Chemical Abstracts

An abstract of an article is a short (typically a paragraph in length) summary of the key points and findings in a publication. The abstract includes all of the relevant bibliographic information that allows the publication to be located among the primary literature. Collections of abstracts exist for almost any discipline you can think of, e.g., Biological Abstracts, Petroleum Abstracts, Mathematical Abstracts, etc.

Chemical Abstracts is one of the oldest and largest collection of abstracts in the world. Since its inception in 1907 more than 15,000,000 abstracts have been added to the Chemical Abstracts database. In 1997 alone roughly 710,000 abstracts were developed from approximately 8,000 journals, patents, conferences, etc. Each volume of Chemical Abstracts is organized under 80 broad subject areas.

Chemical Abstracts also assigns a unique Registry Number to chemical compounds in a chemical registry that now contains over 21,000,000 unique chemical compounds. 68% of the compounds in this registry are organic compounds while 17% are bio-sequences, 6% are coordination compounds, 4% are polymers, and 3% are alloys.

Chemical Abstracts are published by Chemical Abstracts Services, which is a Division of the American Chemical Society. Chemical Abstract Services also operates STN International a vendor of over 200 scientific and technical databases.

Montana Tech has paper copies of Chemical Abstracts extending back to the beginning of Chemical Abstracts in 1907. Paper copies of decennial or centennial indices cover the years 1907-1956. In 1990 Montana Tech discontinued subsribing to the paper copies of Chemical Abstracts in response to an anticipated increase in the annual subscription costs from ~$4,000 to ~$12,000. Electronic searching of Chemical Abstracts continues to be available during a restricted set of hours (~ 5 PM to 7 AM Mountain Standard time) through the Montana Tech Library at a substantial (~80%) reduction in the actual cost as a consequence of our being an academic institution.