A Chemical Smart Group??

Greetings everyone,

I have accumulated a very large quantity of references from my research group/colleagues, leaving me with hundreds of unsorted references.  Since we look at compounds, the most logical organisational approach is via periodic table.  I can get the keywords from the title, but not necessarily the titles that use compound names.

For example titles of:

“the new sulfide BaCuS4” (good) - I can use “condains” with “sulfide”

“discovery of CaAgS4 crystal” (bad logic) - I COULD use “contains” with (case sensitive) “S” 

“Discovery of Superconductor BaCuO4” (false positive) - My second critera would drag in " S uperconductor"

Are there wildcards like “contains” with "S# " perhaps, so I could tell it …S4 or …S1.03 etc.?  At least with a (typical) sulfide, I know the S would be near the end of the molecular FORMULA, but not necessarily the end of the TITLE.

Do I have a chance with a similar type of Smart Group organisation or am I out of luck?

Thanks,

Bryan

If I’m interpreting your examples correctly you could create a smart group but there night be a problem with using quotations in your wildcard. The quotations causes the search to look for the exact term within the quotes: S#

EndNote uses the asterick (*) to denote wildcards and set up to 10 search fields. Here’s an example of the first 3 terms. Wildcards are handy but need to be specified so as not to cast such a wide net. You can try it but a quick test shows “S” alone as a wildcard would be too broad. However, including “4” to the wildcard will locate both BaCuS4 and CaAgS4; and the leading asterick enables locating “S4” at the end if a word/term. The search should specify “superconductor” as  separate term. So the result would be:

    Title contains sulfide
or Title contains *S4
or Title contains superconductor

Since there’s a max of 10 search terms suggest you make a list for each list; sort each list in alpha order; determine which terms could be aggregated by wildcards (e,g., *S4); then setup the smart group/search terms (you might conduct a trial test first).

Thanks for the reply, but a few clarifications:

  • I dont use " " in EndNote; this was solely for the ease-of-reading on the forum

  • I agree that S is a bad criteria because my example (false positive) is one that would end up in the group, but SHOULDN’T.  So for example Superconductor would appear, but doesn’t belong.

  • I brought up S# , because I can’t define S1*, S2*, S3*, S4*, S5*, S6*, S7*, S8*, S9*, S0*; that’s really inefficient sorting logic (if it were computer code, # would look for any integer immediately following an S)

So does * have any advantages over simply typing S?  Since the “contains” command does left and right inclusions too.

Bryan

At present I don;t believe a smart group can be created given the search variations needed. You might submit a product suggestionvia the forum regarding use of the pound sign (#) or other convention for specifying searches involving a range of numbers or codes (given the number and variations encompassed in your discipline). This would be a  useful tool.

It seems tio me that the wildcard * and typing “S” (with “contains”) accomplish the same result so neither has an advantage over the other.

Done and done.  Thanks for the reply.