Introduction
Contents of the SPIE Digital Library
Access and Usage
Format and Use Requirements
Searching the Digital Library
Browsing the Digital Library
Other Features
Subscriptions & Pricing

The SPIE Digital Library is the most extensive resource available on optics and photonics, providing unprecedented access to more than 230,000 technical papers from SPIE Journals and Conference Proceedings from 1990 to the present. More than 17,000 new technical papers are added annually.

SPIE has collaborated with the American Institute of Physics (AIP) to help develop the Digital Library, which is being hosted on AIP's Scitation platform. Inclusion on Scitation ensures customers of a proven online publishing system with an excellent reliability record, powerful search engine, and many useful features. SPIE records are included in AIP's SPIN database.

* Some Proceedings volumes are not available in the SPIE Digital Library as SPIE does not have electronic rights to this material. Click here for a listing of those volumes.

e-First publication
New papers from SPIE's Journals and Proceedings go online as they complete the necessary approvals and production. Print publications follow completion of the online volume. For e-First publications, the electronic version is the publication of record, and citation information indicates the online publication date.

Citation numbering format
The citation format for e-First articles has changed from traditional page numbers to six-digit article identifier numbers (CIDs). Utilization of article CIDs allows papers to be cited as soon as they are published online, using the same identifier for both online and print versions. Specific information about the article CID number system can be found on the Proceedings homepage and in the "About the Journal" pages under General Information for each SPIE Journal.

A Digital Library subscription is not required to use the search and browse features or to view tables of contents and abstracts. Downloading full-text digital papers is available only to authorized subscribers.

Institutional subscribers gain access to the Digital Library via their organization's IP addresses and may use the archive in a manner consistent with their institutional license agreement.

Personal subscribers gain access to full-text papers via a username and password. Download activity is recorded and tracked in the My Subscription account page, which may be viewed at any time after establishing a login session. This account page also serves as a personal archive. (This page is not available to institutional subscribers.)

Institutional and Personal Subscriptions apply to digital papers only. Hard copies of papers not yet available in digital format may be ordered at the SPIE Bookstore site on SPIE Web.

Nonsubscribers may purchase digital papers directly from the Digital Library using the "Quick Article Buy" option or by conducting searches at the SPIE Bookstore.

All full-text papers are provided in PDF format. Journal papers from 2001 are available in both PDF and HTML formats. All PDF papers are searchable using the Find utility in Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Proper display of full-text PDF papers in the SPIE Digital Library requires Adobe Reader 5.0 or higher. If you have an earlier version of Acrobat Reader, you may click here to download the current version:

SPIE has attempted to publish digital papers in the highest resolution possible while maintaining reasonable file sizes and download and printing times for a variety of user systems. The more current papers tend to be smaller in size and have higher quality images.

Both Quick and Advanced Search options are available. Advanced Search allows customers a greater degree of selectivity and search options. Search results may be refined or sorted by various criteria. A link on the Search Results page to view related SPIE books and educational materials related to a search is also provided. All records contain author links that display other papers by that author.

The design architecture of the SPIE Digital Library places an emphasis on browse functionality so that readers have some of the browse capabilities available with physical books and journals. Tables of contents for the current issue or previous issues of SPIE Journals may be accessed from the Journals homepage or from the homepage of a specific Journal of interest. Proceedings may be browsed by volume number, by year, by title, by conference, and by technical area. Each of these provides links to the complete tables of contents of Proceedings volumes, which in turn have links to the abstracts and full text.

Reference linking is available for all SPIE Journal papers published since 1999. Each Journal abstract page includes the complete list of references from that paper in HTML, with citation links as applicable. In addition, forward linking (citing articles) is now supported. Only subscribers can access this feature. Links are also provided to INSPEC and MEDLINE records. Proceedings papers have assigned DOI numbers and thus may be linked from other sources in the technical literature. Outbound reference linking from SPIE Proceedings papers to references cited within the paper is planned for the future. SPIE is a member of CrossRef.

Users may sign up for E-mail Alerts and receive e-mail notification with links to the tables of contents when new Journal issues or Proceedings volumes are published.

The Article Collection feature allows users to mark papers of interest and assign their citations to personal Article Collection folders. This is useful for quick identification and storage of selected citations as well as for sharing bibliographies with other users. To use this feature it is necessary to create a free Scitation login account.

Subscription and Pricing information

Institutional Subscriptions

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