Transparent research: Searches for researchers and projects

Data on over 90,000 research projects is collected in the publicly accessible databases of the BMBF. This is the most comprehensive source for inquiries in the German research environment on what kind of research the laboratories do with public funds, who does or has recently done research on which topics and which results these projects delivered.

---

BMBF project funding is the basis for a large part of publicly financed research in Germany. Another part consists of research in research institutions which receive basic funding from the BMBF or are co-financed by the BMBF and the Länder.

Project documentation online

The data on project funding, which is documented in the BMBF funding catalogue, is accessible to everyone. The catalogue provides data on all current and recently concluded projects - all in all over 90,000 projects.

Starting from the individual projects, a mouse click brings you to the project reports with the results of the related projects. All project reports on BMBF projects can be searched in the database of the German National Library of Science and Technology TIB Hanover, which includes about 7 million datasets on titles. For some time now, these reports have also been provided as PDF files. All available project reports can be read with a further mouse click. Older reports in print can be ordered online via the TIBORDER order system.

Institutional funding takes place more frequently under the responsibility of the funding institutions. Their research work is accessible via the BMBF search engine forschungsportal.net. The forschungsportal only provides material of servers of government-funded science organizations. About 20,000 web servers are currently included.

Knowing what - knowing how

The search within project funding and institutional funding has not been interlinked yet. A comprehensive overview is therefore currently only provided by searching in the database "Förderkatalog" as well as with the "forschungsportal.net" search engine.

Everyone is able to search via search engines on the Net. Searches in databases are more exact but are also considered to be more difficult. Yet both are equally uncomplicated.

When you are looking for projects on topics...

• in funding projects: Enter your search word - according to the syntax of the search language in between percentage signs - in the field topic of the funding catalogue. E.g. for a search of biotechnology: %biotechnologie%.
• in the funding programmes: Projects of a funding programme are almost always organized by one of the BMBF's project management agencies. A search including the project management agency therefore results in all projects of a funding programme. The project management agencies can easily be selected from the pop-up list of the search page.
• at the research institutions: Simply enter your search word into the search field of forschungsportal.net, as you would in any other search engine. (Sample search: Biotechnology)

When you are looking for specific projects ...

the most exact way to do so is a search for the promotional reference in the funding catalogue. Enter the promotional reference of the project into the field promotional reference of the funding catalogue (Sample search: for a project in nanooptics, promotional reference 03N8705). Here, you can also search for project groups when you enter part of the promotional reference in between percentage signs.

When you are looking for persons ...

• this can be done in funding projects either via entering the topic or the grant recipient or contractor in the related fields of the funding catalogue.
• this can best be done in research institutions best by searching forschungsportal.net by topics and institutions (Sample search: Institutions on biotechnology). In addition to the persons, the address of the research institution is given including the website of the institutes.