SciFinder

SciFinder is not available to the general public, however, it can be accessed through Wayne State University Libraries.  You must set up an account to obtain access to SciFinder, but after you do that, there is a wealth of information to explore.

SciFinder, according to the product overview on the CAS website, is "a research discovery tool that allows you to explore the CAS databases that contain literature from many scientific disciplines including biomedical sciences, chemistry, engineering, materials science, agricultural science and more!" (CAS stands for Chemical Abstracts Service).

Other features of SciFinder include*:

-Access to current, high quality scientific information

-Links to more relevant journal articles and patent documents than any other source

-The ability to significantly improve your productivity

-Capabilities for exploring substructures and reactions.

*These statements are made by CAS and do not reflect the views of the authors of this blog.

In SciFinder you can explore references, explore substances or explore reactions.  As this is a reference class, the explore reference tab is what we will focus on.

You can explore references by research topic, author name, company name, document identifier, journal, patent or tags.

Research Topic:

You can narrow your research topic search by language types, publication years, document type, author name or company name.

Author Name:

If you choose to search by Author Name, you may enter their first, middle, and last name, and check for alternate spellings of the last name.

Company Name:

To search the under a Company Name, you simply enter the name of the company you're searching for.

Document Identifier:

If you know the number/document code for the specific document you're searching for, you can enter it here.

Journal:

For a journal search you may search under the journal name, volume, issue number, starting page title word(s) and the author's name.

Patent:

To execute a patent search you must be able to enter either the patent number, the assignee name, or the inventor's name.

Tags:

Tags refer to keywords specifically linked to a document/or article.  One can search using these tagged keywords and find the document she/he is looking for.

------------------------------ 

Cas:web verson of scifinder. Retrieved from http://www.cas.org/products/scifindr/sfweb/