These databases are of particular interest for chemists. See also this Chemical Data guide.
The University subscribes to many other databases in other disciplines that may be of interest to you, see the A-Z Databases website, which includes resources for biochemistry, biology, chemical engineering, earth sciences, engineering, geography, life sciences, materials science, mathematics, natural sciences, physics, and technology.
| Database | What is it good for? | Access | Notes |
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| ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication | Provides students, researchers, educators, and librarians with the instruction and advice they need to master the art of scholarly communication. Contents include: scientific communication, scientific journals, data in the Google era, scientific style conventions, editorial style conventions, inclusivity. | University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) | |
| arXiv | Highly-automated electronic archive and distribution server for research articles. Open access to 1,094,715 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics. | Public | |
| Access to +12,500 global ASTM International (formerly American Society for Testing and Materials) standards. | University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) | ||
| bioRxiv | Preprint server for biology (life sciences generally) but some fields may overlap with chemistry, e.g. biochemistry, genomics, cell biology. | Public | |
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A comprehensive library of over 90,000 internationally recognised standards. It’s available 24/7 and revised every single day. You can also access ASTM, ISO, CEN, CENELEC and IEC on BSOL. | University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) |
BSOL will be introducing a new security feature to their documents. This means BSOL documents can only be opened with a plug-in installed on a user's device. The plug-in is called File Open. The plug-in must be installed by 1st September 2021. BSI has created guidance on how to install the plug-in, to ensure that users are able to access and use the documents as quickly and efficiently as before: Please contact ejournals@lib.cam.ac.uk if you have any concerns. |
| BrowZine - access to online journals provided at Cambridge University | Browse scholarly journals available via university subscriptions on your tablet device or smartphone. Access thousands of scholarly journals anywhere you have WiFi access. View complete issues of journals including the table of contents. Create a personal library of favorite journals. Be alerted when a new issue of a journal is published. Save articles on your mobile device to read later even when you are off line. Download BrowZine articles to Dropbox, Mendeley, Zotero, and other services to help keep all of your information together in one place. |
University-subscribed | |
| Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) (see also Physical Sciences Data-Science Service, PSDS) | World’s repository for small-molecule organic and metal-organic crystal structures. | Public, via WebCSD | The standalone CSD application can easily be added to managed Windows computers within the Department of Chemistry via WPKG, and can also be accessed on the Managed Cluster Service computers throughout the University & in Colleges. Follow the link on the left for more information. See also their Training and Educational Resources website for guidance on how to use CSD. |
| CAS Common Chemistry | Open community resource for accessing chemical information. Nearly 500,000 chemical substances from CAS REGISTRY® cover areas of community interest. The collection represents substances commonly found in consumer products, on regulatory lists and as part of introductory chemistry curricula. | Public | |
| ChEBI (Chemical Entities of Biological Interest) | Freely available dictionary of molecular entities focused on ‘small’ chemical entities. | Public | |
| ChEMBL | ChEMBL is a manually curated database of bioactive molecules with drug-like properties. It brings together chemical, bioactivity and genomic data to aid the translation of genomic information into effective new drugs. | Public | |
| Chemical Availability Search (ChASe) (see Physical Sciences Data-Science Service, PSDS) |
Allows researchers to search across a database from numerous suppliers to source and compare chemicals for use in their projects. The ChASe interface allows searching by substance name, or identifier, including InChI string, InChI key, SMILES and synonyms. It can also be searched using a structure or substructure through the structure editor. |
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| Chemicalize | Calculate properties instantly, search chemical data, and draw molecules online. | Public: free access but you have to sign up for a free account. Paid plans are available. | |
| Comprehensive Coordination Chemistry III | Comprehensive Coordination Chemistry III (CCCIII) describes the fundamentals of metal-ligand interactions, provides an overview of the systematic chemistry of this class of compounds, and details their importance in life processes, medicine, industry and materials science. This new edition spans across 9 volumes, 185 entries and 6600 printed pages. CCCIII is not just an update of the second edition, it includes a significant amount of new content. In the descriptive sections 3-6, emphasis is placed upon material that has appeared in primary and secondary review literature since the previous edition published. The material in other sections is newly written, with an emphasis on modern aspects of coordination chemistry and the latest developments. | University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) | |
| ChemRxiv | Pre-print server for a broad range of chemistry fields. | Public | Preprints come from the author's original files, and are not prepared for publication. |
| ChemSpider (see also Physical Sciences Data-Science Service, PSDS) | Free chemical structure database providing fast text and structure search access to over 35 million structures from hundreds of data sources. |
Link from ChemSpider to the Crystallography Open Database See also the ChemSpider Synthetic Pages |
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| Cite them right | The essential referencing source. This site will help you to reference just about any source, and understand how to avoid plagiarism. | University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) | |
| CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics | Tables of data and current international recommendations on nomenclature, symbols, and units. | University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) | |
| CrystalWorks (see Physical Sciences Data-Science Service, PSDS) | Crystallographic structural data. | ||
| Current Protocols | Over 24,000 step-by-step techniques, procedures, and practical overviews in: Bioinformatics; Chemical Biology; Cell Biology; Cytometry; Current Protocols: Essential Laboratory Techniques; Food Analytical Chemistry; Human Genetics; Immunology; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Molecular Biology; Microbiology; Mouse Biology; Neuroscience; Pharmacology; Protein Science; Toxicology; Stem Cell Biology. | University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) | Individual protocol titles and articles are available on iDiscover. |
| Crystallography Open Database, COD |
Open-access collection of crystal structures of organic, inorganic, metal-organics compounds and minerals, excluding biopolymers. |
Public | |
| DETHERM (see Physical Sciences Data-Science Service, PSDS) | Thermophysical data. | ||
| e-EROS (Encyclopedia of Reagents for Organic Synthesis) | Reference work for reagents and catalysts for the study or organic synthesis. Detailed information on more than 4,500 reagents and catalysts, and every year more than 200 new or updated articles are added. | University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) | |
| FAIRsharing.org - Databases | A registry of knowledgebases and repositories of data and other digital assets.
Researchers can use FAIRsharing as a lookup resource to identify and cite the standards, databases or repositories that exist for their data and discipline, for example, when creating a data management plan for a grant proposal or funded project; or when submitting a manuscript to a journal, to identify the recommended databases and repositories, as well as the standards they implement to ensure all relevant information about the data is collected at the source. |
Public | You can search for and filter by subject using the left-hand side menu bar. |
| Google Dataset search | Dataset Search enables users to find datasets stored across the Web through a simple keyword search. The tool surfaces information about datasets hosted in thousands of repositories across the Web. | Public | |
| Highly Cited Researchers | Recognizing the true pioneers in their fields over the last decade, demonstrated by the production of multiple highly-cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in the Web of Science™. Of the world’s scientists and social scientists, Highly Cited Researchers truly are one in 1,000. | University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) | |
| Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD) (see Physical Sciences Data-Science Service, PSDS) |
World's largest database for completely identified inorganic crystal structures, provided by FIZ Karlsruhe GmbH for the scientific and the industrial community. The database (2021.1) contains: more than 240,000 crystal structures; > 3,000 crystal structures of elements; data from more than 1,600 periodicals; > 43,000 records for binary compounds; >79,000 records for ternary compounds; > 85,000 records for quaternary and quintenary compounds; records from 1913 to the present. |
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| JoVE Unlimited : Journal of Visualized Experiments | 17,000+ videos of laboratory methods and science concepts. | University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) | |
| Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology | Articles on chemical substances, including their properties, manufacturing, and uses. Focuses on industrial processes and unit operations in chemical engineering. Covers fundamentals and scientific subjects related to the fields of environmental and health issues concerning chemical technology. | University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) | |
| The Lens | A trans-disciplinary, trans-domain platform aggregating metadata on scholarly works and patents for discovery and analysis using management tools and APIs. | Public, no account required, but APIs are available to University users via a subscription to The Lens Institutional Toolkit from 2022 | Visit the ejournals@cambridge blog post on The Lens subscription for further information. |
| National Library Of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) | The NCBI advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. Resource List A-Z gives links to resources for many subjects and includes Chemicals & Bioassays, such as PubChem BioAssay, PubChemCompound, PubChemSubstance. | Public | |
| NIST chemistry webbook | Contains thermochemical data for over 7,000 organic and small inorganic compounds, reaction thermochemistry data for over 8,000 reactions, IR spectra for over 16,000 compounds, mass spectra for over 15,000 compounds, UV/Vis spectra for over 1,600 compounds, electronic and vibrational spectra for over 4,500 compounds, constants of diatomic molecules (spectroscopic data) for over 600 compounds, ion energetics data for over 16,000 compounds and thermophysical property data for 34 fluids. | Public | |
| nmrshiftdb2 | nmrshiftdb2 is a NMR database (web database) for organic structures and their nuclear magnetic resonance (nmr) spectra. It allows for spectrum prediction (13C, 1H and other nuclei) as well as for searching spectra, structures and other properties. The nmrshiftdb2 software is open source, the data is published under an open content license. The core of nmrshitdb2 are fully assigned spectra with raw data and peak lists. | Public | |
| Organic Chemistry Portal |
Offers an overview of recent topics, interesting reactions, and information on important chemicals for organic chemists. Find the most important name reactions in organic chemistry, stability data for the most frequently used protective groups, protection and deprotection methods; browse synthetic transformations.
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Public |
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| OSCAR: An extensive repository of chemically and functionally diverse organocatalysts | A repository of thousands of experimentally derived (OSCAR seed and CSD-extracted) and combinatorially enriched organocatalysts (OSCAR!(NHC) and OSCAR!(DHBD) for N-heterocyclic carbenes and hydrogen bond donors, respectively). The structures and corresponding stereoelectronic properties are publicly available and constitute the starting point to build generative and predictive models for organocatalyst performance. | Public | |
| Pharmaceutical Substances | Information relating to the industrial synthesis and commercial applications of every licensed drug of significance. Provides access to syntheses, patents, and applications for over 2,600 active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). | University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) | |
| Physical Sciences Data-Science Service (PSDS) |
The PSDS provides a common access point to data resources within the Physical Sciences to all staff, students and other members of UK academic institutions. Resources currently provided are: CSD (Cambridge Structural Database), CrystalWorks (crystallographic structural data), ICSD (Inorganic Crystal Structure Database), DETHERM (thermophysical data), ChemSpider (chemical structures), Propersea (property prediction). |
On campus: apart from the CSD (Cambridge Structural Database, please see above), all other services are accessed via web interfaces from the PSDS homepage, and should automatically be accessible to users on UK academic networks, for free. Off-campus: please go to the registration page to a request a PSDS username and password. Please visit the PSDS website for further information on accessing their services. |
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| Pistoia Alliance Chemical Safety Library |
Open-access platform that streamlines access to hazardous reaction information crowd-sourced from academic, industry and government institutions around the world. Developed and hosted by CAS (Chemical Abstracts Society). |
Public | |
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PQDT (ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Abstracting & Indexing Service) |
A comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses from around the world, dating from 1743 to the present. | University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) | Access for members of the University of Cambridge is to the abstracts only. Full text can either be purchased online via ProQuest or through our Document Supply service. |
| PQDT Open (ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Open) | Open Access theses published under ProQuest's Open Access Publishing | Public | |
| Propersea (see Physical Sciences Data-Science Service, PSDS) | Provides predictions for a range of molecular and physicochemical properties for small molecules. The predicted properties include: melting point, boiling point, density, logP, solubility, polarizability, pKa and more. It will also predict the IUPAC name for the molecule. | ||
| PubChem | PubChem is the world's largest collection of freely accessible chemical information. Search chemicals by name, molecular formula, structure, and other identifiers. Find chemical and physical properties, biological activities, safety and toxicity information, patents, literature citations and more. You can browse data and draw structures to search. | Public | |
| PubChem BioAssay | Consists of deposited bioactivity data and descriptions of bioactivity assays used to screen the chemical substances contained in the PubChem Substance database, including descriptions of the conditions and the readouts (bioactivity levels) specific to the screening procedure. | Public | |
| PubChem Compound | Contains unique, validated chemical structures (small molecules) that can be searched using names, synonyms or keywords. The compound records may link to more than one PubChem Substance record if different depositors supplied the same structure. These Compound records reflect validated chemical depiction information provided to describe substances in PubChem Substance. Structures stored within PubChem Compounds are pre-clustered and cross-referenced by identity and similarity groups. Additionally, calculated properties and descriptors are available for searching and filtering of chemical structures. | Public | |
| PubChem Substance | PubChem Substance records contain substance information electronically submitted to PubChem by depositors. This includes any chemical structure information submitted, as well as chemical names, comments, and links to the depositor's web site. | Public | |
| PubMed | 25m+ citations for biomedical literature indexed by MEDLINE (U.S. National Library Medicine citation database), life science journals, and online books. Includes links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites (where subscribed). | Public |
CamPubMed: Cambridge interface that displays '@cam find full-text' links. |
| re3data.org | Re3data is a global registry of research data repositories that covers research data repositories from different academic disciplines. It includes repositories that enable permanent storage of and access to data sets to researchers, funding bodies, publishers, and scholarly institutions. re3data.org promotes a culture of sharing, increased access and better visibility of research data. | Public | |
| Reaxys, incorporating Reaxys Target and Bioactivity Insights (formerly Reaxys Medicinal Chemistry) and Reaxys Predictive Retrosynthesis |
Reaxys offers synthesis planning and includes experimental structure, reaction and property data from essential journals, patents, conference proceedings and textbook chapters. Links to the full text (where subscribed). Reaxys Target and Bioactivity Insights content includes: structure–activity relationship (SAR) profiles; data from in vivo animal studies; in vitro efficacy, pharmacokinetic, toxicity and safety data; in vitro metabolic profiles, for drug discovery and development. Reaxys Predictive Retrosynthesis is a tool for medicinal and synthetic chemistry that allows you to carry out synthesis route design and prediction by applying AI to the Reaxys database of chemical reactions. |
University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login). Note that Chemistry Department VPN access is not required. If you receive the message 'Your attempt to sign in via institution has failed, please try again' clear your cache/cookies on the following sites: reaxys.com; elsevier.com; shib.raven.cam.ac.uk / cam.ac.uk; login.microsoftonline.com If you experience any issues accessing Reaxys when connected to the VPN please clear your cache/cookies and/or try using a different browser, then try again. Otherwise, if you cannot access Reaxys via the proxy URL given in the first column of this table, while connected to the VPN, follow this route (which should work whether you are connected to the VPN or not):
This route basically uses Shibboleth (Raven) to gain access as a university subscriber. If you have a Reaxys account you can sign in using those credentials instead of using the institutional login route as above. If you experience further problems having followed these instructions please email IT Support at support@ch.cam.ac.uk. |
The Reaxys Education (RxED) YouTube playlist and the Reaxys Academy provide educational material to support learning chemistry concepts and digital chemistry literacy with Reaxys (self-paced courses, video tutorials). The Reaxys Support Center gives information on Reaxys content and guidance on its use The free ReactionFlash app is available giving access to 1,000+ Named Reactions, their mechanisms and examples in peer-reviewed literature. Interoperability between Scopus and Reaxys: Now, when reviewing articles in Scopus, you can preview chemistry substance information coming from Reaxys to assess the relevancy of that article as quickly as possible. With the direct interlinking between Scopus and Reaxys, you can avoid searching multiple times in different platforms. Once you have found an interesting chemistry article in Scopus and you want to further explore the chemistry details, you can seamlessly hop-into Reaxys to dig deeper. Interoperability between Reaxys and ScienceDirect: The fully interactive side-panel, which includes data and content from Reaxys on the chemical structures discussed in the article. Previously, users were shown a static summary of the chemical structures in the article. Now, when a user clicks on one of the chemical structure images in the widget launched in May, the new Reaxys Side-Panel will open and display structure data from Reaxys, along with links back to Reaxys so that users can further analyse that data using the Rx Query Builder and other features. |
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CAS SciFinder-n provides researchers with chemical substance information, informing your critical research activities with authoritative details on chemical substances and their related chemical structures, chemical names, regulatory information, and properties, including CAS Registry Numbers®. Included in the SciFinder-n Discovery Platform are CAS Formulus and CAS Analytical Methods. CAS Formulus is an integrated formulations database and workflow solution. With curated information from patents and journals spanning various industries, CAS Formulus helps formulation scientists evaluate ingredients, find suppliers, and explore regulatory requirements, all in one easy interface. CAS Analytical Methods provides a single source for searching and comparing the latest published scientific methods across multiple fields of study.
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University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) |
When accessing SciFinder-n for the first time you will be prompted to create an account. See system requirements and recommendations from CAS to ensure you can access SciFinder-n Find out more at CAS SciFinder-n training & support. See also the blog post from the Electronic Collection Management team for the University of Cambridge. |
| Scopus | 21,000+ journal titles (30% physical sciences), 120,00 books, 6.8m conference papers 27m patents. Of 54m records, 33m date from 1996 and 21m pre-1996 records go back to 1823. Links to the full text (where subscribed). Links to metrics data for citations. |
University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) | |
| SpectraBase |
An Online Spectral Library from Wiley. Quick access to millions of NMR, IR, Raman, UV-Vis, and Mass Spectra. Search a compound by name, InChI, InChIKey, CAS Registry Number, or Draw a structure. |
Public |
You can add SpectraBase’s Spectral Images & Other Data to Your Chemistry Dataset. |
| Spectral Database for Organic Compounds, SDBS | SDBS is an integrated spectral database system for organic compounds,which includes 6 different types of spectra under a directory of the compounds: an electron impact Mass spectrum (EI-MS), a Fourier transform infrared spectrum (FT-IR), a 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrum, a 13C NMR spectrum, a laser Raman spectrum, and an electron spin resonance (ESR) spectrum. | Public | |
| Springer Materials (including Landolt-Börnstein) |
SpringerMaterials provides curated data and advanced functionalities to support research in materials science, physics, chemistry, engineering, and other related fields. Enhanced data visualization features display interactive crystal structures, data tables, and phase diagrams with export options for further analysis. Search functions optimized for materials science like elemental composition or chemical structure searching to quickly find material property data. |
University-subscribed (off-campus access via Raven login) | |
| SureChEMBL | Provides free access to chemical data extracted from the patent literature. | Public | |
| Toxline |
Toxline was the National Library of Medicine (NLM) bibliographic database for toxicology, a varied science encompassing many disciplines. Toxline records provide bibliographic information covering the biochemical, pharmacological, physiological, and toxicological effects of drugs and other chemicals. Toxline references were drawn from various sources organised into component subfiles. This version of Toxline is no longer available. Updated Toxline content is available in PubMed. |
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| UniChem | Efficiently produces cross-references between chemical structure identifiers from different databases. | Public | |
| Web of Science | 8,500+ science journal titles, 60,000+ scholarly books, 160,000+ conference proceedings (1990-), 51.8m+ patents, 55m records dating from 1900. Cited reference and chemical structure searches. Links to metrics data for citations. Links to the full text (where subscribed). | University-subscribed (requires Raven login on- and off-campus). | Mobile version available. |
| Wikidata | Wikidata is a free, collaborative, multilingual, secondary database, collecting structured data to provide support for Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, the other wikis of the Wikimedia movement, and to anyone in the world. Wikidata is a central storage repository that can be accessed by others, such as the wikis maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. Content loaded dynamically from Wikidata does not need to be maintained in each individual wiki project. For example, statistics, dates, locations and other common data can be centralized in Wikidata. You can use the Wikidata SPARQL query service to extract data. | Public |