Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS)

CAS ― the World's Authority for Chemical Information

Regarded as the world’s authority for chemical information, CAS is the only organization in the world whose objective is to find, collect and organize all publicly disclosed substance information. A team of scientists worldwide curates and controls the quality of CAS databases, which are recognized as the most comprehensive and authoritative by chemical and pharmaceutical companies, universities, government organizations and patent offices around the world. By combining these databases with advanced search and analysis technologies (SciFinder® and STN®), CAS delivers the most current, complete, secure and interlinked digital information environment for scientific discovery.

In 2013, CAS databases experienced robust growth, with more than 1.5 million patents, journal articles and other disclosed research sources added, for a new total of more than 38 million records. Updated daily, the CAS reaction database saw even greater gains, with growth exceeding 8 million new reactions, bringing the total to 70 million reactions now available to researchers. Because of the work of the more than 1,000 scientists around the world who assemble, curate, and assure the quality of the CAS databases, researchers can explore the largest collection of disclosed chemical synthesis information from 1840 to the present, including more than 25,000 reactions added in 2013 from Wiley.  CAS also added thousands of experimental procedures from Springer and Thieme Publishing Group, now providing access to more than 5 million experimental procedures for reactions from prestigious publishers including all ACS Publications journals, Taylor and Francis top synthetic titles, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry journals, and patents from the USPTO, European Patent Office, World Intellectual Property Organization, the Japanese Patent Office and the German Patent Office. CAS has more reactions and experimental procedures than any other single source.

The CAS REGISTRY℠ is the world’s largest collection of chemical substance information.  In November 2013, CAS celebrated registration of the 75 millionth substance in the CAS REGISTRY.  In addition to covering substances from journals and patents, CAS REGISTRY includes substances from chemical catalogs, worldwide governmental regulatory agencies and reputable web resources. By year-end, the CAS REGISTRY contained more than 78 million substances in total.  The CAS REGISTRY also contains more than 65 million sequences. The continual growth and updating of organic and inorganic substances in the CAS REGISTRY database is reported with the REGISTRY counter on the CAS web site home page (www.cas.org). This growth has been complemented by CAS’s expanding coverage of predicted and experimental property values, spectra, and data tags, which totaled more than 4 billion by year-end. Included are more than 22,000 experimental heteroatom NMR spectra added in 2013. 

In total, CAS covers 63 patent authorities worldwide to ensure comprehensive patent information within its databases, including multiple basics coverage from all covered authorities.  Supplementing the disclosed chemistry added to CAS databases from document analysis, CAS also added patent front page graphics from the U.S., Korean, Japanese, Chinese, European and World Patent Offices and expanded Patent Kind Code coverage for Brazil, Philippines, Romania and Switzerland.  Another important content initiative added more than 45,000 records from the Inventory of Existing Chemical Substances in China, bringing CAS’s coverage of regulated chemicals to more than 300,000 substances from 14 national inventories.

SciFinder Helps Scientists Find the most Relevant Information for their Research

CAS introduced a new, streamlined design for SciFinder in 2013 to help users be more efficient than ever.  New graphical content and the redesigned interface enable fast, accurate review of results and one-click access to powerful SciFinder search features.  CAS also introduced a new structure editor that does not require a Java plugin, with import options now available on all pages featuring the CAS structure editor.

Other key SciFinder enhancements for 2013 included:

• A new default Analyze option for reaction searching lists all reagents contained in the current answer set.
• Quick View was added to commercial source answer sets to allow users to quickly view details related to a select substance with supply information still in view.
• Hyperlinks were added to many top catalogs listed in commercial sources.
• SciPlanner how-to guides were updated with advanced features and functionality.
• More than 27,000 biological synonyms were added to improve comprehensiveness of Research Topic Explore searches.
• Full-text PDFs are now available for U.S. patents.

CAS also introduced a range of Application Program Interface (API) capabilities for SciFinder designed to streamline researchers’ workflows.  CAS worked with several customers to develop API support for reaction, substance, and reference searching.  The initial integration was with Vertex Pharmaceuticals, a global biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

ACS ChemWorx, introduced in March 2013, includes the ability to explore referenced abstracts via SciFinder. 

ACS members can now access SciFinder as part of the new ACS Member SciFinder Benefit. More than 14,000 members have opted to take advantage of complimentary access to SciFinder in 2013.

In December, an exciting new collaboration was announced with PerkinElmer to combine the power of two leading chemistry solutions:  SciFinder and ChemBioDraw®.  New functionality is being developed to enable a ChemBioDraw user to directly initiate a search in SciFinder, providing access to comprehensive content available in the CAS databases.  The solution, which will enhance the efficiency of researchers’ workflows, will be available early in 2014.

Organizations around the globe rely on SciFinder for accurate, timely chemistry and related information.  Customers around the world continued to commit to SciFinder as their choice for chemistry research, and CAS announced a five-year agreement that makes SciFinder available to researchers in the Czech Consortium, a regional consortium of schools outside Prague.   Kalexsyn, a U.S.-based Contract Research Organization, also signed a multi-year contract to offer unlimited SciFinder access to its researchers.

CAS was pleased to welcome 17 students and postdocs to participate in the 4th annual prestigious SciFinder Future Leaders in Chemistry program in 2013.   Participants, chosen from 40 countries and more than 160 universities worldwide, were selected from a pool of candidates whose research interests spanned the scientific spectrum, including synthetic chemistry, materials science, nanotechnology, biology and other disciplines demonstrating the breath of information relied-upon in SciFinder.  The group attended the ACS National Meeting and Exposition in Indianapolis in September, providing opportunities to exchange ideas and network with peer scientists from around the world.

Launch of Version One of new STN Begins New Era in IP Searching

CAS, along with its partner FIZ Karlsruhe, introduced Version One of new STN in July.  Version One of the new STN platform delivers core STN content including the complete CAS REGISTRY and CAplusSM content along with Thomson Reuters’ Derwent World Patent Index® (DWPISM),  and the Derwent Chemistry Resource (DCR) .  Proprietary search technology offers new features that allow for STN’s unique content offering to be explored in new ways. With its advanced design, STN’s intuitive user interface is oriented toward the work processes of patent specialists. Users can manage their search strategies and results in dedicated “projects,” which enable search professionals to organize and efficiently work on numerous projects concurrently. Specific emphasis has been placed on workflow. The user interface has been designed to show search query, history, and results at a glance while highlighting the most relevant answer sets. The greatly increased search capacity allows for completely new approaches to searching and results evaluation.

Other enhancements assured valuable access to patent information for STN classic users, including:

• A new pharmacovigilance (PV) cluster simplifies PV alerting and searching.
• The addition of IFIALL, a comprehensive bibliographic U.S. patent database, consolidated information for more efficient retrieval of U.S. patent records.
• INFULL added full-text Indian patent applications and granted patents in English to STN.

Manuel S. Guzman Appointed President of the American Chemical Society’s CAS Division

In September, Manuel S. (Manny) Guzman joined CAS as President, succeeding Robert J. Massie, who led CAS for more than 21 years and is retiring at the end of March 2014.  Prior to his appointment as CAS President, Guzman was Executive Vice President of Learning and Research Solutions and International at Cengage Learning, a leading provider of innovative teaching, learning, and research solutions for academic, professional, and library markets worldwide.