How do I search for grants in the database?

Just use it like Google - type in your words into the search box and hope for the best. You will quickly realise that our search engine will uncover the grants that you have never even thought somebody has written.

But to search for specific grants in the Grantome database in more detail, enclose the terms in quotes, if you want to search for exact phrases, or use our "Advanced" search option.

What search fields can be specified

Use the "Advanced" search feature to specify the fields for up to 3 keywords. The search fields are: Funder (granting organization such as NIH,NSF, etc...), Grant Type (e.g. R01), Funding Institute (e.g. NIGMS), Author / Principal Investigator, Title, and Institution at which the research will be conducted (e.g. Harvard).

How can I refine the search results?

To further refine search results, fields are shown on the left hand side of the page that can be used as either inclusive or exclusive filters. Categories are Year, Institution, Grant type, Institute, and Author. The top 20 search results within each category are displayed along with the number of search results for each. Check on boxes to choose the desired filters and include it by activating the button with a circled check mark, or exclude it by clocking the button with a circled “x”. Press "Filter" to update search results.

How can I apply boolean "AND", "OR", "NOT" operators?

We use Sphinx for fast database queries and all of its functionality can be used. By default, we assume the "AND" operator between the keywords. The query can be further refined using the following keywords:

  • explicit operator AND:
    cancer & brain
  • explicit operator OR:
    cancer | brain
  • explicit operator NOT:
    cancer -brain
  • explicit grouping:
    (cancer brain)

To put all of it together, we could look for brain cancers that do not have any metastasis in the grant:
(cancer & brain) -metastasis

Can you explain the search results?

Results are tabulated showing: funding organization, year, grant title, amount of money awarded, author, and institution. For any particular search result, click on the title to reveal more detailed information summarized by 5 categories: the grant abstract, funding agency, institution, related projects, and publications resulting from grant support of research. Fields colored in "orange" are links that can be clicked for more information.

How do I make a plot?

Plots appear instantenously after the search has been performed. Options for the axes can be chosen from the drop down menu. For the x-axis they are: year, grant type, institute (of granting organization that made the award), institution (to which grant is awarded), and author (principal investigator). For the y-axis they are: count (# of grants), cost, sum over cost (for each value on which there is data on the x-axis), and average cost.

What types of plots can I make?

Plots can be displayed in histogram format with vertical bars, as a scatter plot with points, or a line plot with adjacent points connected by line segments. By placing the mouse on top of a bar or point, an interactive box will appear that display its numerical values.

How do I visualize the effect of a third variable?

The "group by" option can be change from the default value of "nothing" to decompose each y-axis value into parts by one of the following variables: year, grant type, institute (of granting organization that made the award), institution (to which grant is awarded), or author (principal investigator). Bars or points are then colored by the “group by” variable. For histograms, bars corresponding to the different “group by” values can be adjacent (side by side) for each x-axis variable using the Bar Chart graph type, or stacked on top of each other and displayed by the Stacked Area Chart graph type.

What are the different options for displaying data using the "stacked area chart"?

There are three types of plots available for stacked area chart. For the "Stacked" (default) option, each value of the x-axis variable corresponds to a combination of multiple values of the y-axis variable that are colored by the “group by” value. For the "Stream" type, segments are displayed in a displaced fashion about the x-axis. Finally, for the "Expanded" subtype, the y-values are renormalized to total to 100% for each value of the x-axis variable, so that the height of each colored segment represents its proportionality.

How can I zoom into part of the chart?

The "line with focus chart" graph type is a special version of the "line chart" graph type with the additional ability to view subparts of plot in greater detail. Two vertically stacked plots are displayed. On the bottom is the full plot with interactive rectangles that define the x-axis boundaries that are displayed on the upper plot.