Getting the Most Out of SciFinder-n: Advanced Reference Searching

CAS Lexicon

By using the CAS Lexicon you can find indexing terms to refine your reference search. For more information on the CAS Lexicon, click here.

For example, using a regular References search for atmospheric pollution gives over 900,000 results.

Instead, you can search the CAS Lexicon found on the home page.

After launching the CAS Lexicon, enter the search term and search.

Then, add the preferred term, broader terms, narrower terms, and related terms as needed by selecting the terms and clicking the add term(s) button. 

Once the terms are added to your query, you can either search to add more concepts, or run the search.

This search has narrowed the results, but they can be refined further by adding more terms to the CAS Lexicon or by refining or excluding results with filters.

Citation Map

Use the Citation Map feature to explore the related references of a root document. To create a citation map, click on the Citation Map button on the reference results page.

Once the citation map is generated, you can view and filter the documents that cite and are cited by the root document.

For more information, see this help page on citation maps.

Knowledge Graph

Users can create a Knowledge Graph to visualize connections between references, authors, substances, concepts, and organizations. Create a knowledge graph by clicking on the Knowledge Graph button while on the reference results page.

The Knowledge Graph is made of nodes (circles) and edges (lines) and can be filtered by node type or refined by the same filters for reference results.

You can manipulate the nodes for legibility, and click on the node to highlight the connections to and from that node, as well as to see details of the node.

For more information on Knowledge Graphs, see this help page.