Milestones: Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) Will Announce 50 Millionth Registered Chemical Substance Next Week; Don't Forget Free "Common Chemistry" Database
People often tell us we need more science content. So, here's one for you.
Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) will announce the 50 millionth registered chemical substance next week. The number itself represents an important milestone both for researchers and CAS, but even more significant is the pace of scientific discovery around the world. Consider this: CAS will record the 50 millionth substance just nine months after recording the 40 millionth. By comparison, it took 33 years for CAS to register 10 million compounds, a milestone reached in 1990.
The predominant source of this new chemical substance information is global patent literature. Several years ago, patents accounted for approximately 20 percent of the substance information added to the registry. Today, that number is closer to 70 percent. CAS, which oversees the Registry—the world’s largest registry of publicly disclosed chemical information—can put those numbers in perspective and provide expert insight on what is driving the increase in the number of patents and registered substances.
CAS expects to announce the 50 millionth registered substance Tuesday [We Will Update Update].
REGISTRY is the only integrated comprehensive source of chemical information from a full range of patent and journal literature that is curated and quality controlled by scientists working around the world. For more than 100 years, CAS scientists and colleagues in several nations have analyzed and indexed publicly disclosed global scientific information to build up the unique REGISTRY resource that provides not only chemical names, the unique CAS Registry Number, and vital literature references but also ancillary information such as experimental and predicted property data (boiling and melting points, etc.), commercial availability, preparation details, spectra, and regulatory information from international sources.
See Also (We've Posted on this Free Service in the Past):
CAS Launches Free Web-Based Resource "Common Chemistry" for General Public
Common Chemistry is a resource providing information on approximately 7800 chemical substances of general and widespread interest. It is helpful to non-chemists who know a chemical name or CAS Registry Number of a common everyday chemical and want to pair both pieces of information.
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