Databases in Chemistry

CA - Description:
Producer: Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), U.S.A.
Coverage: 1967 to date
File Size: 14.74 million records
Updates: Biweekly
File Type: Bibliographic
Content: Chemistry
Language: English
The Chemical Abstracts database covers all areas of chemistry and chemical engineering. CA contains records for documents reported in printed Chemical Abstracts (CA) from 1967 to the present. Sources include over 9,000 journals from some 150 countries, patents from 26 countries, technical reports, books, conference proceedings, and dissertations from all areas of chemistry and chemical engineering worldwide. Bibliographic terms, indexing terms, and CAS Registry Numbers are searchable. Over 87% of the records also contain CA abstracts, the text of which is searchable. A learning file, LCA, is available. For convenient choice of pricing, the HCA file - identical to CA - is available. H files have higher connect-hour fees and no search-term pricing, while the standard files have lower connect-hour fees plus search-term charges. CD-ROM: CASurveyor series including titles such as: Chromatography, Magnetic Resonance, Organometallic Chemistry, Food and Feed Chemistry, Cancer Chemical Research, Mass spectrometry and Applications, Pollution Control and the Environment, Polymer Coatings and Adhesives, Polymer Synthesis, Waste Management and Remediation, Hazardous Materials, Cancer Therapeutic Agents, New Pharmacologically Active Compounds, Organic Photochemistry, and Peptides and Amino Acids. This file is available, under a variety of names, such as CA through many online systems including STN, EINS, DIALOG, DATASTAR, and QUESTEL-ORBIT.
Analytical Abstracts. Description:
Producer: The Royal Society of Chemistry, UK
Coverage: 1980 to present
File Size: 246,000 records
Updates: Monthly
File Type: Bibliographic
Content: Analytical Chemistry
Language: English
The Analytical Abstracts database covers worldwide literature on analytical chemistry. The ANABSTR file contains bibliographic records with abstracts (since 1984) for documents reported in printed Analytical Abstracts. Sources for ANABSTR include journals, books, conference proceedings, reports, and standards. Bibliographic information, indexing terms, abstracts, chemical names, and CAS Registry Numbers are all searchable. Analytical Abstracts is available on the following host systems: QUESTEL-ORBIT and STN International.
BEILSTEIN Description:
Producer: Beilstein Information Systems, Germany
Coverage: 1779-
File Size: 7.3 million records
Updates: Updated irregularly
File Type: Structure, Numeric
Content: Organic Chemistry
Language: English with some fields in German

In the area of organic chemistry, BEILSTEIN Online is the world's larges factual database. BEILSTEIN contains organic chemical structures, preparation and reaction information, and numeric property information. The source for BEILSTEIN is the Beilstein Handbook of Organic Chemistry (main volume and supplements 1-5) for the period 1830-1979. Also included are data from 84 leading journals in organic chemistry for the period 1980-1994. Records are searchable by structure, and all text fields are searchable. The Beilstein database is available on: STN and DIALOG and via MIMAS-CrossFire. A learning file, LBEILSTEIN, is available on STN. A description of Beilstein Online is provided by the Beilstein Institute.
CEABA Description:
Producer: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Chemisches Apparatewesen,
Chemische Technik und Biotechnologie e.V., Germany
The Royal Society of Chemistry, UK
Coverage: 1975 to date
File Size: 433,000 records
Updates: Monthly
File Type: Bibliographic
Content: Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology
Language: English with some abstracts in German
The Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology Abstracts database covers international scientific and technical literature on chemical engineering and biotechnology. CEABA combines the former DECHEMA and CEA (Chemical Engineering Abstracts) databases. Sources for CEABA include journals, books, conference proceedings, reports, and dissertations. Bibliographic information, indexing terms, and abstracts are all searchable. CEAB is available on the STN host system.
GMELIN. The GMELIN File is a structure and factual database on inorganic and organometallic chemistry. Substance records contain the critically reviewed and evaluated data from the GMELIN Handbook of Inorganic and Organometallic Chemistry issued 1975 and before, covering the chemical literature for the period 1817-1970. Also included are selected data from a pool of the 112 most important journals of inorganic, physical, and organometallic chemistry, and other journals of physics from 1988 to the present. Records contain the substance identifying information: structure image, GMELIN Registry Number, CAS Registry Number, numeric and non-numeric data about chemical and physical properties, and preparation and reaction information. The information is accompanied by a reference to the primary literature. The database is in English.
The Gmelin database is available on the STN Information Service, and via MIMAS-CrossFire.
A learning file, LGMELIN, is available on STN.

NTIS is produced by the National Technical Information Service of the USA and corresponds to the publications Government Reports, Announcements & Index. It covers US government- sponsored research and development from over 300 federal agencies. The database includes, amongst other areas, materials, mechanical engineering, methods and equipment, military sciences and space technology. NTIS is a large database with over 1,700,000 records from 1962 onwards. It is available online via DIALOG, EINS, and STN International.

PASCAL - Programme Appliqué a la Selection et a la Compilation Automatiques se la Literature - is a large multi-disciplinary bibliographic database produced by the Institut de l´Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST). It corresponds to PASCAL published by the Centre Nationale de la recherche Scientifique (CNRS). PASCAL has broad international coverage within the areas of science, technology, applied sciences, biological sciences and medicine. In particular, it covers virtually every French journal in science and engineering and is particularly strong in material from Eastern Europe. The language of the database is French, and there are additional keywords in English, German and Spanish. Note that the title is always translated into English. PASCAL is one of the largest databases with some 9,500,000 references dating from 1973 onwards. PASCAL is available on DIALOG, EINS, and the QUESTEL-ORBIT, information retrieval systems.

RAPRA Description: RAPRA is a bibliographic database on the worldwide scientific, technical, and trade literature concerning rubber, plastics, adhesives, and polymeric composites. The database covers a wide scope of subjects encompassing technical, academic, commercial, and marketing aspects of the rubber and plastics industry. Citations are in English and most contain an abstract. The database corresponds to the printed Rapra Abstracts and Adhesives Abstracts.
RAPRA is available on the following commercial information retrieval systems: STN, EINS, DIALOG, and QUESTEL-ORBIT.
SciSearch. The citation index is a special type of index, which allows you to search forwards in time from a known relevant paper. In every field of scholarship, research workers and practitioners cite references to earlier publications related to the work described in their own papers. Through these references (citations) an author expresses subject relationships between the current article and the cited references. A citation index is based on these relationships. It lists publications that have been cited and identifies the sources of these citations. Starting from a known relevant reference, it is possible to trace subsequent articles which refer to the original document, thus leading to more recent literature than the first known item.
You can get general information about citation databases from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI).
Citation indexes are extremely useful tools for "working forwards" from a highly relevant reference. In using them, it is, however, important to bear in mind the normal pattern of citation. There is a time-lag between the publication of a document and the first reference to it, due to the time taken to assimilate the new information, the time taken to make use of it in further research and the time taken to publish the citing document. The citation index is a powerful tool for information retrieval, in that it is possible to use a cyclic technique, in which the citing document found, together with other papers by the same author(s), may act as new search entry points.
The Science Citation Index - SCI - covers over 5 900 journals in a wide range of subjects in the physical and natural sciences, medicine and technology.
SCI consists of three main parts:

Citation Index -
every reference (citation) from the articles in the Source Index, that are being referred to (or cited) during a given period of time is listed in alphabetical sequence under the name of the first author;
Source Index -
an alphabetically arranged author index, giving full bibliographic details of all the source publications; journal articles, reviews, books etc. are indexed by the first author (with references from other authors);
Permuterm Index -
a subject index in which every significant word in the title of every article being indexed is paired with every other significant word in the title and rotated (e.g. AB, BA).

ISI provides annual user guides for Science Citation Index, as well as lists of the journals covered. These are arranged alphabetically, by subject, and by country of publication.
The Social Sciences Citation Index covers more than 1 700 of the world's leading social sciences journals in a broad range of disciplines. It also covers individually selected, relevant items from more than 3,300 of the world's leading scientific and technical journals.
The print format includes features such as:

the Citation Index
which enables the reader to take a known paper and find other papers that cite it
the Source Index
which enables the reader to discover what a particular author has published during the period covered
the Permuterm® Subject Index
which allows the reader to launch a search without knowing key author or papers
the Corporate Index
which provides access data on authors and works through their corporate affiliations.

The equivalent database SciSearch is available is available on the Data-Star, DIALOG and STN International host systems, and on ISI.
In the Web of Science you can get access to the Science Citation Index as well as the Social Sciences Citation Index at the same time.
VINITI - the Database of the All-Russian Institute of Science and Technology - is a large bibliographic database which covers scientific and technical information and corresponds to the printed Referativnyi Zhurnal. The language of the database is Russian and it is currently available from the International Centre for Scientific and Technical Information (CSTI).

Databases in Chemistry

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