Since 2007 the University of Ulm has a licence of SciFinder for retrievals in the Chemical Abstracts databases and the "Chemisches Zentralblatt".

Chemical Abstracts is the worldwide leading compilation of abstracts in chemistry and related fields. The printed issues for the years between 1907 and 1998 are in one of the reading rooms of the university library. The total compilation until today can now be searched in English language online user-friendly by means of various SciFinder Scholar platforms:

• SciFinder Scholar (classical, including CHEMZENT)
• SciFinderⁿ (including CHEMZENT)
• MethodsNow Analytics

The licence comprises the following:

• online-access: 24 h per day and 7 days per week
• CAS Plus (bibliographic database with over 51 million abstracts since 1907)
• REGISTRY (substance database with over 227 million compounds, among them about 159 million inorganic, organometallic and organic substances)
• CASREACT (reaction database with over 121 million one-step and multi-step reactions)
• CHEMCATS (database of 102 million commercial substances in about 1.000 catalogues)
• CHEMLIST (database with regulatory information for about 394.000 substances)
• CHEMZENT (German abstracts from 1830 until 1969)

In addition to the classical SciFinder Scholar the special database MethodsNow is licensed. It informs in detail about the recent literature in analytical chemistry, pharmacology, food analysis, and isolation of natural products. SciFinder is the most recent platform which stands out due to the detailed information on chemical reactions.

SciFinder was designed for usual end users. However, more complex retrievals (especially nested Boolean expressions and patent and polymer retrievals) can only be  performed by means of the classical Messenger retrieval language.

All members of the University of Ulm (coworkers and students) can use all SciFinder platforms in the IP controlled local area network.

Since 2011 there is also:

• SciFinder Mobile with limited features

See also actual information about the system requirements.

 

Access to SciFinder:

In July 2026, CAS SciFinder switched to Shibboleth-based login. You can now use your regular university account to log in to SciFinder: scifinder-n.cas.org

For users with an existing SciFinder account, the existing account will be merged with the Shibboleth login upon first login.

For new users without an existing account, a new SciFinder account is created automatically when they log in for the first time, so that search queries, formulas, etc., can be saved in the account as usual.