February 15, 2008 (Vol. 28, No. 4)
Rating:
Strong Points: Useful database
Weak Points: Nothing Significant
Summary:
Another site of interest to chemists is ChemRefer. Encompassing a mountain of chemical and pharmaceutical literature references, ChemRefer provides access to this content through both a very simple search function on the opening page and a more sophisticated search feature internal to the site. At the latter, users can narrow searches by specifying author, title, journal, citation date, publication, and web address. The site is more than just a literature database, however. For example, functions for drawing structures online are available and the drawn structures can be searched across the database. This is a dandy way to access information. An export feature for user-created structures would be a welcome addition. RSS feeds are available, as is a newsletter. A site that will be bookmarked by many a chemist, I’ll wager.
