Online Research Systems

Below are the various online systems, both internal and external to the University, that are used heavily during research.

Finding Funding

  • Pivot
    • Pivot connects researchers to financial support by leveraging the most comprehensive global source of sponsored funding opportunities, coupled with scholarly profiles to match researchers with financial partners and collaborators. See Finding Funding using Pivot for more information.

Proposal Development & Sponsored Projects

  • See Proposal Submission Systems for all information on submitting grant proposals through SPA. Go there first!
  • Grants.gov
    • All federal grants will eventually be required to be submitted through Grants.gov
  • NSF FastLane
    • For electronic submission of NSF grants
  • NIH eRA Commons
    • NIH requires that applicants review the grant proposals submitted via Grants.gov in the NIH eRA Commons. This web portal is also used to review the status of grant applications, and submit NIH progress reports
  • NIH RePORTER
    • This searchable database is a great resource for researchers planning to submit a biomedical research grant application. Use it to identify funded research topics, read the abstracts of funded grant proposals, identify researchers when conducting literature searches, etc.
  • proposalCENTRAL
    • Many foundations, non-profit, and other private sponsors use proposalCENTRAL as the portal for grant submissions.

Research Administration

  • Rascal
    • RASCAL is web-based application developed to simplify the University's research compliance and research administration processes. It is designed to help researchers and administrators manage ongoing research projects and related compliance activities here at Columbia. 
  • ARC
    • The University's financial system, ARC (Accounting and Reporting at Columbia)
  • LabArchives
    • Electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs) help researchers to manage the results of research efforts, record and document research processes and procedures, and manage  digital research data. More information is on the LabArchives at Columbia website.
  • StudyManager
    • StudyManager creates and tracks study financials, tracks research patient visits and procedures and provides data for auditing

Clinical Trials

  • RecruitMe
    • RecruitMe is a recruitment tool meant to connect those who want to participate in clinical trials or research studies to the researchers that are conducting them. To begin using RecruitMe all you have to do is search for a medical condition or research field that interests you and then answer a few eligibility questions and the researcher will get right back to you.