Redacted Justification.pdf

Control No: JA-21-TEN-145

Version – March 2017 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY

FAR Subpart 13.5 Simplified Procedures for Certain Commercial Items – Sole

Source Justification and Approval

1. Contracting Activity: DEVCOM-Chemical Biological Center, 8505 Ricketts Point Rd

2. Description of Action: CBC requests a firm-fixed price contract, to include two option years, with ACS/CAS for SciFinder. The Government projects award for and fiscal year funds will be used.

An acquisition plan is not required because this procurement does not meet the threshold at Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement 207.103(d)(i)(B).

3. Description of Supplies/Services:

SciFinder is a web-based interface that provides unique searching functionality to the proprietary chemical information contained in Chemical Abstracts Services (CAS) databases. CAS is a division of the American Chemical Society. CAS is recognized by academic, corporate and S&T researchers as the producer of the world’s largest and most comprehensive chemical registry. MethodsNow is integrated into SciFinder and provides access to experimental procedures, step by step and the analytical procedures allowing keyword searching and the ability to compare three procedures.

4. Authority Cited: Simplified Procedures for Certain Commercial Items, 41 U.S.C. 1901 (or 41 U.S.C. 1903 for Special Emergency Procurement) as implemented by FAR Subpart 13.5:

Unusual and compelling urgency Exclusive licensing agreements Industrial mobilization x Other: Sole source

5. Reason for Authority Cited: The CAS REGISTRY is the most authoritative collection of disclosed chemical substance information, containing more than 90 million organic and inorganic substances and 65 million sequences. SciFinder covers substances identified from the scientific literature from 1957 to the present, with additional substances going back to the early 1900s. SciFinder is the only resource that allows end-users to:

locate essential research information and data on chemical substances through flexible search options (author, title, keyword, organization, CAS #, chemical formula, structure drawing) identify chemical substances by searching their chemical structure or sub-structure find detailed data about chemicals; indentify literature referencing specific chemicals and reactions.

search by Nucleotide or Protein sequence

Control No: JA-21-TEN-145

Version – March 2017 FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY link to relevant patents and articles that can be obtained through the CBC Technical Library provide citation/reference information for articles related to specific chemical structures provide detailed experimental procedure documentation in laboratory notebook format keyword searching of analytical procedures capability to compare 3 procedures side by side.

There is no other source available that can grant access rights to SciFinder & MethodsNow or their content. CAS/ACS is the sole source for these proprietary databases and their content; there are no third party vendors for this unique product.

There is no other vendor that can provide the content along with the functionality and searching capabilities of the SciFinder & MethodsNow databases.

If this request is not approved, CBC Researchers would be unable to effectively identify essential information (reaction/sequence/spectra data and relevant articles/patents) related to specific chemical substances. They would be unable to search by chemical structure or substructure and indentify and link out to related articles/papers, view experimental procedures in laboratory notebook format, or keyword search analytical procedures.

The current subscription lapses on 28 February 2021 under contract W91ZLK-18-P- 0024. A new contract needs to be in place by then.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: To maximize competition, this requirement will be solicited through Sam.gov as Notice of Intent, Special Notice

7. Actions to Increase Competition: : CBC will continue to research and make every effort to identify similar resources that will not be limit to sole source only, but instead compete these requirements to the maximum extent possible, and within current policy.

Future efforts will include contacting various publishers, providers, distributors, etc.

Ensuring the widest dissemination of opportunity among these entities will maximize the possibility of competition and cost savings for the Government.

Market Research, including web searches, reviewing library list serves, and conferring with other Federal librarians was conducted within the past 6 months to confirm that Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) and division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) is the sole developer and provider of SciFinder. SciFinder’s content, specifically CAS registry numbers, and functionality including the ability to search substances, retrieve chemical reactions and identify related literature references are unique and proprietary to SciFinder. The analysis and searching capabilities of MethodsNow are also unique and proprietary to CAS. There are no third party distributors or providers of this database platform or its content. .