Screenshots used throughout this guide are used with permission from CAS and are copyright 2025 © American Chemical Society (ACS).
Updated information and screen shots of this page created by Matthew Murray.
Searching SciFinder
To create a result set, conduct a search using any of the categories. For this example, Substances will be used, but Reactions, References, and even Markush are also valid and possible to create and combine sets for.
To create a set, press the "Save Options" button in the top right of your search results and select "Save and Alert."
From the window that pops up, you will have to give your result set a name and select among multiple "Search Options." It is recommended that you select "Query Only" for any result set that has over 20,000 items to avoid negating results from your set, as Saving "All Answers" can only save 20,000 results.
Adding an Existing Tag or creating a New Tag are optional, but may assist you in organizing your research and keeping track of more complex tasks while combining sets (more on that below).
Once you save your result set, you can always access that result set again from the SciFinder home page. To do so, navigate to the menu in the top right and select "Saved." From here, you can rerun saved searches, or combine results (see below).
To be alerted for any changes in your result set, press the toggle on the right. This will allow you to input an email address and specify how often you want to be alerted for your result set.
Once you have a result set saved, you can begin to combine other results sets based on that saved set. You must have at least one saved result set to use when combining sets.
There are two methods to combining sets.
1. The two saved sets method
Create two result sets. Once you have them both saved, navigate to your Saved Sets from the SciFinder homepage.
Once on your Saved Sets page, click on the "Combine" box. Select the type of result sets you are looking to combine (in our case, Substances), select the type of comparison you want to make between the sets, and then select the sets you wish to compare in this fashion.
SciFinder will then conduct a search depending on your criteria and lead to a results page, where you can again combine and save your set as needed.
2. The one saved set method
Create a single result set. Once you have that saved, initiate a query in SciFinder and attain a different set of results that you want to compare your set against. Once you have your second result set page ready, press the "Combine Answer Sets" button.
Once you press "Combine Answer Sets," you will be prompted to select the method in which you want your Answer Sets to be compared.
For the following descriptions, your current result set is Set A and your saved result set is Set B.
Clicking View Results will create a new result set, which you can again combine and save as needed.
