Information Today
Volume 15, Number 6 • June 1998
Scientists Can Now Access Full-Text Journals on the Web Via Chemical Abstracts


Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) has announced that it is streamlining the information retrieval process through a new initiative that will take scientific information users of CAS services from reference to full-text article, immediately, in a single online session.

CAS will enhance its electronic services by incorporating direct access to ChemPort, the collaborative Web service that integrates a database of chemical information with full-text articles from leading scientific publishers. During this year, CAS will link its electronic products—SciFinder, SciFinder Scholar, STN Easy, and STN Express with Discover!—to the ChemPort site, enabling a wider audience to reach the full-text Web service.

"We realize that scientists want to 'close the information loop' as quickly as possible," said Suzan A. Brown, CAS marketing director. "By connecting CAS services to ChemPort, we have made the link between secondary information, such as abstracts, and the original journal articles virtually seamless. The more publishers who begin participating in ChemPort, the more value our users will gain by searching CAS databases. They will find the reference, then go the full-text article on the Web in a single step."

Users who already subscribe to the journals of publishers collaborating in ChemPort can begin using the new link from CAS services immediately to access these journals on the Web.

STN Easy has offered access to full-text documents through ChemPort since February. To be linked to ChemPort by mid-year are SciFinder, SciFinder Scholar, and STN Express with Discover!, personal computer software for searching the STN International network.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) and CAS launched ChemPort in December 1997 in collaboration with seven other major scientific publishers. The jointly created Web site allows researchers to access a combination of top scientific online journals and the vast coverage of CHEMICAL ABSTRACTS. According to the company, ChemPort makes it easy to do the following:

ChemPort includes 26 ACS journals—on topics ranging from biochemistry to environmental science—and journals published by the Academic Press, the Royal Society of Chemistry, Springer-Verlag, the American Institute of Physics, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Chapman & Hall, and the Institute of Physics. Researchers can access 300 journals from these publishers. Full-text documents not available online or published by non-participating publishers may be ordered through CAS's Document Detective Service or FIZ Karlsruhe's AutoDoc.

Source: Chemical Abstracts Service, Columbus, OH, 800/753-4227, 614/447-3731; Fax: 614/447-3713; http://www.cas.org.


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