appear as shown below.

A couple of these options that might be particularly useful would be “Requirements” and “Keywords”. “Requirements”

allows you to specify the type of entity you are associated with (i.e. – Academic Institution). “Keywords” allows you to

search for topics in specific areas. By selecting the “Browse” link under “Keywords”. A pop-up box appears and you can

select one or more sub-categories. Again, you may specify if the search will return results with

any

of the keywords you

specified (Combine with “or”) or if

all

keywords must be present before it is considered a match (Combine with “and”).

Still using the earlier example and including the limiting criteria shown above, the search will now find “ARRA”

opportunities in “Department of Energy” that contain

either

the keyword “Energy Conservation”

or

“Fuel Cells”.

In addition to specifying the criteria you want to see in your result list, you may also wish to specify criteria that you

don’t

want to appear. For instance, you may wish to find ARRA opportunities through the Dept. of Energy but you want

to exclude any results that contain “photovoltaics” in the title field. You could do so by using the “Exclusion” field as

shown below.

Once you have set all the search criteria, select the “Search” button at the bottom of the page and you will see the

results.

Saving Search Criteria (Registration Required)

Researchers often wish to search by the same keywords or sponsors each time they visit the website. COS makes this

task easier by allowing you to save frequently used search criteria. There are two ways to save a search you have

created.

First, by continuing with the example outlined above, at the top of the results list you will see a link to “Save Search”. A

pop-up box as shown below will appear asking you to name the search and if you would like to receive e-mail alerts.

Once you have saved the search, return to “Workbench Home”. Your saved search will appear on your workbench

where you can “run”, “edit”, “delete”, or “share” it.

The second way is to create a new search directly from the workbench. The workbench displays an area entitled “Your

Saved Funding Searches”. To create a new search, click the link for “Add a Search”. You will see the advanced search

menu as shown earlier. Follow the same steps as before and the new search will appear in the list.

E-mail Alerts (Registration Required)

In the “Save Search” box, you have the option to receive e-mail alerts or not. If you select yes, COS will run your

search(es) on a weekly basis and e-mail you the results. You can also set this option from your workbench at a later time

by checking the box under “Weekly Email” and then “Save Email Changes”. If you wish to stop receiving e-mails, simply

uncheck the box and click “Save Email Changes”.

User Training

COS also offers user training via webinars. These sessions help users learn to navigate the system and add personalized

functionality to their accounts. For a list of upcoming training sessions go to:

http://www.cos.com/usertraining/

.