Skip to Main Content

How to Use SciFinder N

How to use the world's largest chemical information database to find chemical references, compounds, and reactions.

What is SciFinder N?

SciFinder N  is the premier source for chemistry information.  It is eight databases rolled into one:

  • Chemical Abstracts--the core database of chemistry literature;
  • A reaction database;
  • A chemical catalogs database;
  • A chemical regulatory information database;
  • Chemical industry notes database;
  • A database of searchable MARKUSH structures from patents;
  • MEDLINE, a database of journal article citations which focuses on biomedicine and health.  Also covered are aspects of biology, environmental science, marine biology, plant and animal science as well as biophysics and chemistry;
  • A substance database.

 

Image source:  SciFinder. 

SciFinder N Databases

CAPLUS   

 

Online version of Chemical Abstracts,  which indexes and abstracts journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, and patents   Provides mostly references/citations, with few full-text links.   1900 to present.      

         

 

 CASREACT     

 

Reaction searching. Contains information on reactions of organic substances, including organometallics and biomolecules. Contains singlestep and multistep reaction information for reactants, products, reagents, solvents, and catalysts. Pre-1985 reactions have only been selectively added.  In other words, there could be an article in SciFinder describing the reaction--but there is a chance that the same article will not be in CASREACT.

 

 

CHEMCATS

 

 

A catalog database containing information about commercially available chemicals and their worldwide suppliers. CHEMCATS contains more than 71 million commercially-available products, over 1,000 chemical catalogs, over 880 suppliers, and more than 22 million CAS registry numbers.

 

CHEMLIST

 

Regulatory information on over 400,000 regulated substances; includes data from state, national, international regulatory agencies.

 

CIN

 

 

Current business news related to production, pricing, sales, facilities, products and processes, or corporate and government activities in the chemical industry.   Contains records extracted from chemical industry trade publications.  Currently, CIN has more than 1.7 million records.

 

 

 

MARPAT

 

More than 1.3 million searchable Markush structures from patents covered by CAS from 1988 to the present with selected coverage of Japanese patents from 1987.  In addition, English, French and German patents have selective coverage from 1985-1987.  Other records from 1961-1987 are derived from INPI (Institute National de la Propriete Industrielle) data.  Russian patents published after January 10, 2000 and Korean patents from 2008 to the present are also covered

 

MEDLINE

 

National Library of Medicine database.  1958 to present.

 

REGISTRY

 

Contains more than 183 million unique organic and inorganic chemical substances, such as alloys, coordination compounds, minerals, mixtures, polymers and salts, and more than 65 million sequences—more than any other database of its kind.  Search by chemical structure, chemical name, and CAS Registry Number.  1800's to the present.