CAS conspiracy

To follow up on Catherine's post here, I'd like to quote three relevant sections from the CAS Information Use Policy:

III. Authorized Use of CAS Information

2. The building of searchable Project directories or Databases for use by individuals and Project teams is permitted. Each User is permitted to download 5,000 Records for personal use or to share within a Project team for the life of the Project. These Records may be obtained from more than one CAS product as long as the 5,000 limit/User is not exceeded.
   
   
5. Metadata from CAS Records may be downloaded for an Analysis or Data Mining procedure in compliance with CAS or STN Product licenses. The User or Information Professional must use CAS or STN Analysis or Data Mining tools (with the exception of standard office software such as Microsoft® Excel, Word, and PowerPoint®). Any Records retained from the task are subject to the limits specified in these Policies. CAS Records retained as a result of the analysis must be consistent with these Policies and display the ACS copyright.

IV. Unauthorized Use of CAS Information

3. A User may not use CAS Records or Metadata with non-CAS or non-STN tools with the exception of standard office software such as Microsoft® Excel, Word, and PowerPoint®.

As Catherine notes, item IV.c seems to indicate that CAS will no longer allow people to use citation management software such as RefWorks or EndNote to look after their citation information and prepare their papers. This is insane. You can still find lots of information on the CAS website about how to get your records into EndNote and other programs here. Is this rather helpful information going to come down?

Item III.e seems to imply that CAS will allow people to use their own citation analysis tools, of course. Is is also a subtle hint that they'll be coming up with their own management program too, that may be integrated more closely with upcoming versions of SciFinder than SciFinder is currently with the EndNotes of the world?

York can't be the only place that teaches chemistry students to use RefWorks (the product we license) or EndNote or whatever. It would certainly be a very bad idea if they wanted us to stop doing that. I definately think CAS should clarify what IV.c means -- are chemists allowed to use citation management software with CAS database products.