About
SciFinder is an intelligent interface which helps users to easily search the extensive Chemical Abstracts Databases. Searches can be done by subject phrases, author names and chemical identification such as structure/substructure, reactions, molecular formulae and more. Additional content notes are available at the CAS site.

Access
Access is restricted to current UW students, faculty and staff and is limited to 10 concurrent users. New users see guidelines and tips below.

SciFinder is available through the web from most web browser and supports an alert feature that will notify you when new articles in your subject are published.

Access to SciFinder is limited to 10 concurrent users. There are a few things we can all do which will minimize this problem and take better advantage of the seats we have available to us:

   1. Log out of the system when you are done searching. This immediately opens that seat to someone else who might be waiting to get on. Sessions will time out after 20 minutes, but it can be a very long 20 minutes if you are the one waiting to connect.

   2. Don't read the electronic articles you retrieve via Chemport (clicking on the computer terminal icon in your answer set connects you to an electronic version of the article in many cases). Look at the article long enough to see if it is of use to you and then print it off or email it to yourself. Chemport is great for this and also allows easy access to many patents and other types of documents. However, it also ties up a seat that others may need. You can find articles in an e-journal or if we can't access it electronically, check the Libraries Catalog for the title in print. Chemport does not always know that we do have a valid subscription to an ejournal, another reason that this is the better option.

   3. If you get the message that all seats are taken when you log in, please wait several minutes before you try again. We are finding that some users are making several attempts within a minute or two and this is not likely to get you in any faster, doesn't help your blood pressure and improperly inflates our turnaway statistics.

Access to the SFS client is no longer available. To connect, follow the instructions under Connect, to register and access SciFinder using the Web Interface.

SFS is available for current UW students, faculty, and staff only. Further, it is only available for  educational and UW research needs. Do not lend your account to anyone else. Researchers who consult with companies may not use SFS for the company's research. There are obviously many gray areas so please feel free to consult Susanne.