Keyword index, Chemical Abstracts

Bibliographic data, keyword phrases, index entries, general subject headings, and CAS Registry Number(s) for documents covered by Chemical Abstracts Service... 

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... 

Chemical Abstracts (CA) consists of two main parts, abstracts of every paper containing new chemical information, and indexes which provide access to the abstracts and thence to the original literature. It is published weekly and each issue contains a keyword index and an author index. The weekly issues are collected in volumes covering a six month period (one year, prior to 1962) and each volume contains author, chemical substance, formula, general subject, patent, and ring system indexes. Every five years (ten years, prior to 1957) the indexes for the ten volumes are combined to give Collective Indexes. These indexes are the single most important and comprehensive information tool available to the chemist... 

The statement that the title should be descriptive of the matter of a communication seems to be a truism, but insufficient attention appears to be paid to the titles of papers submitted to learned journals. This is particularly true when papers are part of a series—for example, one of a series of papers may be entitled Studies in the Chemistry of X and Y, Part 47. Attempted Synthesis of Y. Suppose X and Y are complex alkaloids often such a paper deals only with the preparation of some complex ring structures—oxaazulenes, perhaps—from which the investigators hope ultimately to synthesize the subject of their main interest. Hence the paper is really about oxaazulenes and not alkaloids X and Y. The repercussions of this on indexing are serious. However, the new keyword in context indexes Chemical Titles) which are compiled by computer from titles of papers and used for awareness in the period between original publications and effective use of chemical and physical abstracts, may alter this. As special keyword indexes are compiled from titles, authors may give more thought to the relation of a title to its paper. 

Figure 1 Histogram analysis of CoMFA publications indexed by the Chemical Abstracts Service between 1988 and 2001. Keyword search CoMFA and comparative molecular field analysis search date April 2, 2002 search conducted using SciFinder 5.1 in the CAPLUS database.

Chemical Engineering and Physical, Inorganic, and Analytical Chemistry. Each contains abstracts and bibliographic information reproduced exactly from specific CA Sections as well as a keyword index. 

C45 BioTech Updates includes abstracts from Chemical Abstracts and business information from Chemical Industry Kotes related to biotechnology processes, people in the industry, government activities, production, and pricing internationally. Each issue is divided into four sections patents, papers, books and reviews, and BioTech Industry Notes. Each issue also contains keyword and author indexes. 

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. 

Each issue of these groupings is provided with the keyword index to the complete Chemical Abstracts and is issued bimonthly at a reduced rate. As together they cover only about 80% of the contents of Chemical Abstracts and are not supplied with the complete regular indexes it is clear that they will not be suitable for literature searches, but are intended for specialists who do not wish to buy the complete work but want something more substantial than Chemical Titles. 

Chemical Abstracts Service are also producing a similar rapid digest to act as a guide to the literature dealing with the biological action of organic compounds, known as Chemical-Biological Activities. Keyword-in-context, notation, molecular formula and author indexes are provided. 

To find information about chemical patents reference must be made to the patent indexes of the abstract journals, especially Chemical Abstracts and Chemisches Zentralblatt. The new patent concordance in CA should be noted. The Chemical Abstracts Service has also published Chemical Patents in a similar format to Chemical Titles. It consists of an alphabetical list of keywords with the corresponding patent number. Reference to this in the... 

The Keyword Index consists of a series of words and phrases selected from the title and text of the abstract (Fig. 16). Subject terms and substance names are listed alphabetically. The substance names included in the Keyword Index seldom correspond to the systematic CA Index Names. They can be trivial or semi-systematic names, but are, in each case, the designations used by the author in his paper and thus also included in the CA abstract. Only the volume indexes of the Chemical Abstracts contain the systematic substance names. 

Fig. 16. Excerpt from the Keyword Index of a Chemical Abstracts issue...

Biological Abstracts (University of Pennsylvania) contains much of chemical and biochemical interest, and publishes approximately 100,000 informative abstracts annually in semimonthly issues, each of which has an author index which cumulates in the last issue of each volume, and a guide to new books and periodicals. Each issue also has a subject index based on keywords in the titles of articles and arranged in alphabetical sequence by computer. This is supplemented by the classified arrangement of the material and a detailed table of contents. The computer-composed subject index cumulates each quarter. Specialized parts are also issued separately. 

Analysis processing starts with document analysis. In this process, a short summary (abstract) of the document is created along with keyword phrases, which provide simple natural-language access points for the subject content of the article. Also, the document analyst identifies the chemical substance and general subject index entries that capture the uniqueness of the document and provide the critical controlled-vocabulary, articulated subject access points. 

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