The coverage on STN is from 1984 to the present, and includes more than 8.5 million records. Updating and SDI runs are weekly. Several classification schemes are used, and controlled descriptors from a vocabulary of over 80,000 terms are added in English, French, and Spanish. For records in the area of metallurgy, German descriptors are given. The database dates back to 1980 and contains currently more than 85,000 records.
Most records have an author abstract.
Producer of the database is Prous Science S.A., Barcelona, Spain. The new file has been released on 17 December 2000. Currently, the file contains more than 623,700 records. Updating continues on a monthly basis. These files will be deleted from STN on December 31, 2000.