The experimental data on inclusive and semi-inclusive cross sections of deep inelastic scattering of polarized leptons on polarized nucleons are reviewed in this paper.
The results of these experiments are usually expressed in terms of spin-dependent structure functions of nucleons and used for testing of different theoretical predictions such as Quantum Chromodynamics, Bjorken sum rule, Elli-Jaffe sum rules, Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn sum rules and others, as well as for determination of quark contributions to the spin of nucleons. A short summary of underlying theoretical works and description of experimental set-ups at CERN, DESY, and SLAC, where the experiments have been performed, precedes the data review.

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