Dana L. Roth

SPRESIweb 2.1, a Selective Chemical Synthesis and Reaction Database

InfoChems SPRESIweb 2.1, launched in January 2005, offers both structure, chemical reaction, property data, and text searching via the Internet. SPRESIwebs integrated structure and reaction databases are derived from articles indexed from over 1350 journals and conference publications, in addition to chemical patents, published between 1974 and 2002. SPRESIweb provides access to 4.5 million compounds and 3.6 million reactions from 565 000 references including 156 000 patents. In addition, SPRESIweb offers over 28 million chemical, physical, and biological property data values. As an aside, the Chemical Abstracts Service has enhanced its REG File records with InfoChems physical property data and its CASReact File with InfoChems chemical reaction data.

Searching the chemical literature

No wonder you activities are, reading will be always needed. It is not only to fulfil the duties that you need to finish in deadline time. Reading will encourage your mind and thoughts. Of course, reading will greatly develop your experiences about everything. Reading searching the chemical literature is also a way as one of the collective books that gives many advantages. The advantages are not only for you, but for the other peoples with those meaningful benefits.

FRPAA and NIH Mandate : A Blessing in Disguise for Scientific Society Publishers?

Abstract Society publishers are encouraged to view recent “Open Access” proposals as opportunities to expand access and balance subscription pricing with author contributions. This approach would hopefully avoid the difficulties inherent in the deposition and use of pre-publication manuscripts. Examples of reasonably priced society journals are presented along with comparison pricing of society and commercial journals. These examples suggest that society journals should be immune to cancellations, in contrast with the vulnerability of commercial journals.

Web-Accessible Chemical Compound Information

ABSTRACT Web-accessible chemical compound information resources are widely available. In addition to fee-based resources, such as SciFinder Scholar and Beilstein, there is a wide variety of freely accessible resources such as ChemSpider and PubChem. The author provides a general description of various fee-based and free chemical compound resources. The free resources generally offer an acceptable alternative to fee-based resources for quick retrieval. It is assumed that readers will be familiar with The Merck Index, Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, and Knovel Critical Tables.

Chemistry Journals: Cost-Effectiveness, Seminal Titles and Exchange Rate Profiteering

Summary The cost-effectiveness of STM journals has been compared within several subject areas, beginning with Henry Barschallss work with the physics literature in the late 1980s. A new use-independent cost-effectiveness metric is proposed and calculated for journals in several chemistry subdisciplines. Publisher and year-of-publication data for seminal journal articles assigned in a graduate-level organic synthesis class are presented. The effects of publisher policies in establishing and enforcing differential subscription prices for European and non-European customers on the rise of journal subscription costs and also on possible exchange-rate profiteering are discussed.

Several Centuries of Centrality

As Carolyn Bertozzi mentioned in her inaugural editorial, the relationship of “Central Science” to “Chemistry” became popularized over 40 years ago with the publication of the first edition of Brown and LeMay’s Chemistry: The Central Science, now in its 13th edition. Yet as late as 2003, Prof. Sason Shaik at The Hebrew University claimed “popularization of chemistry remains scant.” He goes on to share [his] “own experience of popularizing chemistry by delivering the following universal message of our science, that Chemistry is the window given to Mankind to glimpse into its material essence.”

Merck Index - 12th Edition on CD-ROM - for the Macintosh

The Merck Index (12th edition on CD-ROM, Version 12: 1, 1996) for the Apple Macintosh requires a Macintosh with PowerPC (PPC) or 68040 processor, a color monitor (at least 640 x 480 pixels, and 256 colors), a quad speed CD-ROM drive, 8 Mb RAM and 12 Mb hard disk space), and a System 7.5 (or higher) operating system. Installation of the software, although both poorly documented and not intuitively obvious, appears fairly Macintosh standard. In the absence of a local systems support staff, toll free numbers and an e-mail connection are available from the publisher.