STN Training Course Descriptions

STN International (the Scientific & Technical Information Network) is designed to meet the information needs of Knowledge Managers, Information Professionals, and Research Scientists.  STN offers current and archival information from over 210 scientific, technical, patent, and business databases covering a broad range of scientific fields, including chemistry, engineering, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, regulatory compliance, patents, business, and more.

STN provides interfaces for both experienced searchers (STN Express with Discover! and STN on the Web) and infrequent searchers (STN Easy).

The STN Agency at The Royal Society of Chemistry offers the following training courses which include opportunities for online practice:

Training Courses for New STN Searchers

STN Basics: In this introductory training course you will learn how to use the basic commands and perform online searches in a range of bibliographic STN files.   Techniques to enhance search results, including relevance ranking and setting up current awareness alerts will also be covered.  This course is particularly suitable for Information Professionals and non-chemists.

STN Basics - Engineering Focus:  This course covers STN Basics as above with emphasis on searching the INSPEC and Compendex databases.

STN Basics for Chemists: Learn to use the basic STN command language to search using chemical names and molecular formula in the CAS Registry File and to find the references in Chemical Abstracts.  Structure searching is not  covered in this Basics course. This course is designed for chemists who are new to online searching.

Tips for searching with STN Easy:  STN Easy offers web-based point and click access to a selection of databases from STN including Patent, Biotech and Chemistry clusters. This half-day session will cover content and searching tips with ample time to try out your own searches. This course is suitable for anyone not wishing to use command line searching.

Training Courses for Experienced STN Searchers

STN Basics - Next Steps:  This course, which will be useful to anyone who already has some experience of online searching, will look at how to use the STN index feature to identify relevant files as well as how to conduct a multifile search and remove duplicate answers. Prerequisite: STN Basics or prior experience of online searching, not necessarily using STN.

STN as a second search language:  This course will be useful to anyone who already has some experience of online searching but not necessarily in the STN command language. It can be used either as a "conversion" course or a refresher of STN commands. It will combine techniques covered in STN Basics and Next Steps courses.

Structure Searching on STN:  Learn how to build structure queries and find substance information using a chemical structure as a search term in the CAS Registry File.  This course is suitable for chemists and Information Professionals.

Reaction Searching on STN: Learn how to locate chemical reaction information in CASREACT, ChemInformRX, ChemReact, the Derwent Journal of Synthetic Methods, and Beilstein using structure-based queries.  Prerequisite: Structure Searching on STN.

Patent Searching on STN: Learn about the patent process, types of patent searches, STN patent coverage, and techniques for searching patent number, inventors, and assignees. This session will also look at STN patent family coverage, techniques for searching patent family equivalents, STN patent legal status coverage and techniques for searching and monitoring patent legal status in INPADOC. Prerequisite: STN Basics.

Full-text Patent Searching: Explore the benefits of using the full-text patent files on STN, and learn how to take advantage of their timeliness and comprehensiveness. This course also covers patent family identification and the best use of search and display tools. See how to take advantage of STN Viewer - the web-based workflow productivity tool designed for simple management and evaluation of full-text patent documents from STN Express Version 8.2 answer sets.  Prerequisite: STN Basics.

Introduction to MARPAT:  The MARPAT file contains the generic structures from patent documents already indexed in CAplus.   This session will look at how to construct queries for searching in MARPAT and consider the interpretation of the results.  Prerequisite: Structure Searching on STN.

Beilstein on STN: The Beilstein file contains structural information on more than 8 million organic compounds. This course looks at search strategies for the retrieval of preparation and reaction information, as well as the valuable pharmacological, ecological and physical property data available in this file. Prerequisite: STN Basics for Chemists or Structure searching on STN.

Sequence Searching on STN: Learn how to locate information on sequences in the CAS Registry and DGENE files on STN.   Search techniques covered include BLAST similarity searching using STN on the Web and the RUN BLAST program in DGENE to locate literature and patent references containing sequences of interest.  Prerequisite: STN Basics

Update your Skills

Analysing your Search Results: Learn about the commands, software tools, and analysis and visualisation techniques available to better refine and understand search results.  Use the software tools Analyse Plus in STN  Express version 8.2 for generating bar charts and cross tabulations from STN search results.  Discover the power of STN AnaVist, the interactive software for analysis and visulisation of data from leading sci-tech and patent resourses. Prerequisite: STN basics.

Property & Preparation Searching in Registry and Beilstein Files: Strategies for exploring the two largest collections of substance data, Chemical Abstracts and Beilstein, via structure, name and formula searching will be discussed.  The focus and aim will be to find preparations and property data.  Simple techniques for searching for substances within a range of a specific property will also be covered.  Prerequisite:  STN Basics for Chemists.

Structure Searching - Beyond the Basics: Learn about some of the more advanced features of searching in the CAS REgistry file. Build on your existing skills by learning techniques to assist a structure search to go to completion. Adding screens, ruing system terminology and subset searching will be highlighted. Prerequisite: Structure searching on STN.

More about Marpat: The development of effective Markush structure queries for searching the MARPAT file will be covered. This course will consider using match levels and element counts in generic queries. Prerequisite: Structure searching on STN.

Searching with Derwent WPI: Learn about all the features and benefits of the recently enhanced Derwent World Patents Index file. 
Take advantage of the synergy with other patent files, including searching for legal status data and family information. Prerequisite: Patent searching on STN.

Searching with INPADOCDB:  Take advantage of the updated features and new content of the International Patent Documnetation Database, with 63 milllion documents, an extensive backfile and abstracts, citations and European classifications.  INPADOCDB is also the premier source of legal status information. Prerequisite: Patent searching on STN.