7.1 How can I access databases such as Chemical Abstracts?
Description
This article is from the Chemistry FAQ, by Bruce Hamilton B.Hamilton@irl.cri.nz with numerous contributions by others.
7.1 How can I access databases such as Chemical Abstracts?
These databases are almost all inevitably commercial, it costs serious
money to build and update them, thus it will cost money to access them.
Either you or your institution will be paying the supplier. Do not
expect to find copyrighted databases ( such as the Merck Index, Chemical
Abstracts, Kirk Othmer, or Sax ) freely available on the Internet.
There are several commercial suppliers of databases that contain chemical
information. These can usually be accessed either via the Internet or
telephone Packet Switching Networks. The most well known specialist database
is the American Chemical Society's Chemical Abstracts [1], which is provided
by the Chemical Abstracts Service. CAS offers a commercial database service
called STN International, which contains over 190 scientific and technical
databases.
These databases cover all aspects of Chemistry, including CAS
Registry Numbers, and are accessible via the WWW.
http://www.cas.org/ Chemical Abstracts Service.
http://info.cas.org/stn.html STN Introduction
http://www.dialog.com/ Dialog
The most universal and comprehensive database supplier is Knight Ridder,
whose Dialog service offers over 40 databases that solely concentrate
on aspects of chemistry, including Chemical Abstracts since 1967 ( but it
does not offer the actual abstract, just the bibliographic information )
and the CAS RN database [2]. Dialog also offers several hundred other
commercial and technical databases, and Knight Ridder also offers selected
general and technical databases on a low-cost, home user ( off-peak :-) )
system known as " Knowledge Index " at approx 25% of the normal Dialog cost.
Knowledge Index is also available from some on-line suppliers such as
Compuserve - but remember that KI does not include CA.
The ability to perform on-line searches is becoming an essential attribute
for modern chemists. Major database suppliers offer a wide range of training
courses and there are several excellent articles on searching the chemical
literature ( database and/or journals) in journals such as J.Chem.Ed.[3-5].
If you have access to a CD-ROM database, you should practise your search
logic on that first, before going on-line. Because of the cost structure of
database suppliers such as Dialog, and the inappropriate selection of
keywords by authors :-), it is often more cost-effective to focus on grabbing
around 100-200 titles and scanning them offline ( using the 30 minutes
"hold search" function ), and then going back online to grab the desired
abstracts and citation information.
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