Documentation from within SciFinder is available at its Help link, far lower right on the SciFinder interface. Below are additional general sources of documentation about SciFinder available at the CAS website.
Below are links to some specific features of SciFinder, including ones labeled NEW that are now accessible to Lehigh as of fall 2024.
Information: "CAS Analytical Methods provides a single source for searching and comparing the latest published scientific methods across multiple fields of study. Providing easy-to-read experimental details, CAS Analytical Methods helps get you back in the lab faster." See documentation here and here.
Access: You can access Analytical Methods in two ways. First, you can do a literature search in SciFinder, locate references with relevant methods, and link to Analytical Methods to see the full details of the method.
Second, click on the three dots circled in purple in the screenshot below, select CAS Analytical Methods on the dragdown menu that comes up on the left, and then put in your SciFinder user login credentials if prompted. This enables you to search on keyword, matrices, or analyte and then further limit to category or particular technicque. This can be useful for certain types of searches, e.g. when searching for polymer techniques and techniques that meet characteristics that you specify. In general, it can be more direct a way to bring up analytical methods than by starting with references.
Information:
Formulus is useful when converting basic research into a product. "Develop safe and effective products. CAS Formulus is an integrated formulations database and workflow solution. With curated information from patents and journals spanning various industries, CAS Formulus helps formulation scientists evaluate ingredients, find suppliers, and explore regulatory requirements, all in one easy interface.".See CAS Formulus documentation here and here.
Access:
Access through SciFinder using the same technique mentioned above that involve clicking on the three dots next to the CAS logo.
Information: This feature enables you to search sequences and then click out to [journal and patent] literature references. You can "Query BLAST, CDR, and Motif algorithms for nucleotides and protein based sequences"."There are three sequence search types: BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool): Search for proteins as well as nucleotides using a set of local alignment algorithms (BLASTn, MegaBlast, BLASTp, tBLASTn, BLASTx); CDR (Complementarity-Determining Region): Search for antibody and t-cell receptors; and Motif: Search for short patterns in DNA, RNA, or proteins with queries enabled for additional variability."
In addition to these searching options, you will see Life Sciences filters available for reference and substance answer sets, and Life Sciences data as part of individual substance records and individual reference records.
See Search Sequences and CAS SciFinder Quick Reference Guide, page 12.
Access: Use"Search CAS Sequences" on the SciFinder landing page or look for this feature after you do a literature search.
Info: ChemZent provides bibliographic coverage of chemistry literature from the 1800's to 1969. See information here.
Access: Do a references search in SciFinder. When the search results come up, they will include ChemZent records, but you can limit to ChemZent on the left-hand side of the search results.
Information: To draw structures, you can use SciFinder's chemical drawing tool (CAS Draw) or upload drawings from ChemDraw Professional to SciFinder. See here for details. "You may import either a structure .mol file or SMILES string created in ChemDraw into CAS SciFinder's CAS Draw or ChemDoodle drawing tools." For information about using ChemDraw in conjunction with SciFinder, see here.
Access: See ChemDraw Professional entry on this list to download the software. CAS Draw is available from within SciFinder. You will need to activate the SciFinder Proxy Connnection if you want to install the SciFinder button in ChemDraw. See: Activate ChemDraw/CAS SciFinder Proxy Connection. If you use a .mol file or SMILES string created in ChemDraw, you don't need to activate the proxy link. Contact the science librarian for assistance.
Information: This SciFinder capability gets you directly to synthetic methods information without wading through the full text of literature. You can link to detailed methods directly from your reaction answer set. See CAS SciFinder Quick Reference Guide, page 14, which concerns reaction searching. Note the experimental protocols screenshot on that page for synthetic methods information.
Access: see information above.
"For both known and unknown molecules, CAS SciFinder will perform a full retrosynthetic analysis powered by the renowned CAS collection of reactions, reducing your synthetic planning time. Diverse synthetic routes combine steps from the literature and predicted steps based on rules trained on our full set of reactions." "Make reaction plans with conditions, yields, catalysts, and experimental procedures."
Information: See:
Access: See "Retrosynthetic Analysis" on the SciFinder landing page.
Medline includes journal articles and clinical trial reports going back over 40 years. SciFinder enables you to access this content by doing a research topic search. MEDLINE is published by United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), which is part of the National Institute for Health (NIH).
Any article that is covered both by the MEDLINE and the CAplus databases will appear as a single record in your SciFinder answer set. When you conduct a topic search in SciFinder, there is a “Database” Filter that allows you to see the number of documents from each file (articles that are covered by both CAplus and MEDLINE will be included in each of the counts).