CAS Scientists Provide Unique Insights Into Record-setting Volume Of Published Scientific Research

2004, CAS scientists set new records for in-depth analysis and exhaustive indexing of the scientific research published in more than 9,500 journals and patents from 50 issuing authorities around the world. Most importantly, CAS scientists' intellectual analysis of the published research provided tens of millions of unique electronic pointers to the new science not provided by any other Web or information services. CAS announced the database building achievements at the On line Information 2004 conference held this week in London.

CASM and CAplusSM databases of chemical and related scientific information grew to a total of more than 24 million document records as CAS scientists added a record-breaking 855,000 abstracts during 2004. During the same period, the CAS Registry, the recognized authority on substance information, reached a total of nearly 25 million organic and inorganic substance records with the addition of 1.8 million records for the year, 9 percent more than the previous year and another record-breaking total.

"Intellectual analysis and the thorough indexing of our scientists far surpass robotic means of identifying relevant research publications," said CAS Vice President, Editorial Operations, Dr. Matthew J. Toussant. "This is especially critical in finding the new science disclosed in patents. Our scientists look at descriptive information and translate it into substance records that can be searched by structure in our STN and SciFinder services. None of the free web services can provide this unique value-adde d link to the literature and patents."

CAS Databases Reflect Research Growth

The Primacy of Patents

As in previous years, new substance records entering the CAS Registry database in 2004 were derived from CAS analysis of both journal articles and patents. However, the share of new substances contributed by patents grew to 60 percent for the year.

Growing Variety of Information Now Accessible

During 2004, CAS enriched its database content in several ways:

• Patents grew as a percentage of CAS database content - indexed patents and related CAS patent family records now amount to more than 20 percent of the total.
• Additional patents of scientific interest beyond chemistry and not originally covered in CA are now being added, and will amount to thousands of new records.
• More countries have been added to CAS patent coverage; the latest added are Greece, Moldova, and Turkey. CAS now provides patent information from 50 national and international patent-issuing authorities.
• Citations in CAS databases now amount to more than 120 million, including citations that appeared in both journal articles and patents.
• More than 18,000 reactions were added to the CASREACT® database to provide more comprehensive coverage of biotransformation enzymatically catalyzed organic reactions; in total CASREACT now offers more than 8.6 million reactions.

Recent publications represented in CAS databases are complemented by millions of older documents back to 1900, digitized by CAS for its Scientific Century project.

CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, is an organization of scientists creating and delivering the most complete and effective digital information environment for scientific research and discovery. CAS provides pathways to published research in the world's journal and patent literature — virtually everything relevant to chemistry plus a wealth of information in the life sciences and a wide range of other scientific disciplines — back to the beginning of the twentieth century. CAS publishes the print version of Chemical Abstracts (CA), related publications and CD-ROM services; operates the CAS Chemical Registry; produces a family of online databases; and offers the SciFinder desktop research tool. CAS operates STN International, a network of scientific and technical databases, in association with FIZ Karlsruhe in Germany and the Japan Science and Technology Agency.

Source: CAS - Chemical Abstracts Service