Introduction to SciFinder Scholar

SciFinder Scholar is a user-friendly, Internet-based search system that provides students and academic researchers with access to chemical and biomedical information indexed in the Chemical Abstracts Service suite of databases and in MEDLINE, produced by the National Library of Medicine.

Features

SciFinder Scholar allows users to:

• Search by research topic, chemical substance, author name, document identifier, and company name or organization;
• Search by structure;
• Browse tables of contents of journals;
• Sort, analyze and refine answer sets;
• Save and print results;
• Link to cited references;
• Link to full-text;
• Link to commercial sources and regulatory information.

Access and Restrictions

Generally, SciFinder Scholar is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. However, it is unavailable from 10 p.m. Saturdays through 1 a.m. Sundays, and on the first weekend of the month from 5 p.m. Saturday through 1 a.m. Sunday. Because the College of Wooster shares a two-simultaneous-user license to SciFinder Scholar with two other colleges, there may be times when users are refused access because both ports are busy. In this case we recommend that you wait a few minutes and try again. To limit the number of “busy signals” we ask that you remember to log off of the system as soon as you complete your search. The Chemical Abstracts Service computer will automatically disconnect a SciFinder session after 20 minutes of inactivity.

The College’s license with the Chemical Abstracts Service limits the use of SciFinder Scholar to College of Wooster faculty and students for academic research only. Please see the License Agreement for details of this agreement.

SciFinder Scholar is currently available to College of Wooster faculty and students in the Timken Science Library computer laboratory. See Getting Started with SciFinder Scholar for instructions on accessing the system.

Content

SciFinder Scholar allows users to move easily between these databases to retrieve bibliographic and substance information.

CAplus	contains bibliographic data for journal articles, patents, books, conference proceedings and dissertations indexed by the Chemical Abstracts Service. Approximately 4000 records are added daily.
REGISTRY	a database of chemical substance information, searchable by name, molecular formula, or molecular structure. Updated daily, it contains more than 32 million organic and inorganic substances and more than 59 million protein and nucleic acid sequences.
CASREACT	provides access to information on synthetic organic research, including organometallics, natural products, and biocatalyzed reactions; searchable by reaction, product, reactant or reagent. It is updated weekly.
CHEMCATS	provides current information on commercially available chemicals and their worldwide suppliers.
CHEMLIST	provides regulatory information about substances from the regulated chemicals listings of America, Asia, Australia, Europe, Israel and Taiwan. It is updated weekly.
MEDLINE	contains bibliographic data produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and covers worldwide biomedical literature from 1950 to the present. It is updated five times per week.

Getting Started with SciFinder Scholar

SciFinder Scholar may be accessed from computers in the Timken Science Library’s computer laboratory. To start SciFinder Scholar, launch the application from the dock. The SciFinder Scholar splash screen will display with an overlaid window giving you a choice of accounts. Select the default account, which is 24-Hour Access with Substructure Search, for standard access as described above. The second choice, SciFinder Scholar Training, is only active during scheduled library classes by prior arrangement with Chemical Abstracts Service and will not work otherwise. It may take several seconds to establish the connection to the Chemical Abstracts Service, so please be patient.

When the connection is made, the first screen to appear is the Chemical Abstracts Service License Agreement. You must accept the conditions of use spelled out in this agreement to continue. Once you click on Accept, the SciFinder Scholar window appears. It contains the Main Menu, the Main Menu Toolbar, and the Explore dialog box.

The Explore dialog box provides access to scientific information through the Chemical Abstracts Service and MEDLINE databases, allowing the user to search by subject, author, document identifier, company name or organization, or chemical substance or reaction.

Finding Help

Detailed online help is available in the SciFinder Scholar User Guide, which can be accessed by clicking on the Help icon on the Main Menu Toolbar, or by selecting SciFinder Scholar from the SciFinder Help menu.

The SciFinder Scholar Web site provides general information and updates on new features. SciFinder Support Information provides access to a variety of training and support materials, including the SciFinder Scholar How to Guides. These guides are designed for the beginning user and give a quick overview of SciFinder Scholar’s search and analysis features.