The editable vector version of the banner is also available: branding/scisvg-banner.svg.

SciSVG

Open scientific vectors for figures, presentations, and publications.

Free to use. Free to modify. Attribution required.

Scientific illustrations and SVG assets are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Software, scripts, and website code are licensed under the MIT License.

SciSVG is an open scientific illustration library of clean, editable vector graphics — designed to be found, edited, and cited. Every asset is a hand-structured SVG with named layers and embedded metadata, organised by scientific domain and searchable in the online gallery.

Browse the library

The interactive gallery provides fuzzy search, category filtering, live SVG previews, downloads, citation copying, and a detail view for every asset.

Gallery: https://saveenasolanki.github.io/SciSVG/

What's inside

Category	Subcategories	Assets
Biology	cells, organelles, proteins, dna-rna, pathways, organisms	mitochondrion, cell membrane, animal cell, neuron, ribosome, DNA double helix, chromosome, plasmid
Chemistry	molecules, reactions, glassware, instrumentation	benzene ring, peptide bond, protein–ligand binding, reaction arrow, Erlenmeyer flask
Bioinformatics	genomics, networks, machine-learning, workflows, databases	heatmap, sequence alignment, gene structure, sequencing reads, phylogenetic tree, neural network, workflow pipeline
Laboratory	equipment, workflows, consumables	microscope, micropipette, test tube rack, 96-well plate, petri dish
General Science	—	arrow right, curved arrow, axes, magnifier, layers
Medicine	anatomy, disease, clinical	open for contributions

30 assets today. Every asset is a 512×512 editable SVG with named layers, embedded <title>/<desc> metadata, and per-asset searchable metadata in metadata/assets.json.

How to use an SVG

1. Browse the gallery or the assets/ folders.
2. Download the .svg file.
3. Edit it in Illustrator, Inkscape, Figma, PowerPoint, Keynote, Affinity Designer, or any SVG-compatible application.
4. Add attribution to SciSVG in the figure legend, acknowledgements, slide footer, website, or references as appropriate.

Required attribution

All SVG artwork under assets/ (and the banner under branding/) is released under CC BY 4.0 unless a file explicitly states otherwise.

A compact attribution is sufficient for slides, websites, posters, and figures:

SciSVG — Saveena Solanki, CC BY 4.0, https://github.com/SaveenaSolanki/SciSVG

For academic manuscripts, please cite:

Solanki, S. (2026). SciSVG: An Open Scientific SVG Illustration Library. GitHub. https://github.com/SaveenaSolanki/SciSVG

GitHub also exposes citation metadata from CITATION.cff. If a DOI is added through Zenodo later, the DOI-based citation can replace the repository citation.

Adding new SVGs — the easy way

Contributors do not need to understand the whole repository:

python scripts/add_svg.py my_figure.svg

The tool validates your SVG, asks for category/keywords/name, places the file in the right folder, records you as contributor, and rebuilds the catalog. Full guidelines are in CONTRIBUTING.md.

source/            editable Illustrator/Inkscape originals (masters)
assets/            optimized, validated publication SVGs (canonical)
previews/          generated PNG/WebP previews (build artifacts, gitignored)
metadata/          assets.json (generated), categories.json, contributors.json
website/           GitHub Pages gallery
scripts/           validation, optimization, catalog, previews, contributor tool
tests/             test suite (pytest)

Validation & quality standard

Every asset must pass scripts/validate_svgs.py: XML validity, viewBox required, no scripts, no event handlers, no raster images, no external resources, no duplicate IDs, no broken references, kebab-case filenames, and the CC BY 4.0 attribution comment. Distributed SVGs are optimized with SVGO (svgo.config.js), which is configured to preserve attribution comments, <title>, <desc>, and viewBox.

CI (.github/workflows/) validates every push/PR, rebuilds the catalog on main, and deploys the gallery to GitHub Pages.

Repository structure

SciSVG/
├── README.md
├── LICENSE                ← MIT (software)
├── LICENSE-ASSETS         ← CC BY 4.0 (artwork + documentation)
├── CITATION.cff
├── CONTRIBUTING.md
├── CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
├── SECURITY.md
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── ROADMAP.md
├── branding/
│   └── scisvg-banner.svg
├── assets/
│   ├── biology/           cells, organelles, proteins, dna-rna, pathways, organisms
│   ├── chemistry/         molecules, reactions, glassware, instrumentation
│   ├── medicine/          anatomy, disease, clinical (open for contributions)
│   ├── laboratory/        equipment, workflows, consumables
│   ├── bioinformatics/    genomics, networks, machine-learning, workflows, databases
│   └── general-science/
├── source/                reserved for editable masters
├── previews/              generated (gitignored)
├── metadata/              categories.json, contributors.json, assets.json (generated)
├── scripts/               validate_svgs.py, optimize_svgs.py, build_catalog.py,
│                          generate_previews.py, check_metadata.py,
│                          check_duplicates.py, add_svg.py
├── website/               index.html, style.css, app.js, catalog.json
├── tests/                 test_svgs.py
└── .github/
    ├── workflows/         validate-svg.yml, build-catalog.yml, deploy-pages.yml
    ├── ISSUE_TEMPLATE/    svg_request.yml, scientific_error.yml, bug_report.yml
    ├── PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md
    └── dependabot.yml

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md and the ROADMAP.md. Contributors submit only artwork they created themselves or have the legal right to release under CC BY 4.0.

License

• SVG artwork in assets/ and branding/: CC BY 4.0 — attribution required. See LICENSE-ASSETS.
• Software (scripts, website, tests, workflows): MIT. See LICENSE.

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SciSVG — open scientific vectors, designed to be reused and cited.