# FAQ

## How to cite SureChEMBL?

If you mention SureChEMBL in your work, please cite:

Papadatos G, Davies M, Dedman N, Chambers J, Gaulton A, Siddle J, Koks R, Irvine SA, Pettersson J, Goncharoff N, Hersey A, Overington, JP. SureChEMBL: a large-scale, chemically annotated patent document database. Nucleic Acids Research, 2015;44(D1);D1220-D1228.

DOI: <https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkv1253> PMID: <https://europepmc.org/article/MED/26582922>

## Can I search a compound by SCHEMBL\_ID?

Yes. You can directly type your SCHEMBL\_ID in the url. e.g. <https://www.surechembl.org/chemical/2871> or <https://www.surechembl.org/chemical/SCHEMBL2871>

## Can I search a compound by InChI key?

While there is not yet a possibility to search directly by InChI key in SureChEMBL, you can use [UniChem](https://www.ebi.ac.uk/unichem/) to retrieve any SureChEMBL compound by InChI, InChI key or SCHEMBL\_ID.

<figure><img src="/files/VMrnTHc3hQtXQ0RtKo17" alt=""><figcaption><p>Search by InChI key in UniChem. If the compound is in SureChEMBL, it will appear in the result lit</p></figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="/files/esWPxVKzrINuBirWpZFb" alt=""><figcaption><p>Click on the corresponding link to see the compound in SureChEMBL</p></figcaption></figure>

## Can I download SureChEMBL to work offline?

Yes. The different ways of downloading SureChEMBL data are described in the [downloads](/surechembl/downloads.md) section.

## What license covers SureChEMBL data?

The SureChEMBL data are made available under a highly permissive [CC BY 4.0 licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en).


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