Hi Tracy,

Our institution subscribes to both SPIN and COS.  I can only speak to a
comparison of the funding information databases SPIN and COS.  As you
probably know, each of these companies (InfoEd for SPIN and  Proquest for
COS) also puts out an associated alert service and expertise service) for an
additional fee. We subscribe to SPIN and its associated alert service called
SMARTS as well as Proquest's funding database only of called COS.

My general observation is that SPIN has a much more sophisticated searching
mechanism than COS.  For example the number of selections in several search
categories are more abundant in SPIN than in COS.  SPIN allows you to
distinguish between numerous applicant types such as postdoctoral, faculty
member, researcher, physician/medical professional, young investigator, senior
investigator, etc. whereas COS lumps them all together under one
heading "PhD, MD or other Professional". Same thing with award types - SPIN
allows you many more selections from which you can choose to refine your
search.  SPIN also allows you to elect NOT to include terms.  So if you would
like to exclude certain criteria, you can do this in SPIN whereas in COS you do
not have this feature.

If I had to choose between the two I would not hesitate to choose SPIN.
That being said, there are some features I really like about COS.  COS tends
to have more opportunities for graduate students.  COS provides a more
detailed heirarchy for it's keywords which allows you to locate keywords more
easily by discipline.  COS also has an "Internal Coordination" criteria that allows
you to quickly find all those limited competitions that require institutional
coordination.

That's it quickly in a nutshell.  I am more of a SPIN user than COS so there
might be some COS experts that would have an additional or different
perspective.

Hilda
--

Hilda Alajajian

Grant Resources Specialist

University of Vermont

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