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Library Research Guides

SciFinder-n

Access and use SciFinder through the web version for exploring chemical literature and substance information.

SciFinder-n Added Features

Truncation

SciFinder-n opens for truncated searching with a “*” after topics, authors company names, reactions or substances. This will for example provide access to related biomolecules, unspecific derivatives or otherwise unrecorded spelling variations. This opens for searching better in the regulatory landscape, searching for enzymes or polymers. The “*” also works imbedded in words (Mu*ller, Anton will find both Anton Muller, Anton Mueller and Anton Müller and even Anton Mller). Also, the “” double quote will find exact phrases in reference searching.

 

Citation Map

SciFinder-n displays a “Citation map” on the document level with onward and backward citations. Users of this function can benefit to easier find new partners for research projects or simply to find “hidden” literature. Using an answer with a “best” ranked relevance with a citation map will often produce a snapshot of science in question.

 

Assembled Markush Structures

The Markush searching in the Marpat database differs a lot from SF-web to SciFinder-n. In the classic SciFinder a user will search for a compound but get a result as a list of patent references. In SciFinder-n a user will see an assembled Markush structure with a reference to actual claim(s). Users can also setup alerts in Marpat in SciFinder-n. Match levels are still fixed in SciFinder-n. On top of this, Markush answer will be ranked according to relevance; that is a Tanimoto score of the structure against the query structure.
 

Filter for Regulatory Information

The truncated search helps regulatory officers to easily identify compounds by chemical name search and after this the compounds that appear on an international or national chemical list can be filtered.

 

Direct Property Search

In property searching one can combine multiple properties and even a molecular formula in one search. Refine after the fact with a drawn
structure to further hone in on interesting molecules.
 

Search for Experimental NMR peaks

This functionality is found under the Substances search => Advanced search. The function allows users to search for H1, C13, N15, N19, P31 experimental chemical shifts from the ACD collection of NMR’s. Users can combine a NMR search with a molecular formula – or property search with the Boolean AND.
 

Combining Reference Search with Structures or Reactions

The combination of topic search with a structure- or reactions search enables users to search very broadly on very generic structures with very generic topics (that might combine into quite few answers). 

Issues you may run into with SciFinder-n search

You may run into the following issues and here is how to resolve them:

Search comes back with too many results

Remember that SFn has different search algorithm. Classic SF uses indexed terms to find results.  SFn uses indexed terms, but also uses the Title, Abstract, Keywords to find documents that are referring to the query entered, that might have been missed in Classic SF. The relevancy should place higher importance on those documents that have more hits as well as hits on Concepts and Substances. 

To narrow the search results:

  • Use Boolean AND (others are not available at this point). For example, searching Boron and medicinal.
  • Use Quotes. For example, searching “boron" and "medicinal" will return documents boron AND medicinal in the Title/Abstract/Keywords. 

Searches on "C O2" vs "CO2" give different results

Molecular formulas should be searched on the Substance Advanced Search page. There is a specific field that will search Molecular Formulas only to provide the correct match.  If there is a need for references on a specific chemical find the chemical and do a crossover to References for the substance(s).  Then leverage the Search within on the Reference page to find the specific details within those documents.

Search for the specific journal yields different results in SF and SFn

CAS is still working on how Journals and Organizations are searched in SFn. Coming soon CAS will be associating all the related Journals to each other so that we can search one and retrieve all the different entries. As for now:

  • Try to enter the different ways the Journal/Organization might be referred to and search. 
  • When typing in the Journal Name use the autosuggest to help find the associated journal names.