Home   •   Support  •  Academics  •  SciFinder Scholar  •  Technical Support  •  Off-Campus Use

Can I Use SciFinder Scholar from Off-Campus?

Yes, under certain conditions. You may first wish to review information about how SciFinder Scholar connects to CAS.

In general, SciFinder Scholar cannot be used with third-party Internet connections because the IP address assigned by the Internet Service Provider is not in the range of campus addresses. As long as the source IP address (the IP address that the SciFinder Scholar server at CAS "sees") of the SciFinder Scholar client is within the range of campus addresses (the addresses agreed upon between your institution and CAS), SciFinder Scholar can be used on a computer that is not physically located on campus. This can be accomplished several ways:

• Dial-in (PPP):  If authorized SciFinder Scholar users are able to dial into the campus network and obtain a campus IP address, SciFinder Scholar will work fine.
• VPN (Virtual Private Networking) uses VPN client software to make a secure connection over the public Internet to a campus-based VPN server. There are many VPN vendors, but in general, the connection creates an encrypted "tunnel" through the public Internet to your campus. If your VPN system includes Network Address Translation (NAT) and your source IP address, after NAT, is a registered campus IP address, you'll be able to use SciFinder Scholar.

Note: Your VPN administrators may need to:
Use "single tunnel" and open Port 210 on the VPN server.
If "split tunneling" is used, create a rule to "tunnel" Z39.50 traffic destined for Port 210.
For full-text linking, "chemport.cas.org" traffic must also tunnel.

• Proxy server: If a user located off-campus has access to the Internet, and the institution has an inbound access proxy server that can identify authorized campus users, SciFinder Scholar can possibly be used. The following settings must be configured:
  

SciFinder Scholar's Site Preferences may need to be changed so that SciFinder Scholar connects to the proxy server instead of directly to the server at CAS.

The proxy server must be configured to route SciFinder Scholar connections and network traffic to the server at CAS. The SciFinder Scholar client computer can have any IP address, but the proxy server presents to the server at CAS an IP address that is in the range of campus addresses. (The proxy server must perform NAT)

Note that web browsers provide built-in support for proxy servers and user authentication. SciFinder Scholar can connect to a proxy server, but it does not support user authentication in the way that a web browser does. Thus, if, upon receipt of a connection, the proxy server requests a user ID and password, SciFinder Scholar will not respond. However, it may be possible to use a web browser to authenticate the user to the campus network via a proxy server and then start and connect with SciFinder Scholar.

Note: EZproxy, beginning with version 5.0c_GA, will work with SciFinder Scholar (client version).  Prior versions did not support SciFinder Scholar because, as far as CAS knows, EZproxy did not support the Z39.50 protocol and Port 210.  You may obtain information about updating EZproxy from OCLC.  Technical support for EZproxy is provided by OCLC.

Web Version of SciFinder:  Proxy support is determined by the web browser being used.  Any version of EZproxy should work with web browsers recommended for use with the web version of SciFinder.  Contact your organization's Key Contact or Librarian to find out if you have access to the web version of SciFinder.