Chemical Abstracts, 180 American publications

A major part in the language of chemistry is in learning the names of the chemicals (nomenclature). Many chemicals, particularly the more common ones, are known by several different names. For example, the chemical CH3CH2OH has the systematic name ethanol. The publication Chemical Abstracts (American Chemical Society) also uses the name ethanol. The historical or common name is ethyl alcohol or grain alcohol. A nickname for it is just alcohol, and there are various tradenames, depending on the manufacturer. For example, the Fastman Company sells it under the name of Tecsol . Fven trained chemists have trouble with nomenclature, which makes the use of and need for written chemical formulae common among chemists. 

The American Chemical Society maintains the chemistry.org website at http // chemistry.org/portal/Chemistry. One can access Chemical Abstracts (CAS) from this site. The site lists meetings and publications and includes a careers and jobs site and an online store. American Chemical Society (ACS) publications at http // pubs.acs.org provides its members information products and services. Currently, over 30 magazines and peer-reviewed journals are published or co-published by the Publications Division. 

Research articles of interest to biochemists may appear in many types of research journals. Research libraries do not have the funds necessary to subscribe to every journal, nor do scientists have the time to survey every current journal copy for articles of interest. Two publications that help scientists to keep up with published articles are Chemical Titles (published every 2 weeks by the American Chemical Society) and the weekly Current Contents available in hard copy and computer disks (published by the Institute of Science Information). The Life Science edition of Current Contents is the most useful for biochemists. The computer revolution has reached into the chemical and biochemical literature, and most college and university libraries now subscribe to computer bibliographic search services. One such service is STN International, the scientific and technical information network. This on-line system allows direct access to some of the world s largest scientific databases. The STN databases of most value to life scientists include BIOSIS Pre-views/RN (produced by Bio Sciences Information Service covers original research reports, reviews, and U.S. patents in biology and biomedicine), CA (produced by Chemical Abstracts service covers research reports in all areas of chemistry), MEDLINE, and MEDLARS (produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and Index Medicus, respectively cover all areas of biomedicine). These networks provide on-line service and their databases can be accessed from personal computers in the office, laboratory, or library. Some... 

CAS ONLINE American Chemical Society, Columbus, Ohio CAS ONLINE The Chemical Search System From Chemical Abstracts Service 1967-present CHEMICAL ABSTRACTS SERVICE Equivalent of the printed Chemical Abstraets(CA). Bibliographic data, keyword phrases, index entries, general subject headings, and CAS Registry Number(s) for chemistry-related publications in 50 languages from 150 countries. Includes worldwide patent documents. Easy crossover to the CAS CHEMICAL REGISTRY... 

For reasons of economy of space, some volumes usually treated in this serial publication as books are styled as periodicals [as recommended by CASSI (Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index of the American Chemical Society)]. For example, Chem. Heterocycl. Compd. refers to the Weissberger-Taylor series The Chemistry of Heterocyclic Compounds published by Wiley (Interscience) Alkaloids (London) is the Specialist Periodical Report, covering that subject, of the Chemical Society (London). 

Chemical Abstracts, published semimonthly by the American Chemical Society, can be used for comprehensive literature surveys on chemical processes and operations. This publication presents a brief outline and the original reference of the published articles dealing with chemistry and related fields. Yearly and decennial indexes of subjects and authors permit location of articles concerning specific topics. 

American developments of nomenclature reached their peak when British chemists were engrossed in World War II. One great American achievement was the Ring Index, published in the year of Dunkirk. A second was the introduction to the index of Chemical Abstracts, 1945 and 1947. The lack of participation of the British in these publications was in part due to the war. No significant account of British practice was published until Mitchell s book (1948) until that time, nomenclature was not considered as a comprehensive, logically uniform whole. However, there are many points in which British nomenclature may be held to be superior to the American. 

In America the standard of nomenclature is set by the indexes to Chemical Abstracts. The individual abstract often uses the nomenclature of the original paper, which may be very different. Authors of papers in American Chemical Society journals are free, within limits, to use their own nomenclature, although they are encouraged to use the standard nomenclature. Editors of American Chemical Society publications, other than Chemical Abstracts, are not expected to supervise rigidly the smaller points of nomenclature used in papers in these journals. 

Highlights in American chemical nomenclature activity have been (1) the adoption in 1915 of systematic naming, with inverted organic entries, for the indexing of chemical compounds by Chemical Abstracts, (2) the publication in 1940 of The Ring Index by Austin M. Patterson and Leonard T. Capell (this activity was sponsored jointly by the National Research Council and the American Chemical Society), and (3) the publication in 1945 by Chemical Abstracts of The Naming and Indexing of Chemical Compounds by Chemical Abstracts. The last two are very useful publications. 

Chemical Abstracts. A weekly publication of the American Chemical Society that consists of research articles and patents in all major fields of chemistry throughout the world. It is completely computerized, including the ability to draw chemical structures as the basis for a search of the database, and available in various forms from several computerized services. It is the most indispensable information source in chemical literature and is the largest scientific abstract journal in the world. For further information, see Appendix II. 

From the beginning, the American Chemical Society charged CA with abstracting the complete world s literature of chemistry. The exponential growth of chemical research and publication in the ensuing years led to a parallel growth in CA and the organization that produces it. 

Norm was a veteran member of the American Chemical Society and a very active one. A most significant service to that organization was his term as chair of the national publications committee. He was involved in many of the planning sessions when Chemical Abstracts was making the transition to computer-searchable data... 

Chemical Abstracts (19) will probably satisfy most requirements for literature on research in fiber-forming materials. The first United States articles on synthetic fibers and fiber-forming polymers appeared largely in the J ournal of the American Chemical Society (32), The rapid growth of polymer science fostered the establishment of the Journal of Polymer Science (35) in 1945. The usefulness of this monthly journal as a medium for the publication of fundamental research papers has also been enhanced by the fact that details appear in this journal that would ordinarily be edited out of other journals. 

Chemische Zentralblatt and Chemical Abstracts. In addition to these general sources there is the excellent Bericht of Schimmel Co., of Miltitz-bei-Leipzig, which has covered the field since 1877. Since 1939 the Bericht has been published irregularly, but it continues to be the. best single abstract source in the field. An American publication, similar but with lesser coverage, is the Annual Report on Essential Oils, Aromatic Chemicals and Related Malerialsy issued by Schimmel Co. of New York (44)-... 

The American Chemical Society (ACS) publishes 19 primary journals. Chemical Abstracts (CA), computer-readable and on-line data bases, and many other publications in chemistry. Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a division of the ACS located in Columbus, Ohio, does most of the computer processing and software development for these publications and data bases. ACS publications and data bases contain chemical structures, tables, equations, line drawings, and other images. CAS continues to automate the processing of graphics for both printed publication and on-line data base publication. 

Chemical Abstracts. Easton, Pa. American Chemical Society. Abstracting virtually all papers and patents, this invaluable weekly publication, only a few months behind the original literature, has semiaimual author, subject, formula, and patent indices. The seven collective indices cover the periods 1907-16, 1917-26, 1927-36, 1937-46, 1947-56, 1957-61, 1962-66. To aid in finding information in the latest issues before the semiannual indices have appeared, the material in each issue is grouped topically, and a keyword index is included with each issue. 

Figure 1 Number of articles abstracted each year by the Chemical Abstracts Service from journals covering aspects of computational chemistry. Overall, the upward trend in the number of publications is apparent, although the increasing number of journals has contributed to a fragmentation and specialization of the literature. By way of comparison, the number of articles abstracted annually from the Journal of the American Chemical Society has fluctuated around 1800-1900 during the same period.

The first U.S. venture into chemical abstracting came into being with the founding in 1895 of the Review of American Chemical Research, containing abstracts of the U.S. chemical papers, which originally was published as a supplement to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Technology Quarterly and became part of the Journal of the American Chemical Society in 1897. In 1907, Chemical Abstracts (CA), a separate publication of the ACS, made its debut. While created primarily to serve the U.S. chemists, over the years it became the... 

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