Cheap Tricks:
Can't afford SciFinder Scholar,
Web of Science or Elsevier ScienceDirect? Here are some recommended free electronic
resources you can use to exposure your students or other users to database
searching,
I. Data Collections
WebElements (http://www.webelements.com/webelements.html)
WebElements is a
hypertext-linked collection of property data on the first 112 elements
including (where available): general, chemical, physical, nuclear, electronic,
biological, geological, crystallographic, reduction potential, isotopic
abundances, electronic configurations, ionization enthalpy data and additional
textual information, especially on the history of the elements.
ChemFinder WebServer (http://www.chemfinder.com/)
This database, provided by CambridgeSoft, provides basic physical data and structure
diagrams. It also has links to websites
containing other data for a large number of chemical compounds. It is
searchable by name, molecular weight, molecular formula, CAS Registry Number.
It is structure searchable (with a special plugin.)
Sigma-Aldrich Search Center
(http://www.sigma-aldrich.com/saws.nsf/ProductSearch?OpenFrameset)
Like the Aldrich Catalog (which,
by the way, is a print resource free for the asking), the web catalog lists
basic physical properties for many of its compounds along with cross-references
to other print sources, like Beilstein, or Fieser. Note that if a compound is available in several different grades,
the data will usually only be list for one of them, generally the highest
purity available. Materials Safety Data sheet information is available.
Similar useful, free
catalogs with searchable product data are
available from:
Alfa
Aesar (http://www.alfa.com/)
Lancaster
Synthesis
(http://www.lancastersynthesis.com/homecatsearch.htm)
Organic Compounds Database
(http://www.colby.edu/chemistry/cmp/cmp.html)
This database, compiled at Virginia Tech and made available by
Colby College, provides physical data on a large number of organic compounds,
including molecular weight, melting point, boiling point, index of refraction
and UV absorption peaks. It is searchable by name, molecular formula or by data
values for the above properties.
NIST Chemistry Webbook (http://webbook.nist.gov/)
The NIST WebBook will provide access to the full array of data
compiled and distributed by NIST under the Standard Reference Data Program. The
current edition, the Chemistry WebBook, contains, among other data:
(1) Thermodynamic data on an extensive set of organic and small
inorganic compounds - Enthalpy of formation, Heat capacity and Entropy for over
5000 compounds.
(2) A large set of ion-energetics data - Ionization
potential and Appearance potential
for over 14,000 compounds.
(3) IR spectra, mass spectra and electronic/vibrational spectra data for thousands of compounds.
(4) Reaction thermochemistry data for over 8000 reactions.
(5) Constants of diatomic molecules (spectroscopic data)
for over 6000 compounds.
(6) Thermophysical property data for 16 fluids
Data on specific compounds may be located by name, formula
or CAS Registry Number.
NIST Physical Reference
Data
(http://physics.nist.gov/PhysRefData/contents.html)
Contains fundamental
constants, atomic spectra data, and more.
Knovel
(http//www.knovel.com))
Knovel is in the business of digitizing classic handbooks and other texts in chemistry,
chemical engineering, environmental science and other areas. For many of these works, including the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics,
Lange's Handbook of Chemistry and Perry's Chemical Engineers Handbook, the tables
have been "deeply indexed", so you can search for individual compounds, or by ranges of property values.
While display of data is only available to subscribers, searching is freely
available to anyone, so students can get a taste of searching
the data tables and learn which handbooks contain the information they want before going to the
printed volumes.
II. Health and Safety
Information
Note that several of the
sites above have health and safety information (ChemFinder, Sigma-Aldrich,
etc.) Conversely, some of the sites
below have basic property data as well as Materials Safety Data Sheets and the
like.
SOLV-DB (http://solvdb.ncms.org/)
SOLV-DB is a database of physical, chemical, health and safety, regulatory and environmental fate
data on over 100 common organic solvents, provided by the National Center
for Manufacturing Sciences. It is
searchable by name, formula, CAS Registry Number, property data values and so
forth.
Hazardous Chemicals
Database
(http://ull.chemistry.uakron.edu/erd/)
This database, created at the University of Akron, will
allow the user to retrieve
information for any of over 1300 hazardous chemicals based on a keyword search.
Potential keywords include names, formula and registry numbers (CAS, DOT, RTECS
and EPA).
ECDIN - Environmental
Chemicals Data Information Network
(http://ecdin.etomep.net/)
ECDIN is a factual databank, created under the
Environmental Research Programme of
the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the Commission of European Communities at
the Ispra Establishment. Chemicals are searchable by name, molecular formula or
CAS Registry Number. Possible available date include: Identification,
Physical-Chemical Properties, Production and Use, Legislation and Rules,
Occupational Health and Safety, Toxicity, Concentrations and Fate in the
Environment, Detection Methods, Hazards and Emergency. Not all chemicals listed
will have data in all fields.
MSDS from Vermont SIRI (http://hazard.com/msds/)
This site from Vermont Safety Resources on the Internet contains a searchable collection of MSDS
from a variety of chemical manufacturers. It also includes a large collection
of links to other Web MSDS sites.
MSDS-SEARCH (http://www.msdssearch.com/)
This site is maintained by Envirocare International, Inc.
It is a free service bringing together MSDS's from a wide range of
chemical manufacturers - over 1000 - and public databases. The site includes a
glossary of MSDS terminology and links to sites which explain the how and why
of MSDS's
MSDS from Cornell(http://msds.pdc.cornell.edu/msdssrch.asp)
Another good MSDS source.
HSDB: Hazardous Substances
Data Base
(http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/htmlgen?HSDB)
In addition to hazard information, HSDB frequently contains
brief information on physical properties and on analysis of the substance in
various media. Search for your target substance either by Chemical Abstracts
Registry Number or by name.
III. Spectra Information
In addition to the NIST
Webbook above, there are a few other useful sites for basic spectral data.
Integrated Spectral Data
Base System (SDBS)
(http://www.aist.go.jp/RIODB/SDBS/menu-e.html)
This site, from the National Institute of Materials and Chemical Research in Japan, contains full
spectra and, in many cases, peak assignments for 30,000 compounds, including
about 19,600 mass spectra, 11,000 13C NMR, 13,500 proton NMR, 47,300 IR, 3,500
Raman and 2,000 ESR spectra. The database is searchable by compound name, CAS
Registry Number, molecular formula and NMR or IR peaks. The database is free to
the public, but users are asked to download no more than 50 spectra per day
without specific permission of the site owners.
Spectroscopic Tools
(http://www.chem.uni-potsdam.de/tools/index.html)
This site, based at the University of Potsdam, allows the user to plug in IR peaks in wavenumbers,
proton NMR peaks or mass spectral peaks and retrieve a list of the functional
groups which would generate those peaks. It also has a 13C NMR database,
searchable by peak or chemical name fragment, which can retrieve structures,
spectra, peaks and peak assignments. Some features require the Chime browser
plugin.
IV. Indexes to the Journal Literature
The most important indexes
for chemists are not free. But for
basic searches, and for training new users in the basic concepts of electronic
searching, there are some excellent possibilities. Many of the providers of large collections of electronic
journals include a search engine so you can search across all the journals in their database.
These are free for anyone to use, although access to the articles is not. See Section V below for possibilities.
PubMed (http://www.pubmed.gov/)
Citations and abstracts for over 11 million articles in medicine, life science, and health
administration. Includes the full contents of MEDLINE, plus "in process"
citations for recent articles which have not yet been added to MEDLINE, and
some additional references from life sciences journals. Cover 1966 to the
present.
PubSCIENCE (http://pubsci.osti.gov/srchfrm.html)
PubSCIENCE is a broad science database, produced by the US
Department of Energy (DOE) and the Government Printing Office (GPO). It
contains current article information taken from the journals of over a dozen
participating science publishers, plus all the citations from the DOE Energy
database (citations more than 10 years old must be searched in the archive
file.) Most records include abstracts. PubSCIENCE offers a simple search
interface and has begun to add links to full text articles in electronic form
(requires subscription to the corresponding journal), but only a small fraction
are available at present.. Future of this database is in doubt at this time.
Ingenta (http://www.ingenta.com/)
Current article information taken from over 25,000
journals, covering virtually all
disciplines. Each search is carried out in two databases: "Uncover
Plus" (1988-present), providing bibliographic information, abstracts and
purchasable full text articles, and "Online Articles" which searches
a wide range of electronic full-text journals and provides links to the
full-text, free for journal subscribers and pay-per-article for most other titles.
Basic keyword searching and advanced "search options" are available.
ERIC (http://searcheric.org/)
The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) database
is the world's largest source of education information. The database contains
more than 1,000,000 abstracts of documents and journal articles on education
research and practice. ERIC is a good
source for finding lab experiments and demonstrations for high school or
college students as it indexes Journal of Chemical Education and similar
publications.
Analytical WebBase (http://www.rsc.org/CFAA/AASearchPage.cfm)
This is the Royal Society of Chemistry's index devoted specifically to the literature of
analytical chemistry. The indexing is specific and well-done. This web version
covers 1980 to the present and is free to any user; however, only institutions
subscribing to the print edition can display the full citation record and
abstract. Non-subscribers get only the article title and date of publication. One good way to use this is to take
advantage of the detailed indexing in this databse to find articles, then look
them up by author or title keyword in another free database such as PubSCIENCE
or Ingenta.
Beilstein Abstracts via
ChemWeb (http://chemweb.com)
Beilstein Abstracts is a bibliographic index (author, keyword, etc.) to key journals in the
organic chemistry literature from 1980-present. It is available as part of
ChemWeb, a World Wide Web "club for the chemical community." You must
register to use Beilstein Abstracts or other services, but registration is free
to all users.
ETDEWeb (http://www.etde.org/etdeweb/)
ETDEWEB includes information on the environmental impact of
energy production and use, including climate change; energy R&D; energy
policy; nuclear, coal, hydrocarbon and renewable energy technologies and much,
much more. Explore the growing collection (early 1995 forward) of over 847,700
bibliographic records with links to over 87,000 documenrs wirh more than 4.2
million downloadable full text pages. ETDEWEB is freely accessible, but
requires individual registration, unless an institution has arranged for IP
authentication.
Scirus (http://scirus.com/)
Scirus is a
science-specific search engine launched by Elsevier Science. It searches journals (in pdf, post-script
and html formats), preprint servers, patent databases, scientific indexes, and
university and faculty websites.
V. Full Text Electronic
Journals
Most electronic journals
(especially in chemistry) require subscriptions, but if you want to expose your
users to electronic journals, there are options. For a good list of individual free titles, see: Fosmire, Michael
and Young, Elizabeth, "Free Scholarly Electronic Journals: An Annotated
Webliography", Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Fall 2000,
(http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/00-fall/internet.html). For a selection of major titles also found
in print, see:
American Chemical Society
Journals
(http://pubs.acs.org/journals/aoc/aoc_search.html)
The American Chemical Society electronic journals site allows free searching of articles from
over 25 electronic journals in chemistry published by ACS. You may search
author and/or title keywords. Searches may be limited by year or starting page
number, and you may search any or all journals. Full text searching and full
text display are limited to subscribers only.
Royal Society of Chemistry
Journals
(http://www.rsc.org/cgi-shell/empower.exe?DB=rsc-e-all)
The Royal Society of Chemistry electronic journals site allows searching of articles from over
20 electronic journals in chemistry published by RSC and allied publishers.
There are three search modes. You may search fields, including author, author
affiliation, journal name, title, abstract or search the full text of the
articles. Searches may be limited by year or issue number, and you may search
all journals or any single journal. Note that display of the full text is
limited to subscribers.
CatchWord Journal Search (http://www.catchword.com/)
CatchWord, Ltd. is an electronic journal host for over 700
journals from over 45 publishers. The CatchWord search engine allows searching
for articles from that collection of journals by author, article title, journal
title, abstract or by full text. The resulting bibliographic records are freely
available, but full text is available only to subscribers through CatchWord.
Kluwer Online (http://www.wkap.nl/kaphtml.htm/TOCSEARCH)
Kluwer Online's Search function allows searching of
tables of contents and abstracts of
articles contained in the Kluwer Online collection of over 250 journals, many
from 1996-present.
Wiley Interscience
(http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/simplesearch)
Access to tables of contents and abstracts for some 300 Wiley journals is available to guest
users.
ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com)
ScienceDirect provides electronic access to peer-reviewed
scientific, technical and medical journals, including backfiles to titles in
several subject areas. Searching the database is free, pdf or html versions of
articles is not. Covers titles from all Elsevier branches plus a few
third-party publishers.
Highwire Press (http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl)
Many journals made available electronically by Highwire Press
(including Science and PNAS) make some portion of their archival material
available free to the public. The page
listed above lists the titles and date ranges for free material. The journals may also be freely searched by
full text
(http://highwire.stanford.edu/searchall/).
BioOne (http://www.bioone.org/)
BioOne is an
aggregation of over 40 high-impact bioscience research journals. Most of these
titles are published by small societies and non-commercial publishers, and,
until now, have been available only in printed form. Access to full-text of articles requires subscription.
BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com/)
BioMed Central
published peer-reviewed articles in open access journals in the areas of life
science and medicine. Open access means that these articles are (and will always be) made
publicly accessible via the Internet without any restrictions or payment by the
user.
VI. Other Types of Scientific Literature
Journal articles are not
the only types of literature of interest to chemists. If you want to expose your users to these other types of
information resources, here are some good sites:
A. Preprints
Chemical Physics Preprint
Database
(http://www.chem.brown.edu/chem-ph.html)
The Chemical Physics Preprint Database is a fully
automated electronic archive and
distribution server for the international theoretical chemistry community. This
server, going back to 1994, is
maintained at Brown University using the Los Alamos preprint database software.
Chemistry Preprint Server (http://preprint.chemweb.com/)
The Chemistry Preprint Server is a permanent web archive and
distribution medium for research articles in the field of chemistry. CPS allows
users to submit their articles to the server where they become accessible to
all the members of ChemWeb.com. Membership in ChemWeb.com is free, but does
require registration with ChemWeb
Los Alamos National
Laboratory e-Print Archive (xxx.lanl.gov)
Started in Aug 1991, xxx.lanl.gov is a fully automated electronic archive and distribution
server for research papers. Archives maintained at Los Alamos include many
areas of physics and related disciplines, mathematics, nonlinear sciences,
computational linguistics, and neuroscience. Also available at
http://arXiv.org
B. Patents
Espa@cenet (http://ep.espacenet.com/)
Provided by the European Patent Office, esp@cenet allows searching of European, WIPO, Japanese, and worldwide patents
in general. Fulltext of patents is available free online for the last ten
years. Earlier years are stored offline and may be ordered.
US Patent and Trademark
Office Web Patent Databases
(http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html)
The USPTO provides fulltext and bibliographic searching of
US patents from Jan. 1976 to the
present. Full text of patents, including images is available free of charge.
C. Technical Reports
DOE Information Bridge (http://www.osti.gov/bridge/)
Department of Energy technical reports from 1996-present, searchable and displayable in GIF, TIFF
or PDF formats. Requires a JavaScript capable browser.
Energy Citations Database (http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/)
Energy Citations contains bibliographic records for
energy and energy-related
scientific and technical information from the Department of Energy (DOE) and
its predecessor agencies, the Energy Research & Development Administration
(ERDA) and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). The Database provides access to
DOE publicly available citations from 1948 through the present, with continued
growth through regular updates.
GrayLit Network
The GrayLIT Network makes the gray literature (technical reports) of U.S. Federal Agencies easily
accessible over the Internet. It taps into the search engines of distributed
gray literature collections, enabling the user to find information without
first having to know the sponsoring agency. Federal Agencies participating in
this project are DOD/DTIC, DOE, EPA, and NASA. Participation will be expanding
as the site develops.
D. Dissertations
Digital Dissertations
(http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/gateway)
The most current two years of the Dissertation Abstracts
database, over 225,000 citations and abstracts, freely available for searching
with guest access. The database represents the work of authors from over 1,000
North American graduate schools and European universities.
VII. Other Chemical
Resources
Organic Syntheses (http://www.orgsyn.org/)
Annual publication with tested syntheses of organic and
organometallic compounds. Gives detailed descriptions of synthetic techniques,
reagents, yields and safety aspects. It is well indexed by authors, compound
names, reaction types, and molecular formulas. The online version is freely
available to the public and contains the contents of the entire series,
searchable by chemical name, CAS Registry Number, other text terms, and by
structure or substructure. Use of this excellent database requires a
Java-capable browser, and installation of the free ChemDraw plugin, which is
available from a link at the site.
Prepared by:
Chuck Huber
Davidson Library
University of California
Santa Barbara
huber@library.ucsb.edu
Undated by Kitty Porter 8/14/02