The database host STN International allows for extensive citation analysis in the SCISEARCH database (Science Citation Index Expanded) and in the CAplus database (Chemical Abstracts). Using scripts citation analysis can be automated in considerable way. Ready-to-use scripts which determine citation counts for a given set of publications, applying either a fixed or a variable citation window and using either SCISEARCH or CAplus as data source, are available at: http://www.psh.ethz.ch/people/neuhaus/stn.

The scripts determine citation counts as follows:

• The bibliographic information - namely first author, publication year, volume number and beginning page - are stored in a text file along with an unique record number for convenient data processing. With these data, each publication is well defined.
• The script reads line-by-line the bibliographic information, transfers them into the reference format of the SCISEARCH or CAplus, respectively, and searches for citations in the reference field of the database.
• When a fixed citation window is applied, each paper on the publication list is analyzed during a fixed period. In case of a 3-year citation window, for instance, citations to papers published in 1997 are counted during the time period 1997-1999. Applying a variable citation window, this time period depends on the publication year of the respective paper. For instance, citations to papers published in 1997 are counted during the time period 1997-2001 resulting in a 5-year citation window, whereas citations to papers published in 1998 are analyzed during a 4-year time period only.
• Finally, citation counts are written along with the respective record number to a comma-separated file, which one can easily import into spreadsheet (e.g. Excel) or a statistical package for further data analysis.

Possibilities as well as limitations of using scripts to automate citation analysis on STN International are discussed by Neuhaus, Litscher, & Daniel (2007).