SciFinder Guide
SciFinder contains a number of databases - two bibliographic, three substance, one reaction and one product
catalogue - for chemical and related scientific information.
1. Introduction
SciFinder is produced by CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society and contains details of journal
articles, conference papers, books, dissertations and patent documents. It covers from 1907 to present with
100,000 journal records from before 1907, and is updated daily. SciFinder selects information from the CAS
(CAplus, CAS REGISTRY, CASREACT, CHEMCATS, CHEMLIST, Marpat) and Medline databases:
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CAplus – Bibliographic database of journals, patents and conference papers from all scientific disciplines.
CAS REGISTRY – Chemical substance database. The database covers > 64 million organic and inorganic
substances and > 63m protein and nucleic acid sequences. Each substance is assigned a CAS Registry
number.
CASREACT – Organic reactions database. Over 52 million single- and multi-step reactions.
CHEMCATS – Information on commercially available chemicals and worldwide suppliers.
CHEMLIST – Identifies substances from more than 100 inventories and regulatory lists from around the
world.
Medline – Biomedical database from 1950 to present. Updated four times per week.
Marpat – Searchable Markush structures from patents, covers 1961 to present.
2. Registration and Access
Instructions on registering for SciFinder can be found by looking up SciFinder in SUPrimo and clicking on the
details tab. Email Enquiries ([email protected]) to ask for the SciFinder Registration URL. Use this URL to
access the SciFinder user registration form to create your own SciFinder username and password. Click on Next
and enter your contact information, including your Strathclyde e-mail address. Specify a username and
password. Select a security question and provide an answer. Click Register. You’ll receive an e-mail from CAS
with a URL link to click on to complete the registration process. You will now see a confirmation page and can
access SciFinder. There is unlimited access to this database. It is available both on and off campus and is listed
on the Library’s list of all databases at: http://www.strath.ac.uk/library/eresources/databases/ Use your DS
username/password to access this service remotely, using the link to SciFinder from SUPrimo or the Library
webpages.
3. Explore References
Choose to Explore References. You can then explore by research topic, by author, company, journal, document
identifier or patent.
(a) Research Topic – this option searches the title, abstract and index files of CAplus and
Medline. Results from CAplus are shown first. Enter your concepts using broad phrases.
Use two to three concepts, avoid too many words in a single concept and link the concepts
with prepositions. You can use natural language, e.g. aloe vera in medicine, and
prepositions such as ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘as’ ‘with’ etc. It is better to use a preposition rather than
YOUR
LIBRARY
YOUR
LEARNING…
‘and’ or ‘or’. You can put alternative terms or acronyms in brackets e.g. aids in cats (felines) to find papers about
aids in cats or aids in felines. Use a comma to separate more than one alternative term e.g. (dogs, cats).
SciFinder will automatically look for plurals, alternative spellings and related terms.
Use the Advanced
Search to limit
your search by
Publication
Year(s),
Document
Type(s),
Language(s),
Author Name,
Company Name.
Click Search.
Check the box next to the option(s) that most closely match your search topic. Concepts ‘as entered’, i.e. exact
phrase, and ‘closely associated’, i.e. in the same sentence, will give the most relevant results. Click Get
References. Your search terms, and any abbreviations or related terms will be highlighted in the list of
references.
Click on the title to get more information about the reference, including an abstract and list of citations. Click the
Full Text link to see if the full document is available electronically or in print.
(b) Author Name – fill in as many of the fields as possible. Leave the check box ticked to account for any
variations in spellings of the last name. Select the relevant name variations from the list and click Get
References.
(c) Company Name – use the broadest company name.
(d) Journal/patent – find specific journal and patent references when you have some bibliographic details. Enter
as much information as you have and carry out your search.
For each of the explore reference searches you can remove duplicate records, using Tools or setting
Preferences, and Analyze the results list. Remove Duplicates will remove the equivalent Medline record from the
results list. You can also use Get Related Citations to get references that cite or are cited by the reference.
4. Analyze, Refine, Categorise search results
An analysis of the results automatically appears in the left reference bar.
(a) Analyze – author name is the default, but you can select a different option from the drop-down menu.
Choose to Analyze by Author Name, Publication date etc. and sort alphabetically or by frequency. Each bar is a
subset of the answer set. Click Apply. If you choose Publication date and sort by year, then you can view
publication trends over time. Analyze by Company to see the major organisations involved in that area.
(b) Refine – reduces your answer set by limiting results to, for example, particular years or document types.
(c) Categorize – allows you to organise your answers into subject categories.
5. Explore Substances
(a) Chemical Structure – Choose to Explore Substances. Draw or modify a Chemical Structure using the
Structure Drawing editor. Choose between exact or substructure or similar substances searches. Click OK. You’ll
see further options for defining your search. Click Search.
Click on the substance or the Substance Detail link to get full details such as Predicted Properties and
Experimental Properties. Related information is shown next to the substance: References, Reactions,
Commercial Sources, Regulatory Information. You can also choose to get references and get reactions for all
substances or selected substances - click the checkbox next to the substance.
(b) Molecular Formula – type in the formula. Only one formula can
be entered at a time.
(c) Substance Identifier– use any of the substance’s trade names,
chemical name or CAS Registry number. Enter substances one per
line. Click Search. Click on Substance Detail to get full details.
(d) Explore Reactions – use the Reaction Drawing editor to draw
the substance. Choose the type of search and click OK. You’ll see
further options for defining your search. Click Search.
6. Combine answer sets
You can combine answer sets of the same type: citations,
substances and reactions. Carry out a search and click on Save.
Give the set a title and click on OK. Click on Saved Answer Sets.
Select at least two sets then choose Combine Answer Sets. You will
have four Combine options: 1) Combine joins sets with OR; 2)
Intersect joins sets with AND; 3 & 4) Exclude joins sets with NOT to
include answers from the one set that are not in the other set. Click
Combine Answer Sets.
7. Keep me Posted
You can set up alerts for references and substances. From the
results list click the Add KMP alert icon in the top left hand corner. Enter a title and an optional description.
Choose the Frequency and Duration and click Create. You will be sent e-mail alerts with hyperlinks to the first
five new substances or titles.
8. Saving, printing and exporting
Select the answers you wish to print, save or export by checking the boxes next to the records in the results list.
Save will save records to the SciFinder server. You can retrieve these by clicking on Saved Answer Sets in the
top right hand corner of SciFinder. Export will save as a file. The default format is Citation export format (.ris) and
this is the format for exporting to reference management packages such as EndNote and EndNote Basic (Web).
9. Help
Click the Help link in the top right corner of the screen to go to SciFinder’s online help. Further help is also
available at: http://www.cas.org/training/scifinder
10. Exit
SciFinder will timeout after 20 minutes of inactivity.
Last updated: 01/10/2014 Elaine Blair,Science Faculty Librarian, Email: [email protected]