Before you logon to the Sponsored Projects Information Network (
SPIN), here are some tips that you might find useful to consider. Remember that this is a subscription service, so you must login from a UCI computer address. SPIN now includes two versions: an older one and a new one. Both will return a good number of hits. The "new SPIN" has the advantage of providing a short synopsis and a more legible interface, so it's easier to determine whether a particular program is right for you.
You'll get the best search results if you choose "Advanced Search" and, as with IRIS, use the SPIN keyword library. Although it's more time-consuming than using keywords that you determine yourself, if you scroll through all the keywords in a category like Social Sciences, for example, you will find some relevant ones that you probably hadn't considered.
Please be aware that a SPIN search will time out after 10 or 15 minutes, so if you leave your search and come back to it, or if it takes you more than 10 or 15 minutes to scroll through a page of search results, you may be unable to access the rest of the results. Therefore it is recommend that youset the "Return Results" button to a 25 maximum at a time.
