Chemistry and Biochemistry

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Primary subject databases
Database Description
SciFinder Journal articles and other materials on chemical substances, reactions or topics. View Full Description

Main databases

Secondary subject databases
Database Description
ChemSpider A free service that provides structure-based chemistry information. View Full Description
CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics The most recent edition of a handbook of key data, constants, terms in chemistry and physics. View Full Description
EBSCOhost databases (all) Search all EBSCOhost databases at once. View Full Description
IEEE Xplore Digital Library Electrical and computer engineering journals, conference proceedings and standards from IEEE/IET. View Full Description
ProQuest databases (all) Search all ProQuest databases at once. View Full Description
Web of Science Core Collection Citation indexes for the arts & humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences. View Full Description

Also useful

Tertiary subject databases
Database Description
ACS Publications The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a publisher of peer-reviewed research journals in the chemical sciences and related fields. View Full Description
Agricultural & Environmental Science Collection Multidisciplinary database with abstracts for conference proceedings, reports, monographs, books and government publications. View Full Description
CAS Source Index (CASSI) Search Tool Search tool for publications indexed by CAS since 1907. View Full Description
DART Citations for journal articles and conference proceedings on teratology and other aspects of developmental toxicology. View Full Description
Encyclopedia of Inorganic Chemistry A great resource on inorganic chemistry. View Full Description
Google Scholar Searches for articles and web resources from academic publishers and universities. View Full Description
Inspec Comprehensive access to the literature in physics, computing, engineering, and information technology. View Full Description
MEDLINE (via ProQuest) Key index for biomedical and related literature. View Full Description
PubMed Free biomedical literature search tool, composed primarily of Medline but including additional information. View Full Description
RSC Publishing Access to Royal Society of Chemistry journals, current and ceased, including the earliest issues (pre-1996), which are held in the RSC Archive section. Searchable. View Full Description
Scholars Portal Books Electronic books from various publishers and coverage various subjects. View Full Description
Scholars Portal Journals Several thousand full-text electronic journals; especially strong in sciences and social sciences. View Full Description
ScienceDirect Journals and books published by Elsevier, primarily in the sciences. View Full Description
TOXLINE (via ProQuest) Citations for journal articles, monographs, technical reports and other materials in all areas of toxicology. View Full Description
TOXLINE (via TOXNET: Toxicology Data Network) A group of databases for toxicology, hazardous chemicals, and related areas. View Full Description
TOXNET Multidatabase search tool for information on toxicology, hazardous chemicals, environmental health, and toxic releases. View Full Description

eBooks

Electronic encyclopedias

Print Resources

  • Merck Index - Quick Reference RS 51.M4
  • ACS Style Guide - Quick Reference QD 8.5 .A25 2006

Patent Searching

Searching Google

Default Search Settings or How Google Interprets your Query:

Implicit AND

 Google returns pages that match all your search terms with the term Search terms are automatically combined using AND

Exact Matching

 Google returns pages that match your search terms exactly

Word Variations

 Google returns pages that match variants of your search terms. This means that it will automatically look for correct spelling of misspelled words

Common-Word Exclusion

 Google ignores some common words called “stop words,” the, on, where, how

32-Word Limit

 Search queries limited to 32 words

Not case sensitive

 Capital letters of search terms are ignored

Search

 Searches documents by keyword

Word order

 Google gives more priority to pages that have search terms in the same order as the query

Ignoring Punctuation

 Google ignores most punctuation and special characters including . ; ? [ ] ( ) @ / * < >

Truncation

 Automatic – no additional symbols required to search for alternative word endings

Search results

 Displays by relevance attributed to Google’s algorithm

Compound words

 Searches both the compound word and the with a space between the words airline air line

Options to Refine your Search; Crafting Queries with Special Characters, Operators and Symbols:

“phrase searching”

 Use quotations marks around phrases “birds eye”

OR and |

 Interchangeable use of OR or |. Results include either search term. OR must be capital letters tourism OR travel

-

 Exclude use –immediately before a search term you want to exclude wine -barrel

..

 Specify the results contain numbers in a range 1800..2000

*

 Use *, an asterisk character, known as a wildcard, to match one or more words in a phrase (enclosed in quotes) “Google * my life”

synonyms

 Use ~(the tilde symbol) immediately before a search term to include synonyms ~tourism

intitle:

 Finds results with your search term in the document title intitle:tourism

allintitle:

 Finds results with your search terms in the document title allintitle:confidential

inurl:

 Finds results with your search term in the URL inurl:healthy

allinurl:

 Finds results with your search terms in the URL allinurl:google.faq

Info:

 Finds results about the web page Info:library.wlu.ca

related:

 Finds results with content related to a specific website

related:http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/

filetype:

 Limits your search results to a specific file type. Examples of file types include; doc xls ppt mp4 filetype:pdf

site:

 Limits your search to searching within a specific site site:www.library.wlu.ca

link:

 Use to see what sites link to a specific website link:www.library.wlu.ca

define:

 Find definitions sourced from a range of online resources define:tourist

cache:

 See what a cached version of the site looked like. The last time that Google crawled the site

Cache: http://lwlu.ca

AROUND(n)

 Proximity search based on the number n. AROUND has to be capitalized CBC AROUND(20) Harper

$

 Find prices Nexus $

#

 Find popular hashtags for trending topics #leftoverturkey

_

 Connect two works. Your search results will find this pair of works linked together or connected with underscore dog_house

Movie:

 Include movie: to find movie-related information Movie:blade runner

Phonebook:

 Reverse lookup using Google Phonebook:555-555-1212

Searching for Chemical Information with Text Representation

Properties of Chemical Compounds

  • Mol-Instincts Chemical Property Database. Search using chemical name, 2D-structure, or properties.
  • NIST Chemical WebBook.
  • WebElements Periodic Table.
  • Index to Physical Chemical and Other Property Data. From University of Arizona.
  • ThermaDex contains annotated bibliographic records that describe compilations of thermodynamic and physical property data for chemical compounds and other substances. Most are printed books; a few are freely available Web-based databases. ThermoDex is a "finding aid" designed to save you time in searching through numerous handbooks you might have in your library or lab. It enables you to enter both a type of compound and a property, and it returns a list of handbooks that might contain these data. The actual data are not reproduced in ThermoDex. All such data are copyrighted by the original publishers.

Spectra

  • Open Spectral Database is exactly what the title suggests - a place where scientists can share spectral data and export it in a number of formats in order to do open science. Each spectrum gets a persistent identifier and contributors can get recognition for their contributions. The site is also an open source project that you can extend, enhance and share.
  • Properties of Organic Compounds. Properties of Organic Compounds is a database that contains over 29,000 of the most commonly sought organic compounds, featuring physical data, spectral data, and structures. With a high quality display and powerful search capabilities, it acts as an easy-to-use tool for identifying unknown compounds or for locating additional data and references for a known compound.
  • nmrshiftdb2 is a NMR database (web database) for organic structures and their nuclear magnetic resonance (nmr) spectra. It allows for spectrum prediction (13C, 1H and other nuclei) as well as for searching spectra, structures and other properties. Last not least, it features peer-reviewed submission of datasets by its users. The nmrshiftdb2 software is open source, the data is published under an open content license. Please consult the documentation for more detailed information. nmrshiftdb2 is the continuation of the NMRShiftDB project with additional data and bugfixes and changes in the software.
  • Spectral Database for Organic Compounds. SDBS is an integrated spectral database system for organiccompounds,which includes 6 different types of spectra under a directory of the compounds. The six spectra are as follows, an electron impact Mass spectrum (EI-MS), a Fourier transform infrared spectrum (FT-IR), a 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrum, a 13C NMR spectrum, a laser Raman spectrum, and an electron spin resonance (ESR) spectrum.
  • ChemSpider
  • NIST Chemical Webbook

Research/Writing/Presentations

  • ACS Style Guide. Effective communication of scientific information.
  • ChemSketch. ACD/ChemSketch Freeware is a drawing package that allows you to draw chemical structures including organics, organometallics, polymers, and Markush structures. It also includes features such as calculation of molecular properties (e.g., molecular weight, density, molar refractivity etc.), 2D and 3D structure cleaning and viewing, functionality for naming structures (fewer than 50 atoms and 3 rings), and prediction of logP.
  • Chemistry Dictionary. Add-in for Word or Open Office.
  • Chem4Word Team. Add-in for Word.
  • Publishing Your Research 101. Videos and slides from the Symposium on Ethics and Publishing (Division of Chemical Information, Spring 2011 National Meeting) are also available.

Commercial Availability

Lab Safety

  • The iRAMP Development Blog. Supporting a learning safety culture in laboratories.
  • The NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards. The NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards is intended as a source of general industrial hygiene information on several hundred chemicals/classes for workers, employers, and occupational health professionals. The NIOSH Pocket Guide does not contain an analysis of all pertinent data, rather it presents key information and data in abbreviated or tabular form for chemicals or substance groupings (e.g. cyanides, fluorides, manganese compounds) that are found in the work environment. The information found in the NIOSH Pocket Guide should help users recognize and control occupational chemical hazards.
  • The Safety Zone. The Safety Zone covers chemical safety issues in academic and industrial research labs and in manufacturing. It is intended to be a forum for exchange and discussion of lab and plant safety and accident information without the fanfare of a news article. Written primarily by C&EN senior editor Jyllian Kemsley, the blog also includes contributions from other C&EN staff writers as well as health and safety experts in academia, industry, and government.

Ethics

Writing

Drugs

Other

  • Nobel Prize Nomination Archive: The database is not yet complete. Currently, data until 1963 is included for nominations to all Nobel Prizes except the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, that only contains data until 1953. Note also that names of the nominees and other information about the nominations cannot be revealed until 50 years later.

Chemical Images

Chemical Drawing Programs

Free (at least for academics)

Fee (prices are for individual student)

Complicated

  • Chemaxon Marvin, etc. https://www.chemaxon.com/my-chemaxon/my-academic-license/Chemaxon offers a large number of products, suites, add ons, etc. and apparently pricing is not shown until you register, login, and initiate the download process. The academic license (free?) seems to be set up more for teachers and researchers rather than students, although apparently an approved teacher license includes their undergraduate classes.

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