Chemistry 634
Fall 2010
Prof. Donald Watson
Electronic Resources for Organic Chemists
Univ of Delaware Chemistry Library
Website: http://www2.lib.udel.edu/branches/chem.htm
DELCAT: Library Catalog to find books, bound journals etc.
Datebases: Scifinder, Reaxys, Web of Science
E-journals: Links to electronic journals to which UDel subscribes
Forms:
Interlibrary Loan Form – get books and articles we do not have
Library Annex Request – get books from the library annex.
Proxy Server:
Allows access to journals and databases from off campus.
For more information see: http://www.udel.edu/topics/connect/webproxy/
Make sure to install the “proxify” button on your web browser – it converts url’s to the UDel proxy
server address. It will save you a lot of time, when working off campus.
See: http://www.udel.edu/topics/connect/webproxy/index06.html
Important Journals for Organic Chemist:
Science, general science, weekly
Nature, general science, weekly
Nature Chemistry, premier chemistry journal, month
Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), premier chemistry journal, weekly
Angewandte Chemie (ACIE), high quality chemistry short communications, weekly
Organic Letters (OL), high quality organic chemistry short communications, biweekly
Journal of Organic Chemistry (JOC), high quality organic chemistry full papers, biweekly
Chemical Communications (Chem Comm), high quality chemistry journal, weekly
Account of Chemical Research, chemistry review articles, monthly
Chemical Reviews, chemistry review articles, monthly
And if you have time:
Chemical Science, new general chemistry journal, likely to become important
Tetrahedron Letter
Tetrahedron
Chemistry A European Journal, high quality chemistry full papers, weekly
European Journal of Organic Chemistry
Organometallics, papers specific to organometallic chemistry, often with inorganic flavor
Databases:
There are at least 5 important databases that you should know about.
Scifinder
Reaxys
Web of Science
Science of Synthesis
Synthesis Reviews
Other web resources:
Evan’s pKa tables, http://www2.lsdiv.harvard.edu/labs/evans/pdf/evans_pKa_table.pdf
Reich’s Organic Chemistry Info page, http://www.chem.wisc.edu/areas/organic/index-chem.htm
Scifinder Tutorial
Scifinder is a good general database for finding compound references and procedures. Note: the
reaction database is not complete. If you do not find what you are looking for in a reaction search, do
a structure search and look up the references.
Scifinder URL: https://scifinder.cas.org
To use you need to create an account: http://www2.lib.udel.edu/database/scifinder.html.
New User Registration Link
Sign-in: https://scifinder.cas.org/scifinder/login.jsf
Most useful searches Explore Substance and Explore Reaction:
Explore Substance:
Open Editor:
Draw desired target then hit OK:
shortcuts
undo
Select search type and limit if needed, then press search:
If the compound is known, you should get a hit list. Note, often the best hits are at the bottom of the
page.
If you click on “reactions” you will get a list of places the compound has been found in reactions.
Again this is not database is not complete. If the compound is can be purchased, there will be an
option for “Commercial Sources.” Please note here, that while many companies list compounds, only
a few supply to synthetic organic laboratories in academia. These include Acros, Aldrich, Fisher,
Strem, Alfa-Asear, and TCI. For the purposes of Chem 634, please limit yourself to these suppliers
when considering commercially available suppliers.
Click on the reference list:
Much like the reaction
search, these options
should only be used with
extreme caution, they
often miss important
papers.
Reference List:
A reference list will look like this. There are now many options to process this information. You can
select hits, get full papers, limit the search, save searches, export to reference software.
Explore Reaction: The reaction search works almost the same way, but now you want to specify if the
structures are “reactants” or “products”. Search can be preformed with both or either, or you can have
multiples of each. To start, draw the desired structures, starting materials on the left.
Next use the arrow to place an arrow between starting materials and products, and “map” the atoms
of the starting material to the product. If there are atoms you do not want to change “lock” them:
Tools:
lock out tool
reaction arrow
atom mapping
these atoms have been locked
Search hits: Again this is not a complete list, but it is an easy place to start. The options are similar to
the structure search page.
Reaxys Tutorial
Reaxys (Formally Beilstein) is the other broad chemistry search index. The reaction searching tends
to be more complete with this database, but is not 100% complete either.
URL: https://www.reaxys.com/reaxys/secured/start.do
Three Search Options: Reactions, Substances and Text. Reactions and Substances most useful.
Substances and Properties Search:
Tools:
erase
periodic table
quick elements
bond tool
Draw desired compound for search, then hit “transfer query”:
For pick options from table. The “substructure” options create free sites on the specified atoms (either
all or hetereoatoms only), this option will include substituents on the searched atoms.
Search Results:
Other
options
Preps
Physical
data
Spectral
data
There are many options to get information about the substances.
Here we hit the “reactions” button:
More details about
each paper here:
full text, more
details, reference
Other structure options:
Reaxys will limit searches to return only papers of biologically active compounds, papers that list NMR
data or other spectra data, many other useful options. These are access in the menus below the main
search. The example shown is for NMR data. You can also limited these searched further, for
example in this case we could search for 1H NMR data in CDCl3. There are many useful options, but
remember, the search is only good as the person who indexed the papers… if you do not find
something useful this way, you may need to try a less limited search and dig into the results yourself.
Example of results, after clicking on “search” then “spectra”:
Reaction Search:
First draw starting materials and products (as desired):
Add reaction arrow:
“Map” the atoms, starting material to the product. Avoid the “automap” function:
Transfer query and selection options desired:
Results:
The reference display is similar to that for substance searches.
Web of Knowledge Tutorial
Web of Knowledge is a rseful search engine for finding information related to citations of papers in the
literature.
URL: http://apps.isiknowledge.com
Forward citation search (search for papers that referenced a paper):
Enter last name of first author, journal (the syntax must be correct, see look up list), and year of
paper:
Pick list is sometimes long. Find the correct paper, click “view record”. (Note the number of miscitations. Don’t add to this list when you publish!):
Reference you selected. Click on “times cited” to see who has cited the paper:
Click on “times cited” to see who has cited the paper.
Links to full papers, can export to Endnote, several options: