1. Keys to accessing chemical information

Chemical information has certain specific characteristics that distinguish it from other fields:

• the durability of information: in most fields, scientific progress and innovation render information obsolete for technological use within a few years. Chemistry has to keep track of data relating to chemical substances and their combinations. It is essential, and often vital for industry, to make sure that the substance we have just synthesized or extracted is not already known or potentially protected by a patent, that a particular property has not already been described, or that a particular application has not already been envisaged. This non-obsolescence, rather than perpetuity, forces us to handle impressive quantities of information. In response to the chronological limitations of the databases available up to 1997-98, producers have taken...