Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Jun 13;62(11):2737-2743.
doi: 10.1021/acs.jcim.2c00268. Epub 2022 May 13.

CAS Common Chemistry in 2021: Expanding Access to Trusted Chemical Information for the Scientific Community

Affiliations

CAS Common Chemistry in 2021: Expanding Access to Trusted Chemical Information for the Scientific Community

Andrea Jacobs et al. J Chem Inf Model. .

Abstract

CAS Common Chemistry (https://commonchemistry.cas.org/) is an open web resource that provides access to reliable chemical substance information for the scientific community. Having served millions of visitors since its creation in 2009, the resource was extensively updated in 2021 with significant enhancements. The underlying dataset was expanded from 8000 to 500,000 chemical substances and includes additional associated information, such as basic properties and computer-readable chemical structure information. New use cases are supported with enhanced search capabilities and an integrated application programming interface. Reusable licensing of the content is provided through a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial (CC-BY-NC 4.0) license allowing other public resources to integrate the data into their systems. This paper provides an overview of the enhancements to data and functionality, discusses the benefits of the contribution to the chemistry community, and summarizes recent progress in leveraging this resource to strengthen other information sources.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
New CAS Common Chemistry homepage.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Detailed record for caffeine in CAS Common Chemistry.
Figure 3
Figure 3
CAS Common Chemistry detail page for cholesterol, with elements as follows: (a) Basic information for the substance that includes chemical name, CAS RN, molecular formula, molecular mass, and structure image. (b) Basic property information that includes boiling point, melting point and density, where available. (c) Other names and identifiers, including InChI, InChIKey, SMILES, canonical SMILES, and synonyms. (d) Deleted or replaced CAS RNs that include any CAS RNs that referred to this substance in the past, but are no longer active. (e) Link to CAS SciFindern that directly links the user to find more information about the substance. (f) Pre-formatted citation that can be copied and pasted directly to cite this webpage. (g) Download button that downloads the molfile format for this chemical structure.

References

    1. CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society . CAS History https://www.cas.org/about/cas-history (accessed 2022-01-24).
    1. American Chemical Society . About ACS https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about.html (accessed 2022-01-24).
    1. Rovner S. L.CAS Launches Free Online Database. Chem. Eng. News. May 25, 2009.
    1. Walker M. A.Wikipedia as a Resource for Chemistry. In Enhancing Learning with Online Resources, Social Networking, and Digital Libraries; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society, 2010; Vol. 1060, pp. 79–92.
    1. CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society . CAS REGISTRY and CAS Registry Number FAQs https://www.cas.org/support/documentation/chemical-substances/faqs (accessed 2021-12-23).

Publication types