gogo
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how to find one compound in literature comprehensively?
crossfire and scifinder only gave the results that the compond was applied or used in some reactions, however, unsuccessful applications mentioned in
text were not included. as a result, how could i find the citation comprehensively, including all literatures that used to mention that compound?
thanks so much!
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Ritter
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| Quote: | Originally posted by gogo
crossfire and scifinder only gave the results that the compond was applied or used in some reactions, however, unsuccessful applications mentioned in
text were not included. as a result, how could i find the citation comprehensively, including all literatures that used to mention that compound?
thanks so much! |
There are 2 ways to search the chemical literature: online & on foot.
Files CA & CAPLUS in STN cover the literature back to the mid-1970s. Beyond that you have to use File Beilstein in STN to get the earlier
literature. These are all expensive, especially if you are not skilled in their online searching languages.
There is a group at CA in Columbus that will do comprehensive online searches for you but it is also expensive (as in hundreds of $$$ per search). And
they will likely miss older references if your compound predates 1976 or thereabouts.
The less expensive lit searching technique involves spending a lot of time in well-stocked chemistry libraries at universities. Using hard-copy CA
& Beilstein, you have to assemble a list of all the journal articles that mention your compound, then go find them in the stacks & copy them.
Then you check their references & go find those articles, etc, etc, until you get back to the first. But both Beilstein & CA are difficult to
use in hard-copy if you are not versed in CA nomenclature & if you cannot read chemical German & understand how Beilstein is organized.
[Edited on 4-7-2008 by Ritter]
Ritter
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\"The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.\"
Karl Marx
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vulture
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I thought scifinder finds everything in the CAS database and as CAS covers pretty much everything published, scifinder should give you everything
there is to find.
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Ritter
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| Quote: | Originally posted by vulture
I thought scifinder finds everything in the CAS database and as CAS covers pretty much everything published, scifinder should give you everything
there is to find. |
SciFinder is based on the CA electronic database which is complete only back to sometime in the 1970s. When you look at their pdf on File CA, it
claims to have everything back to 1907, but I've run many STN searches in File CA & the hits peter out when your loooking for references earlier
than about 1970.
There is also a lot to be critical of with CA. I've personally run into papers that were never abstracted and compounds that were incorrectly
abstracted.
[Edited on 4-7-2008 by Ritter]
Ritter
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\"The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.\"
Karl Marx
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S.C. Wack
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Seconded. Scifinder is generally worthless for references over 30-40 years old.
Note that the OP says Scifinder and Beilstein Crossfire isn't good enough (awwwww, schade), so talking about these is unnecessary.
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Nicodem
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I did not really understood what the problem of Gogo is, but in my experience SciFinder has way more erroneous entries than Beilstein (kind of makes
sense given Beilstein is originally German). Also, Beilstein has much more reactions abstracted, but SciFinder has more compounds abstracted (it finds
references for compounds that Beilstein does not even know about, but does not find so many reactions where a specific compound is involved while
Beilstein does). Of course, Beilstein is also much, much better at giving experimental properties for compounds. I always check both as you can never
be sure. This way you get your self saved from the tedious work of fully characterizing compounds that you could erroneously think are new while they
were just not abstracted by either one or the other database.
…there is a human touch of the cultist “believer” in every theorist that he must struggle against as being
unworthy of the scientist. Some of the greatest men of science have publicly repudiated a theory which earlier they hotly defended. In this lies their
scientific temper, not in the scientific defense of the theory. - Weston La Barre (Ghost Dance, 1972)
Read the The ScienceMadness Guidelines!
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gogo
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thank u so much for your reply!
i am afraid that some of you might misunderstand my question, or i might have expressed uncompletely. what i am now confused is, beilstein and
Scifinder only give citations of the desired compound, which was utilized successfully in the references. some of the articles else might contain such
knid of substances that could not be applicable for the reported conditions, as a result, the authors just mentioned them in text or even support
information. however, niether beilstein nor Scifinder would THINK that this paper is also a useful citation for this USELESS compound. concequently,
the direct search for the defined compound would miss many unsuccessful examples that appeared in literature, which might be useful for the students.
I will give a instance.
i want to find one compound, such as indole, in literature. and there might be two papers in one volumn of JACS. the former is about the
N-substitution of amines. indole seems to be one of successful example for the condition and it is indeed listed in table. the latter is about the
arylation of arenes and heterocycles. however, the reaction applying indole only give trace products. so the author just wrote "indole is not
applicable for this reaction and only gave trace products" in text. no scheme, no figure, even not listed in table. i think that beilstein and
Scifinder will definitely cite the former as a reference for indole, but the latter one might not be included.
if i want to do some arylation of indole, i might not have read the latter paper mentioned above. but also, niether beilstein nor Scifinder would give
me the right information that indole used to be unsuccessful in this paper. even one sentence might be helpful for me at this time.
i am sorry to have typed so many words. my english is so poor that i could not even completely write down one sentence. however, i do my best to
express myself clearly and i hope you could understand me and do me a favor. thank all of you so much!
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Nicodem
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I think I now understand what you mean. First you have to understand the the people paid to do the abstraction job are just humans and do mistakes, so
even if a compound is explicitly mentioned in a successful reaction it will not necessarily be abstracted, and if it is, it could be abstracted with
the wrong structure. Secondly, when searching for the type of information you look for, it is better to search by keywords instead structures. It is
also very important to find a review paper about the specific reaction where you suspect your compound could have been unsuccessfully employed (the
authors were supposed to have read all they could find and they should emphasize the substrate specifics of the reaction). You can also help yourself
using the search engines at the publisher's site where you can search directly into the full text of the primary literature using keywords or phrases.
Though sadly in the newer literature (last 20 years) there is this antiscientific tendency to obfuscate the limitations of the
reactions/reagents/conditions used and the authors will very rarely describe the failed experiments. These days it is more important to appear cool
instead of scientific and both the authors and the referees encourage this antiscientific style of publishing.
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Ritter
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Nicodem
when searching for the type of information you look for, it is better to search by keywords instead structures. |
I work as a consultant and do lit searches for people who have a lot of money riding on my findings and reccomendations. Depending on the exact
requirements of my employer, I have used both key word searching as well as structure searching. But key word searching produces far more ambiguous
results than structure searching, especially when it comes to patents.
[Edited on 13-7-2008 by Ritter]
Ritter
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\"The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.\"
Karl Marx
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