SPIE Digital Library Hits Half-a-Million Milestone

The world's largest collection of optics and photonics applied research includes conference proceedings and presentations, peer-reviewed journals, eBooks

06 March 2019

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BELLINGHAM, Washington, and CARDIFF, UK - The SPIE Digital Library, the online publishing platform of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, has reached the remarkable milestone of 500,000 publications.

The Society, long known for its "yellow books," made the move to the digital platform in July of 2003 when the SPIE Digital Library launched on the AIP Scitation platform with 75,000 journal articles and proceedings papers extending back to 1998. By 2006, the Digital Library was up to 230,000 publications, going back to 1990. Today, the collection lives on an SPIE-built platform and includes the Society's conference proceedings and journals dating back to 1962, the first year of their publication.

Building the Digital Library collection has been consistent and ongoing. SPIE eBooks were added in 2010, and there are more than 360 eBooks in the collection today, with topics that cover a rich range of photonics-focused areas including imaging and signal processing, biomedical optics, lasers, and remote sensing. In 2015, SPIE began recording and publishing conference presentations, ramping up that program over the past four years. Today, the SPIE Digital Library includes more than 17,500 conference presentations, with 6,000 to 8,000 being added each year. Late last year, SPIE added closed captioning and transcriptions to presentation recordings, enhancing their use and accessibility.

Today SPIE publishes 11 peer-reviewed journals. The newest of these, Advanced Photonics, a high-impact open-access journal in partnership with Chinese Laser Press, launched in January 2019. Each year, the Society publishes more than 300 conference proceedings volumes from its worldwide symposia, as well as a number of proceedings on behalf of partnering organizations. It also publishes 25-30 new eBooks annually through the SPIE Press imprint.

The top downloaded journal articles from the SPIE Digital Library include "Review of mid-infrared plasmonic materials," published in the Journal of Nanophotonics; "Medical hyperspectral imaging: a review," published in Journal of Biomedical Optics; and "James Webb Space Telescope: large deployable cryogenic telescope in space," published in Optical Engineering.

Top proceedings downloads include "Defining, measuring, and optimizing laser beam quality," "SUPERTWIN: towards 100kpixel CMOS quantum image sensors for quantum optics applications," and "EUV Lithography: From the Very Beginning to the Eve of Manufacturing."

Among the leading SPIE eBooks are Field Guide to Geometrical Optics by John E. Greivenkamp, and two recipients of the Joseph W. Goodman Book Writing Award, Hyperspectral Remote Sensing by Michael T. Eismann and Tissue Optics: Light Scattering Methods and Instruments for Medical Diagnostics, Third Edition, by Valery V. Tuchin.

The SPIE Digital Library includes a mix of open-access and subscription-access content. SPIE Members receive 10 downloads annually along with an online journal of their choice, and conference attendees receive online access to the proceedings of the conferences they attend. Many of the world's leading research universities, labs, and companies subscribe to the SPIE Digital Library. SPIE has been a leader in subscription pricing, often freezing or reducing prices since 2010, and offering discounted and free access to constituents in low-resource countries.

"This is a tremendous accomplishment for SPIE and a testament to the important work of tens of thousands of engineers and scientists who have contributed as authors and editors to this rich archive," said SPIE Director of Publications Eric Pepper. "I'm not surprised that the 500,000th presentation, 'High-sensitivity detection of Raman vibrations in the impulsive limit with Doppler Raman spectroscopy,' originated at SPIE's largest technical event, Photonics West. Stay tuned, as there will be many more publications to come from SPIE that showcase the exciting new work and innovation being done in optics and photonics."

About SPIE

SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics, an educational not-for-profit organization founded in 1955 to advance light-based science, engineering, and technology. The Society serves 257,000 constituents from 173 countries, offering conferences and their published proceedings, continuing education, books, journals, and the SPIE Digital Library. In 2018, SPIE provided more than $4 million in community support including scholarships and awards, outreach and advocacy programs, travel grants, public policy, and educational resources. www.spie.org.

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