  The ARGO-YBJ experiment is a full-coverage air shower detector located at the
Yangbajing Cosmic Ray Observatory (Tibet, People's Republic of China, 4300 m
a.s.l.). The high altitude, combined with the full-coverage technique, allows
the detection of extensive air showers in a wide energy range and offer the
possibility of measuring the cosmic ray proton plus helium spectrum down to the
TeV region, where direct balloon/space-borne measurements are available. The
detector has been in stable data taking in its full configuration from November
2007 to February 2013. In this paper the measurement of the cosmic ray proton
plus helium energy spectrum is presented in the region 3-300 TeV by analyzing
the full collected data sample. The resulting spectral index is $\gamma = -2.64
\pm 0.01$. These results demonstrate the possibility of performing an accurate
measurement of the spectrum of light elements with a ground based air shower
detector.
