Subject: 7. General Chemistry-related Information on the Internet 
 
Compiled by:    Neil Flatter  
                Lev A. Gorenstein  
                Theodore Heise  
                Mark Perks  
Mutilated by:   Bruce Hamilton 

There are so many references that relate to chemistry on the Internet
that this section could become overwhelming in size.  Instead of trying to 
provide a comprehensive listing of all such sites, what follows is more a 
collection of pointers to other sources that carry a diverse range of
material related to chemistry.  By knowing where to look for an answer, 
these references should provide a springboard for an information search 
on the Internet. Specialist software and search engines are available to 
search for keywords using Gopher and the WWW, and they will also point to 
additional sources not accessed by the sites below. 

7.1  How can I access databases such as Chemical Abstracts?

These databases are almost all inevitably commercial, it costs serious
money to build and update them, thus it will cost money to access them. 
Either you or your institution will be paying the supplier. Do not 
expect to find copyrighted databases ( such as the Merck Index, Chemical
Abstracts, Kirk Othmer, or Sax ) freely available on the Internet.

There are several commercial suppliers of databases that contain chemical 
information. These can usually be accessed either via the Internet or 
telephone Packet Switching Networks. The most well known specialist database 
is the American Chemical Society's Chemical Abstracts [1], which is provided
by the Chemical Abstracts Service. CAS offers a commercial database service 
called STN International, which contains over 190 scientific and technical 
databases. 

These databases cover all aspects of Chemistry, including CAS
Registry Numbers, and are accessible via the WWW.
http://www.cas.org/                   Chemical Abstracts Service.
http://info.cas.org/stn.html          STN Introduction
http://www.dialog.com/                Dialog

The most universal and comprehensive database supplier is Knight Ridder, 
whose Dialog service offers over 40 databases that solely concentrate
on aspects of chemistry, including Chemical Abstracts since 1967 ( but it 
does not offer the actual abstract, just the bibliographic information ) 
and the CAS RN database [2]. Dialog also offers several hundred other
commercial and technical databases, and Knight Ridder also offers selected 
general and technical databases on a low-cost, home user ( off-peak :-) ) 
system known as " Knowledge Index "  at approx 25% of the normal Dialog cost.
Knowledge Index is also available from some on-line suppliers such as 
Compuserve - but remember that KI does not include CA. 

The ability to perform on-line searches is becoming an essential attribute 
for modern chemists. Major database suppliers offer a wide range of training 
courses and there are several excellent articles on searching the chemical 
literature ( database and/or journals) in journals such as J.Chem.Ed.[3-5]. 
If you have access to a CD-ROM database, you should practise your search 
logic on that first, before going on-line. Because of the cost structure of 
database suppliers such as Dialog, and the inappropriate selection of 
keywords by authors :-), it is often more cost-effective to focus on grabbing
around 100-200 titles and scanning them offline ( using the 30 minutes 
"hold search" function ), and then going back online to grab the desired 
abstracts and citation information.

7.2  What chemistry-related material is on the WWW?

Searching

There are several well-known search engines available on the WWW that will
provide updated searches for keywords. Because of the huge expansion of the
WWW, I've decided to select some sites and allow users to use search 
engines and/or web crawlers to locate resources. If you find a real 
treasure house of chemical goodies, email me the address and I'll check it
out. It is important to realise that many of the WWW search engines are 
complementary, and so it is useful to utilise several when trying to locate 
information on the web - good places to start are directories of various 
WWW search engines.

http://home.netscape.com/home/internet-search.html
http://cuiwww.unige.ch/meta-index.html

Free search engines include:-

http://altavista.digital.com/                          Alta Vista
http://www.google.com/                                 Google
http://www.lycos.com/                                  Lycos
http://www.yahoo.com/                                  Yahoo
http://infoseek.go.com/                                Infoseek
http://www.excite.com/                                 Excite
http://www.webcrawler.com/                             Webcrawler

Chemistry Overview sites

http://chemfinder.camsoft.com/
    The fastest and best way to discover information about chemicals on
    the WWW is CambridgeSoft Corporation's Chemfinder free searching 
    server. This has to be one of the most convenient ways to obtain 
    chemical information on the Internet. Highly recommended. 

http://www.chemsoc.org/crl/links.htm
    The Royal Society of Chemistry maintains an excellent list of sites 
    containing chemistry-related material, and is a good starting point.

http://www.chemcenter.org/
    This is the new WWW site from the American Chemical Society, and
    is intended to be their prime location of chemical information.
    
Other very useful sites include;-
http://www.chemdex.org/
    The University of Sheffield comprehensive listing of WWW Chemical info.
    Over 2200 sites indexed as of September 1996.
http://www.chemie.uni-regensburg.de/external.html
    List of Chemical Services and Resources
http://webbook.nist.gov/
    Comprehensive compilation of the NIST Chemistry WebBook, which 
    includes thermochemical, IR, and mass spectral data. 
http://www.chem.ucla.edu/chempointers.html 
    The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Chemistry.
http://rustico.chem.indiana.edu/
    Gary Hieftje's site, covering many aspects of spectrochemistry. 
http://www.indiana.edu/~cheminfo/
    Gary Wiggins' extensive compilation of WWW chemical sites. 
http://www.netsci-journal.com/
    Internet Journal of Science - Biological Chemistry
http://www.cas.org/  
    Chemical Abstracts Service offers a diverse range of information
    with a search facility.
http://www.camsoft.com/
   CambridgeSoft site, ChemDraw, glassware, clip-art
http://www.chem.vt.edu/chem-ed/vt-chem-ed.html
    The Chemistry Hypermedia project, especially chemical education.
http://www.rpi.edu/dept/chem/cheminfo/chemres.html
    Another listing of Chemistry Internet Resources
http://dir.yahoo.com/science/chemistry/
    The searchable Yahoo Collection of Chemistry Resources
http://www.mdli.com/
    Home of the ISIS/DRAW chemical structure drawing programme 
    ( free for academic and personal home use ).    
 
Chemistry Education

Many of the WWW chemistry directories above also have extensive links to 
educational resources, services, and institutions:-

http://www.chemdex.org/
http://www.chemie.uni-regensburg.de/external.html
http://www.chem.ucla.edu/chempointers.html 
http://www.indiana.edu/~cheminfo/
http://www.chem.vt.edu/chem-ed/vt-chem-ed.html

Additional useful sites include:-
http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/ 
    Journal of Chemical Education Online.
http://www-hpcc.astro.washington.edu/scied/chemistry.html
    A comprehensive listing of education resources.
http://www.inform.umd.edu:8080/UMS+State/UMD-Projects/MCTP/Technology/Chemistry.html
    Internet Resources for Science and Mathematics Education compiled
    by Tom O'Haver.
http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/SEP/SEP.html
    UC Irvine Science Education Program, not only chemistry.  
http://ice.chem.umbc.edu/Chem351l/index.html
    Typical University Organic Chemistry Laboratory information.
http://http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/scifun.html
    Bassam Shakhashiri's home page - full of entertaining information. 

Other Chemistry-related Resources

http://www.che.ufl.edu/WWW-CHE/index.html
    The Virtual Chemical Engineering Library
http://electrochem.cwru.edu/estir/
    The Electrochemical Science and Technology Information Resource.
http://www.improb.com/
    For the best science satire around, check out the Annals of Improbable 
    Research, successor to the Journal of Irreproducible Results. Whilst 
    the full version is only available via subscription services, such as
    ClariNet, smaller items are published free in the Mini AIR.
http://www.chemheritage.org
    Chemical Heritage Foundation site about history of chemical industry 
http://www.acdlabs.com/
    Diverse range of chemistry drawing, interpretation, and modelling software.

General Education Resources
     
Many of the Chemistry Overview sites also point to general science sites,
and use of the large search engines is recommended, but some additional 
sites include:- 
http://www.ccc.uni-erlangen.de/jmolmod/index.html
    Journal of Molecular Modeling
http://www.inform.umd.edu:8080/UMS+State/UMD-Projects/MCTP/Technology
/MCTP_WWW_Bookmarks.html
    Internet Resources for Science and Mathematics Education compiled
    by Tom O'Haver.

Chemical Reference Spectra

http://webbook.nist.gov/
    Comprehensive compilation of the NIST Chemistry WebBook, which 
    includes thermochemical, IR, and mass spectral data. 

7.3  What information is available commercially on-line?

As well as the database suppliers such as Knight-Ridder's Dialog ( and 
low-cost home-user Knowledge Index ) and CAS's STN International, there are 
several other technical database suppliers that include chemistry-related 
material, eg Orbit. These organisations usually approach institutional 
librarians and provide comprehensive descriptions of their available 
services. The best place to start is at your local library, talking to the 
librarian in charge of on-line services to ascertain what is available, and
what levels of support are provided. 

The obvious first places to start are Dialog and STN. The range of chemistry-
related databases are extensive. There are several full-text databases of
patents, full-text newspapers and journals, and many specialised databases.
- industry-specific     Aluminium Industry Abstracts, Paperchem
- subject-specific      Fine Chemicals Database, Chemical Engineering and
                        Biotech Abstracts
- chemical properties   Beilstein, Heilbron, Merck Index, Agrochemicals
                        Handbook
- location-specific     IMS World R&D focus.
- chemical market       Chemical Business Newsbase, Chemical Industry Notes, 
                        Freedonia Market Research.

If you plan on using Knight Ridder's lower cost Knowledge Index, ensure that
the databases you are interested in are available on KI, as not all Dialog 
databases are.

With nearly 200 databases on STN and approximately 500 on Dialog, they both 
offer access to a wide range of information. For more specialist information, 
accessing individual businesses is required, and they can provide specialist
sales, marketing and technical support for their products - many such 
businesses are now accessible via the WWW. There are also the various 
registry companies like Thomas that list chemical and equipment suppliers,
and who also offer a free evaluation period:-
http://www.thomasregister.com/

7.4  What information is available free on-line?

The best technique is to use a WWW search engine to locate information
you desire, but some interesting locations are listed below.

http://chemfinder.camsoft.com/
    CambridgeSoft Corporation's Chemfinder free searching server will
    locate much of the diverse information about chemicals ( physical 
    properties, CAS RN, MSDS, etc. )  available on the Internet.
http://chemistry.mond.org/                        
    Chemistry Today is a daily news service that can also be obtained
    by email. 

Several science journals are now making some of their commentary items and 
abstracts available on the WWW, however subscriptions are still required 
for access to the full journal. These include:-
http://www.nature.com/                            Nature
http://www.newscientist.com/                      New Scientist

Many of the Journals published by the American Chemical Society and Royal 
Society of Chemistry also have homepages or articles available. The ACS 
index also includes some of the UK and Japanese journals as well.

American Chemical Society    
http://pubs.acs.org/about.html                    ACS Journal Index 
http://pubs.acs.org/journals/cenear/about.html    Chemical & Engineering News  
http://dchas.cehs.siu.edu/Magazine/default.htm    Chemical Health & Safety
http://pubs.acs.org/journals/ancham/index.html    Analytical Chemistry
http://pubs.acs.org/journals/esthag/index.html    Environmental Science
                                                   and Technology
http://pubs.acs.org/journals/jacsat/index.html    Journal of the American
                                                   Chemical Society
http://pubs.acs.org/journals/joceah/index.html    Journal of Organic 
                                                   Chemistry 

Royal Society of Chemistry    
http://www.rsc.org/is/journals/j1.htm             RSC Journal Index
http://www.rsc.org/is/journals/current/jcr/jcrpub.htm    Journal of Chemical
                                                   Research  
http://www.rsc.org/is/journals/current/oprd/oprpub.htm   Organic Process R&D.

Society of Chemical Industry
http://ci.mond.org/                               Chemistry & Industry   

The Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan homepage is also available
via the ACS publications page.
http://pubs.acs.org/journals/bljapan/about.html

7.5  What chemical patent information is available on-line?

Both Dialog and STN offer commercial access to US and International patents
online, many with full text - however the international ones, especially
those devoted to capturing the current status of patents can be expensive,
so ensure your searching skills are honed if you wish to avoid a large
bill. 

http://patent.womplex.ibm.com/
http://www.patents.ibm.com/
    A new site that offers free searching of the last 20+ years of US 
    patents, and also provide the abstracts, some images, and the claim 
    summary free. Complete copies of the patents can also be ordered. 
    It has a good search engine, and probably should be the first site to 
    visit, but note that it requires a browser that supports frames
    (eg version 3 of Netscape or Internet Explorer).  
 http://metalab.unc.edu/patents/intropat.html   STO Patent retrieval service
    Gregory Aharonian has struggled for several years to provide a free, 
    comprehensive patent title service. This excellent free service offers 
    the titles of chemical, mechanical, or electrical patents via email 
    to subscribers. Recently he also offered one years worth of patent 
    abstracts, but requires some financial donations to expand the 
    service.  The abstracts are freely retrievable by patent number (sorry 
    no searching yet, that needs the big donations). For subscription info, 
    send 'help' to patents@world.std.com.  
http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html   USPTO/CNIDR Patent Project
    This page provides access to both the U.S. Patent Bibliographic 
    Database, which includes bibliographic data from 1976 to 1997, and 
    the AIDS Patent Database, which includes the full text and images 
    of AIDS related patent issued by the U.S., European and Japanese 
    Patent offices.

7.6  Which FTP sites contain chemistry-related material?

ftp://kekule.osc.edu/pub/chemistry/
    Jan Labanowsky's server, also contains an archive of the computational 
    chemistry mailing list.
ftp://qcpe6.chem.indiana.edu/
    QCPE archive
ftp://oak.oakland.edu/pub/simtelnet/
    Dos and Windows public domain and shareware

7.7  What chemistry-focused mailing lists exist?

LISTSERV@Beaver.Bemidji.MSUS.edu 
    Chemistry laboratories (both academic and research), students' 
    experiments (high school, college and university), classroom 
    demonstrations and shows for the public of chemical processes, 
    chemistry stockroom management, lab safety, and  small-scale chemical 
    waste handling procedures.
     
7.8  How can I contact Chemical Societies electronically?

In general, most WWW sites will also contain email addresses that they
can be contacted through. 

http://www.acs.org/
    The American Chemical Society homepage provides access information, 
    and additional email support is available via the following:- 
division@acs.org           ACS Division information      
expo@acs.org               ACS expositions
meminfo@acs.org            ACS membership information
natlmtgs@acs.org           ACS national meeting information
rxnt@acs.org               Reaction Times (college newspaper)
reglmtgs@acs.org           ACS regional meeting information
slga@acs.org               ACS state and local government affairs

http://www.rsc.org/
marketing@rsc.org
    The UK Royal Society of Chemistry, WWW and email address.
http://sci.mond.org/
    The UK Society of Chemical Industry.
http://www.gdch.de/
pr@gdch.de
    The German Chemical Society (Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, GDCh) 
http://wwwsoc.nacsis.ac.jp/csj/index-e.html
    The Chemical Society of Japan ( English index )
   
7.9  How can I contact large chemical companies? 

Check their WWW pages for information.
http://www.argus.it/                            Argus Chemicals
http://www.dow.com/                             Dow Chemicals
http://www.eastman.com/                         Eastman Chemicals
http://www.ge.com/plastics/                     GE Plastics
http://www.hoechst.com/                         Hoechst    
http://www.lilly.com/                           Eli Lilly
http://www.monsanto.com/                        Monsanto
http://www.chemfirst.com/qci/                   Quality Chemicals        
http://www.rohmhaas.com/                        Rohm and Haas 
http://www.sigma-aldrich.com/                   Sigma, Aldrich and Fluka
http://www.sumitomo-chem.co.jp/                 Sumitomo Chemicals

You can observe the naming conventions, so try www.company-name.com for 
other companies not listed, and you can also try using the on-line version
of the Thomas Register.
http://www.thomasregister.com/

7.10 How can I contact chemical suppliers? 

Several major chemical suppliers now have on-line catalogues on the WWW.
http://www.sigma-aldrich.com/
    Sigma, Aldrich, Fluka, and Riedel de Haen chemical catalogues 
http://www.fisherscientific.com/
    Acros Chemicals catalogue 
    Fisher Chemical catalogue
http://www.romil.com/
    Romil Chemicals catalogue ( high purity chemicals )  

Check out the FAQs in rec.pyrotechnics and alt.drugs, they may also list 
some legal suppliers. With the rapid growth of the WWW, it is usually
a good idea to conduct a search to locate suppliers, and you could try
the Chemsources or Thomas Register sites to locate addresses.
http://www.chemsources.com/ 
http://www.thomasregister.com/

Use of WWW search engines and specific terms like "biochemicals" 
will locate the WWW and email addresses of speciality suppliers

7.11 How can I contact equipment suppliers 

Check out the FAQs in rec.pyrotechnics and alt.drugs, they may also list 
some legal suppliers. With the rapid growth of the WWW, it is usually
a good idea to conduct a search to locate suppliers on the Internet, 
and using the Thomas Register site to locate suppliers not on the Internet. 

http://www.thomasregister.com/
    Thomas Register                    ( manufacturers and suppliers )
http://www.sigma-aldrich.com/
    Sigma, Aldrich, Fluka and Supelco  ( techware and books ) 
http://www.fisherscientific.com/
    Fisher Catalogue                   ( general lab equipment )

7.12 How can I contact US government agencies?

http://www.fedworld.gov/
telnet://fedworld.gov/
    FedWorld Information Network at the National Technical Information 
    Service NTIS) was created "to provide a one-stop location for the public 
    to locate, order, and have delivered to them, U.S. Government 
    information."  
gopher://marvel.loc.gov/11/federal/fedinfo/byagency/executive
    Executive Branch Gophers (Library of Congress)
http://www.nist.gov/ 
    National Institute of Standards and Technology
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/atsdrhome.html
    Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (Searchable)
http://www.dot.gov/ 
    Department of Transportation
http://www.epa.gov/ 
    Environmental Protection Agency
http://www.fcc.gov/ 
    Federal Communications Commission
http://www.access.gpo.gov/ 
    Government Printing Office

7.13 Where can I find compilations of science humour?

http://www.improb.com/
    For the best science satire around, check out the Annals of Improbable 
    Research, successor to the Journal of Irreproducible Results. Whilst 
    the full version is available via subscription services, such as
    ClariNet, smaller items are published free in the Mini AIR.
ftp://ftp.in.umist.ac.uk/pub/Text/scijokes.zip
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcdverha/scijokes/
    A huge 500kB compilation of science jokes regularly posted to Usenet.
http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Humor/By_Topic/Science/
    Annals_of_Improbable_Research/
    Search selections from the Annals of Improbable Research

7.14 Where can I purchase scientific software?

Aldrich and Fisher sell software, as do some of the Chemical Societies
http://www.sigma-aldrich.com/
    Sigma, Aldrich, Fluka and Supelco   
http://www.fisherscientific.com/
    Fisher Catalogue                   
http://www.acdlabs.com/
    Diverse range of chemistry drawing, interpretation and modelling software.

Refer also to "Chemistry Overview Sites " and "Other Chemistry-related 
Resources" in section 7.2.