The National Institutes of Health stopped supporting its long-time CRISP database and query interface September 1, and officially retired it as of October 31, 2009.  An acronym for Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects, CRISP was  a highly welcomed, innovative research web tool when introduced more than a decade ago, winning Gov.Exec.com’s “Best Feds on the Web” award in 1999. For many years, CRISP was one of the most common ways for both scientific colleagues and members of the public to find information on NIH research programs.

NIH RePORTER is CRISP’s whizbang replacement. The new tool’s acronym stands for RePORT Expenditures and Results, and the new website is http://projectreporter.nih.gov/reporter.cfm.

RePORTER, which debuted in midsummer 2009, offers all the features of CRISP and more!  It provides:

• A description of the award (abstract) and NIH funding amount for each project.
• Publications and patents that have resulted from NIH-funded research.
• Links to PubMed Central <http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/>, PubMed <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed> , and the US Patent & Trademark Office Patent Full Text and Image Database <http://patft.uspto.gov/> for more detailed information on research results.
• A robust query tool with ability to search by year of award, Institute or Center, state, institution, PI name, project title, key words, free text, study section, mechanism, FOA number, ARRA fundings and more data elements.
• Ability to export results to Excel (xls) or comma-delimited text (csv).  

NIH plans to add new features to RePORTER in several releases throughout fiscal year 2010. In addition, numerous standardized reports detailing funding trends and historical data are available on the RePORTER website.

For questions on RePORTER, please contact the RePORT team at report@od.nih.gov. For questions related to CRISP, please contact the eRA Help Desk at 301-402-7469 or helpdesk@od.nih.gov.

Source: eRACommunications@mail.nih.gov