Index Chemicus

The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), besides publishing Current Contents (p. 1611) and the Science Citation Index (p. 1637), also publishes Index Chemicus (formerly called Current Abstracts of Chemistry and Index Chemicus). This publication, begun in 1960 and appearing weekly, is devoted to printing structural formulas of all new compounds appearing in more than 100 journals, along with equations to show how they were synthesized and an author s summary of the work. Each issue contains five indexes author. 

However, if one lacks access to these, one may consult Chemical Titles and the keyword index (p. 1611) at the end of each issue of CA. In these cases, of course, it is necessary to know what name might be used for the compound. The name is not necessary for Index Chemicus (p. 1622) one consults the formula indexes. However, these methods are far from complete. Index Chemicus lists primarily new compounds, those which would not have been found in the earlier search. As for chemical Titles, the compound can be found only if it is mentioned in the title. The keyword indexes in CA are more complete, being based on internal subject matter as well as title, but they are by no means exhaustive. Furthermore, all three of these publications lag some distance behind the original journals. To locate all references to a compound after the period covered by the latest semiannual formula index of CA, it is necessary to use CAS-online. 

Westfall, Richard S. Isaac Newton s Index chemicus. Ambix 22, no. 3 (Nov 1975) 174-175. 

An assessment of the "Index chemicus" (Keynes M.S. 30), which in terms of sheer bulk is the largest of Newton s extant alchemical papers... 

Deulofeu was a member of the Editorial Board of several scientific publications, including Medicina, Enzymologia, Anales Asociacidn Quimica Argentina, Tetrahedron, Tetrahedron Letters, Index Chemicus, and Carbohydrate Research, and a member of the Assessor Committee of the Editorial Board of Pure and Applied Chemistry. 

Approximately 1995 monoterpenoid-related papers were retrieved from the page-by-page search of 135 titles published since compiling the previous Report (Vol. 7, p. 3) to August 1977 and available to early November 1977 additional papers were retrieved via Current Abstracts of Chemistry and Index Chemicus, and relevant sections of Current Contents, Physical and Chemical Sciences, and Chemical Abstracts. 1210 of these papers provided the core upon which this Report is based. 

Index Chemicus, Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Philadelphia, PA, subset from 1993. 

K. Takabe, H. Fujiwara, T. Katagiri, and J. Tanaka, Tetrahedron Letters, 1975, 1239 (Curr. Abs. Chem. Index Chemicus, abstract No. 230 382 has formula 8 incorrect). 

Backfiles available in print only (e.g.. Index Chemicus pre-1993) are now of very limited use and likely to be difficult to obtain. 

Founded by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), now owned by Thomson-Reuters, Index Chemicus is now part of the Web of Science service, which is in turn part of the Web of Knowledge (www.thomsonreuters.com/products services/scientihc/Web of Science). The electronic hie goes back to 1993 and contains data on 2.6 million compounds. The Web of Science abstracts over 10,000 journals separate hgures are not available for chemistry, but the coverage can be browsed free online. 

Abstracts itself but this is too large and a much better choice is one or more of the titles in the CA Selects series, which only contain abstracts relating to a particular area. However, wider literature coverage is essential and a good approach is to read one of the periodicals which abstracts new compounds and reactions. Methods of Organic Synthesis (Royal Society of Chemistry) and the more comprehensive Index Chemicus (Institute of Scientific Information) are good examples of this genre. 

Index Chemicus (G4) is a more comprehensive and accessible index of new compounds for which analytical data and molecular formulas are available. The publication summarizes this type of information from over 200 key journals, usually within 45 days of the original publication date. Several other instrumental data are usually given, in addition to an abstract of the paper. Some indication of the scope is given by the cumulative index for 1960-1967, which listed some 850,000 new compounds. In 1968 alone, about 165,000 new compounds were described. 

Access to all this information is provided by the Index Chemicus Registry System (ICRS), which contains records of new compounds and associated data on magnetic tape (6). Structures are described by the Wiswesser Line Notation (7), a system for describing chemical formulas in terms of a linear groups of symbols. A recent development is the ICRS Substructure Index (G5), which enables manual searches to be made for new chemical information, and is based on the occurrence of fragments of structures, the most common of which are illustrated as conventional structural diagrams. 

G4. Current Abstracts of Chemistry and Index Chemicus, published by Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Other publications of ISI include the ASCA system the Science Citation Index and Current Contents. 

Three new publications are currently being evaluated for their usefulness in locating new published literature which has not yet appeared in the abstract journals and review articles abstracted in Chemical Abstracts Chemical Titles, Bibliography of Chemical Reviews, and Index Chemicus. The first two are new services provided by Chemical Abstracts and it is hoped that they will bridge the gap between the publication date of an article and the appearance of the corresponding annual index of Chemical Abstracts by means of which the abstract of the original article may be found in Chemical Abstracts. Index Chemicus is a compilation of new compounds disclosed in the current literature and the corresponding references. This new journal is published by the Institute of Scientific Information, Philadelphia, Pa. 

H. Ishikawa, S. Ikeda, and T. Mukaiyama, Chem. Letters, 1975, 1051 a reaction scheme confusingly implies that rose oxide reacts with isobutylmagnesium bromide to yield dihydrorose oxide, and Current Abstracts of Chemistry and Index Chemicus, Abstract No. 238 491, perpetuates this ... 

Products/technologies Index Chemicus database allows access to important reaction diagrams, full bibliographic information, full-length author abstracts, and a variety of searchable indices published in one substructure- and text-searchable database. 

Index Chemicus 1991-. Philadelphia, PA Institute for Scientific Information. Monthly. A text and substructure-searchable database with coverage of over one million structures published in the literature. Contains reaction diagrams... 

The present review complements and concludes the first part [97-AHC(68)223], which was devoted to the chemistry of C-nucleosides of hetero monocyclic bases. C-Nucleosides reviewed in this part were systematized according to the size and complexity of the base component, starting with those of simpler base components followed by more complex ones. Within a class of a particular base component, the arrangement also goes from less to more complex attached components. The C-nucleosides of a certain category are discussed first, followed by their analogs in the sequence homo, carbocyclic, reverse, and acyclo C-nucleosides [for definitions, see Part I, 97AHC(68)223]. To avoid redundancy, whenever the synthesis of a C-nucleoside of a condensed base comprised the elaboration of a C-nucleoside of a monocyclic base, the synthesis of the latter is usually not discussed, since it has already been mentioned in the first part of this review. The literature has been surveyed to Vol. 125, No. 7 (1996), of Chemical Abstracts and Vol. 142 No. 10 (1996), of the Index Chemicus. 

The Wiswesser line notation was already invented in 1938, i.e., before the advent of computers that could effectively use it [10-14], In 1960, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) developed the Index Chemicus, based on the Wiswesser line notation. The Wiswesser line notation is based on sequences of letters, numbers, and other characters as shown in Table 14.5. Numbers refer to the number of carbon atoms. For example, QV refers to acetic acid, and Q2 refers to ethyl alcohol. 

In the past few years, several microcomputer-based software packages have become available to input and store chemical structures. These packages can be divided into two main groups those that allow structures to be drawn and stored for later recall [e.g., ChemDraw (S. Rubenstein), WIMP (Aldrich)] and those that capture structures from online files like Index Chemicus Online and CAS ONLINE [e., PC-Plot (MicroPlot), Emu-Tek (FTG Data Systems)]. The greatest limitation of both groups of software is that stored structures have to be recalled serially or by specific registration number since structure and sub-structure search capabilities are not available. 

Examples are ISI s Current Chemical Reactions database and Index Chemicus subset databases as well as the Rhone-Poulenc pK database. 

Products on the market to date tend to be a repackaging of existing products, for example ISPs Index Chemicus subsets and the BIOSIS Information Transfer Subsystems (B-I-T-S). They are aimed at the end user, not the information specialist, and are priced at a level that the end-user can afford. They are packaged with retrieval software and the vendors are aiming for high volume production. 

EVALUATING THE SYSTEM. We are at present evaluating a system which combines the reaction classification approach with this semi-automatic site analysis. We are using the novel reactions as indicated in Index Chemicus and at the same time are evaluating the ICRS tapes as an automatic way of collecting the reaction and product infoimation. 

ICRS particularly alerts novel reactions and syntheses, and the relevant abstracts can be found by searching the tapes or by scanning Index Chemicus. The first stage of the process is to isolate all the WLNs given for the relevant abstract and to display the structures with relevant CROSSBOW connection table information. 

The total reaction is examined in Index Chemicus and the reaction information added to the existing information and the appropriate class allocated. We have again used the Organic Synthesis (11) classification, but this time have left it essentially unmodified. Any relevant compounds not included in the ICRS tapes (because they did not represent novel conpDunds) are added to the reaction data base. 

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