Chemical Abstracts Services (CAS) has launched a new mobile version of SciFinder.
THE BASICS
Good for quick, on-the-fly searches. For example:
You’re in the lab and you need to get a substance name or registry number.
You’re at a conference or a lecture, and you want to do a quick lookup of a chemist’s recent articles.
- It works on the various mobile devices (iPod Touch, iPhone, Android, Blackberry but not iPad – see below).
- Just go to http://scifinder.cas.org/mobile.
ACCESS
Login with your SciFinder username/password. If you have not yet created a SciFinder Web account, go to this page http://library.wustl.edu/downloads/scholar/regist.html to register. (Danforth Campus faculty, students, staff only).
- No IP authentication, so you don’t have to worry about campus wifi or remote/VPN access issues.
- You don’t have to worry about “turnaways” because there are no simultaneous user limits.
- (On iPads, SciFinder will redirect to the full version, which does fall within IP authentication and simultaneous user limits.)
WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH SCIFINDER MOBILE
- Search by substance identifier.
- Explore by research topic, author or company name.
- View abbreviated records. For substances you’ll get the basic identification information and the beginning of the property data. For citations, you’ll get full citations and abstracts, but none of the additional indexing.
- View results from existing saved answer sets or Keep Me Posted alerts.
BUT YOU CANNOT*
- Draw structures.
- See the complete Registry records or CAS references.
- Link out to article text.
- Create new answer sets or KMPs.
- Limit, analyze or refine searches, see cited/citing references, etc.
- Mark, email or otherwise save any references of interest, or any other “synching” between the mobile and regular web versions.
* though we expect that some of these may become available in future updates, depending on user feedback and interest.
If you have questions about SciFinder (Web or Mobile) or suggestions for future updates, please contact Rob McFarland at rmcfarland@wustl.edu.
Comments