A Year Later, ProQuest Pivot is Making Research Funding and Collaboration Opportunities Easy

ANN ARBOR -- ProQuest is celebrating the first birthday of the innovative Pivot service, which streamlines workflow in university research offices.

Now in place in more than 350 institutions worldwide, Pivot enhances the rich combination of COS Funding Opportunities -- the most comprehensive, global source of funding -- and the acclaimed profiles in COS Scholar Universe to create a unique source for matching financial support to researchers and partners. Pivot provides universities with a single online location for their faculty, research administrators, managers and research development professionals to use for all funding opportunity searches, even those that rely on institution-specific data.

"We have a 15-year track record of innovation in this arena, creating Web-based systems that encourage collaboration in scholarly research and others that boost efficiency for our partners in research offices," said Jeff Baer, vice president of sales and operations, ProQuest Research Solutions. "Pivot integrates those previous systems, creating a robust solution to support the breadth of research development activity in universities."

Throughout its first year, Pivot has continually expanded its service with a variety of new features, including those that enable users to...
* Set institution-wide search filters for funding.
* Identify funding specifically for researchers who are new in their careers with the 'New Faculty/New Investigator' category, which focuses on funding opportunities for the group that often needs the most help in securing funding.
* Create and manage groups for sharing funding opportunities.
* Add internal messages to funding opportunities for efficient communication of important information.
* Publicize the service to users through a free marketing toolkit.

Pivot will continue to evolve in the coming months with updates to its look and functionality, a new online support portal that will connect users with the expertise resident in Pivot's acclaimed support team, and enhanced profile interoperability. Further, expanded reporting functions will allow university administrators to more precisely track activity in Pivot to assess the level of engagement throughout the campus audience.

From Pivot's inception, institutions around the world have warmed to the convenience and ease it brings them. Combining the most comprehensive editorially maintained database of $33 billion in funding opportunities with more than three million pre-populated scholar profiles, Pivot's proprietary connector algorithm enables matches between funding, faculty and collaborators.

In addition to the connections Pivot makes between funding and profiles, it includes tools that make the management of funding opportunities in the pre-award phase more efficient. Users can add internal deadlines to build effective timelines for seizing critical funding opportunities -- especially useful for limited submissions. Funding opportunities can be tracked and organized so that highest priorities take center stage. And users can easily stay on top of the funding landscape by saving and organizing their searches, monitoring action steps, and getting weekly updates on active opportunities.

To learn more visit http://pivot.cos.com.