For more than a century, JOSA B (and its predecessor, the Journal of the Optical Society of America) has been a resource for the worldwide optics and photonics community, providing an outlet for researchers to report on novel findings in all aspects of light–matter interaction. Historically, the Journal has published and archived foundational articles, many in topical feature issues that represent the current state of subfields within the scope. These foundational articles provide significant technical details, and so a more-than-welcome, but nonetheless somewhat underappreciated, side effect is that researchers are able to learn from each other via the Journal.

This publication strategy has proven to be enormously successful and will continue in the future; nevertheless, JOSA B must adapt to the ever-changing needs of the optics and photonics community that it serves. In particular, in the past decade or so, we have witnessed an increase in the pace at which subfields appear, expand, or become invigorated. As cases in point, I mention optical beams and forces, topological and quantum photonics, numerical simulations and optimization techniques, and 2D materials, although this is clearly neither an exhaustive nor an objective listing.

To help our readers stay apprised of all these developments, JOSA B will follow the example of its sister journal, JOSA A, by providing a new service to the community that expands the aforementioned educational aspect via the addition of a new class of article: tutorials.

Tutorials do not represent comprehensive reviews, nor do they report extensive novel research. Instead, we hope that they are beneficial to graduate students and researchers entering the field, and that established researchers will find in them novel perspectives and valuable tools. Tutorials are by invitation only, around 12 pages in length, and will be openly available to all readers.

We are enormously grateful to those authors who have already committed their time and energy to write valuable tutorials in the months to come, and to the authors of the first three exquisitely written tutorials that have already been published [1–3]. In fact, the first two of these were solicited by my predecessor as Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Grover Swartzlander, and I am also grateful to him for his instigation of this initiative.

From optical tweezers to quantum electrodynamics to lasing, the range of subjects covered is already wide. I welcome your suggestions of other topics you would find valuable and hope that, as a community, you will contribute ideas, and read and find these tutorials useful.