Research Guides: Chemistry @ESF: Chemical Resources

Preparation and Reaction Databases

SciFinder's CASREACT database and Reaxys should be your first choices, but there are free online sources that you might also consider.

Organic Syntheses
Detailed, reliable, and carefully checked procedures for the synthesis of organic compounds.
The Chemical Thesaurus reaction chemistry database
A reaction chemistry information system.

Spectra Databases

Spectral Database for Organic Compounds : SDBS
SDBS integrated spectral database includes electron impact Mass (EI-MS), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), 13C NMR, laser Raman, and an electron spin resonance (ESR) spectra.
SciFinder
SciFinder provides direct links to spectra data.

Chemistry Societies

See also: Associations Unlimited for over 22,500 U.S. national nonprofit membership organizations in all fields. The database is also used to monitor association trends; identify related associations; networking and making professional contacts; marketing to associations, their members and markets.

Structure and Property Data

Bordwell pKa Table (Acidity in DMSO)
This site provides equilibrium constants pKa of many organic compounds with pKa values from 0-35 in DMSO.
BRENDA : Comprehensive Enzyme Information System
Over 3500 enzymes are covered, classified according to the Enzyme Commission (E.C.) numbering system.
ChemSpider
A free access service providing a structure-centric community for chemists with millions of chemical structures and integration to a multitude of other online services.
Genome Biology (NCBI)
Biology tools and resources, including organism-specific pages that include links to many web sites and databases.
Household Products Database (NLM)
Information about consumer brands and the health effects listed in Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS).
Landolt-Börnstein Substance / Property Index
Information about substances and related properties.
NIST Chemistry WebBook
Thermochemical, thermophysical, and ion energetics data compiled by NIST under the Standard Reference Data Program.
PubChem
PubChem provides information on the biological activities of small molecules. It is a component of NIH's Molecular Libraries Roadmap Initiative.
Wolfram|Alpha
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Contains a wealth of chemistry data, and provides you with chemical computations in the context of a given search. An effective learning tool for students looking for ways to learn and test their knowledge of chemistry basics.
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Example: number of moles in 5 grams of glucose.

Patent Databases

These databases specialize in searching patent literature and are sources for the full-text of patents.

SciFinder (Chemical Abstracts)
Chemical patent records from 9 of the major patent offices worldwide are fully indexed within 27 days of the patents' issuance.
European Patent Office (esp@cenet)
60 million patents from 85 countries with PDF facsimiles for US (1836 onward), DE (1877 onward), GB (1859 onward), JP (1976 onward), and EP and WO (1978 onward).
Google Patents (USPT0)
Google Patent Search covers the entire collection of issued patents and millions of patent application made available by the USPTO, from patents issued in the 1790s through those most recently issued in the past few months. Patents available in PDF format
U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO)
U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) patent issues and applications to 1790. Full-text since 1976, full-page images since 1790. Patents display as TIFF image files.
World Intellectual Property Agency (WIPO)
Over 1.4 million published international patent applications from the first publication in 1978. Download as PDF or XML.
Canadian Patent Database (CIPO)
75 years of patent descriptions and images with more than 1,900,000 patent documents. PDF page images.