Advances in Optics and Photonics (AOP) is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. The Optical Society (OSA) launched the journal in 2009 under the leadership of Bahaa Saleh. The very first issue appearing in January 2009 contained three reviews and one tutorial. The Journal has done extremely well over the past ten years. As of June 2019, AOP has published 92 reviews and 26 tutorials, written by more than 400 authors, 14 of whom have published more than once in AOP. The list of authors includes Nobel Laureate Shuji Nakamura and many other well-known scientists.

The raison-d’etre of AOP is to publish top-quality reviews and tutorials in all areas of optics and photonics. Indeed, over the last ten years of its existence, AOP has published reviews on a wide variety of topics, ranging from quantum optics to microscopy and covering both the fundamental and applied aspects of optics and photonics. The published reviews and tutorials have served not only the OSA members but the entire optics community, as evident from the large number of downloads across the entire globe. AOP reviews and tutorials are especially useful to graduate students and early-career scientists who are the primary beneficiaries of the in-depth coverage of the topics of their interests.

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of AOP, I asked the authors of several early AOP reviews that have been particularly highly cited if they would be willing to write a guest editorial discussing their experience writing and publishing with AOP. They were invited to include any impact that publishing the paper may have had upon their career and how the topic or field that they originally wrote about has evolved in the subsequent ten years. Four authors agreed to write such a guest editorial, and these are included in this issue.

The first of these is from Qiwen Zhan, the author of the very first review published in AOP [1]. In his guest editorial he describes how writing such a review has increased the visibility of his research and that he feels rewarded when young scientists express how much the article helped them [2].

Christian Brosseau’s guest editorial outlines developments in optical image processing that have occurred since he published his review article on that topic in 2009 [3,4]. This is an active topic area with plenty of opportunity for innovation, and review articles like his can provide valuable background information for those just starting out in such a field.

Alan Willner’s guest editorial describes his very personal take on the value of review articles in general, and AOP’s contribution to the optics community in particular [5]. He briefly describes how his review [6] came about, as well as giving an update on the potential for application of orbital angular momentum to diverse areas of optics.

Lastly, the guest editorial by Pierre Berini [7] discusses recent advances in the field of long-range surface plasmon polaritons. This is another vibrant area of research, with applications in nanophotonics, and we are grateful to researchers like Prof. Berini who have been willing to take the time to review such an important topic for the benefit of others [8].

I also asked the founding AOP Editor, Bahha Saleh, to write an editorial [9] reflecting on his experiences starting a new journal that has proved to be so successful over its ten-year history. I am gratified to note that he feels that the Journal has continued to flourish during my tenure, as I certainly aspired to follow his excellent example.

I take this opportunity to acknowledge the time and effort of the AOP reviewers. Reviewing a long article is a time-consuming job with no immediate benefits to the person undertaking it. However, one must do it as a service to our society, OSA, and to the broader optics community. It is my hope that all members of the optics community will continue to take this responsibility seriously and will be willing to review AOP articles.

I wish to thank the OSA publications staff for producing a top-quality publication and for helping me in a timely fashion during my six-year tenure as the Editor-in-Chief. My term will be ending in December 2019, and Guifang Li will be taking over as the new Editor-in-Chief for AOP starting in January 2020. I am confident that AOP will remain a vibrant journal under his leadership and will continue to serve the optics community.