Chem 7950  

What information do I need?

Why do I need it?

Will I know when to stop?

Why doesn't the library have the journal you need?
Anatomy of a record in SciFinder
Cited reference searching
"Patents
Publication cycle

The library does its best to subscribe to the journals that Auburn University researchers need. The reason we do not have any particular journal usually comes down to money. The cost of journals has outstripped inflation for a couple of decades, almost four-fold. See the graph on Monograph and Serial Costs in ARL Libraries, 1986-2004 for details.

Do not hesitate to use Interlibrary Loan to get articles, books, and conference proceedings that Auburn University does not own or to which we do not have online access.

• Interlibrary Loan => Borrow an article, book, or dissertation from another library or provider
• AUBIExpress => Request electronic delivery of an article owned by Auburn University Libraries. Use AUBIExpress when we have the journal in print but not online.

What exactly does a keyword search in SciFinder search? It doesn't search the full-text of an article! Instead, it searches the record in Chemical Abstracts that represents an article. The importance of understanding this can not be emphasized too much -- it will limit your ability to effectively effectively use SciFinder.

SciFinder Web searches in the ...

• Title of the article
• Abstract – all words in the abstract are searched
• Index Terms and their free-text modifiers (except for Role)
• CAS Registry Numbers and their free-text modifiers
• Supplementary Terms

But not in the ...

• The full text of the article
• Bibliographic information -- Besides the article title, i.e., author or year or journal title
• CA Section Role

For a more about what SciFinder searches, take a look at Anatomy of a record in SciFinder

Also called "Cited Reference Searching", "Who cited this article?" searching complements other ways of searching the literature.

Cited Reference Searching -- Science Citation Index (Web of Science)

Cited reference searching is a powerful tool. It relies on the citation behavior of scientists to index the literature -- index terms and keywords are replaced by cited references. Searching for publications that have cited a particular article is a conceptually different way to search the literature than is a keyword search.
     Cited Reference Searching ... making the most of a key reference
     Science Citation Index -- Search Tips

Cited Reference Searching -- SciFinder 

Since 1997, cited references lists have been added to Chemical Abstracts records. This has made it possible to perform cited reference searching in SciFinder ... at least for articles published after 1997 that cite the article in which you are interested.

1. Select one, or more, references in SciFinder.
2. Click the "Get Related" button at the bottom of the page.
3. Choose "Citing References" ... Get references that cite the selected do document(s).

Cited Reference Searching -- Google Scholar

Google Scholar is the third major database that also allows one to see who has cited an article. Just click on the "Cite by" link to finds publications that have cited the article.

There is overlap between doing a cited reference search in these three databases. Unfortunately, it is not easy to compile an aggregated list from all three databases.

The patent literature is fundamentally different than the journal literature. The goal of a patent is to claim the exclusive right to practice an invention in return for disclosing what the invention is and how to practice the invention. (Actually, a patent provides the right to exclude others from practicing an invention, a subtle difference that encourages the leasing of patent rights to those for whom it has value.) Watch out for verb tenses -- if the past tense is used, then the experiment was done ... but if the only the present tense is used, then the experiment was probably not done.

Handout on the Patent Literature and Chemistry

The better you understand the relationship between different parts of the publication cycle, the better you can use the chemical literature. See the Publication Cycle handout for graphic summary of the publication process. The two most important things to remember:

(1) Preliminary results such as those in a conference proceedings are often followed up a year or two later with a communication or full paper that has more experimental details.

(2) There is a time lag between the publication of an article, its initial short record in SciFinder (and other databases), and the fully indexed record in SciFinder (with CAS Registry numbers, index terms, supplementary terms, and the references cited in the article).