1. Introduction

Previous Editorials in this 20th Anniversary series [1–3] have commented on the inception [2] and the early years [3] of Optics Express and have given an overview of Journal statistics over the 20 years of its existence [1]. In this Editorial, I will cover items not considered before that arose during my tenure as Editor-in-Chief during 2007–2012.

In the years between 2007 and 2012, Optics Express’ previously tumultuous growth started to saturate and it ultimately reached maturity. Figure 1 refers to the time before maturity was reached. It shows the number of submissions received per week during a three-year period from Week 16 in 2007 until Week 18 in 2010. Note the large fluctuations. Some of the peaks are understandable. The ones in early January correspond to submissions that came in during the holidays, and the ones in December are from authors who tried to finish theirs before the break. But how about the spike in Week 28 in 2008? It looks like a rogue wave! Apart from the fluctuations there is a distinct upward trend, which becomes particularly clear by comparing submissions in the corresponding weeks in consecutive years: whereas in most of 2007 the Journal received typically 60–70 papers per week, by late 2009 and early 2010, receiving more than 100 papers per week was the norm.

 

Fig. 1 Weekly Optics Express submissions during a three-year period. Data for the year 2007 is indicated in green (data started in Week 16), 2008 is indicated in red, 2009 in yellow, and 2010 in blue (no data after Week 18).

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The rapid growth of submissions required an equally rapid growth of the number of editors. When I started as Editor-in-Chief in 2007, the Journal had 39 Associate Editors, with Miguel Alonso joining me as Deputy Editor soon after my appointment. When I finished in December 2012, there were 90 Associate Editors and also nine Deputy Editors. Initially, all submissions came across my desk so I could assign them to an Associate Editor to manage the peer review. This is how I was able to collect the data in Fig. 1. However, assigning 20–25 submissions per day to Associate Editors started to take too much of my time. In response, the editorial structure changed, with the appointment of six new Deputy Editors: John Dudley, Javier Garcia de Abajo, Jim Leger, Guifang Li, Colin McKinstrie, and Brian Orr, joined soon afterwards by Vitor Schneider. This allowed me to spend less time on operational matters and more time on strategy.

As already mentioned in a previous editorial [3], Optics Express initially benefitted greatly from having Focus Issues, invitation-only groups of papers in a specific area. In 2007 and 2008 we took this a step further and had a Focus Serial edited by John Dudley and Robert Boyd: between April 2007 [4] and December 2008 [5], Optics Express published a set of 19 forward-looking papers on the “Frontiers of Nonlinear Optics.” I would like to think that this serial contributed in some way to setting the research agenda in this area and it would be very interesting to see whether, 10 years later, these papers have stood the test of time and whether a new serial, in this or in another area, would be of interest.

Taking this idea yet a step further, one more development during my tenure was the establishment of Energy Express as a supplement to Optics Express in 2010. There had been discussions within OSA’s leadership about publishing energy-related research. It was decided to launch Energy Express as a supplement to Optics Express, with its own set of editors, and initially led by Bernard Kippelen. This position was subsequently taken by Christian Seassal. Being a supplement to Optics Express had the obvious advantages that a new journal did not need to be established and that the supplement could enjoy the Journal Impact Factor of the host journal rather than waiting three years to receive its own. On the other hand, the supplement does not have its individual identity as it would have as a stand-alone journal. I believe the choice for a supplement was probably the correct one, and Energy Express continues to publish key papers in photovoltaics and energy-efficient lighting.

One of the eternal questions during my tenure, and I am sure during the entire lifetime of any Open Access journal, was determining the price for an article to be published. There is now an approximate industry norm for Article Processing Charges (APCs), but this was not so 5 or 10 years ago when the number of Open Access journals was limited, and Optics Express was one of a modest number of successful ones. After initially increasing yearly, OSA decided that the APC would increase only nominally. As Editor, I strongly supported this because OSA Publishing, and the journals it produces, needs to serve the optics community, which it cannot do when a large fraction of the community does not have the funds to publish. While it is probably true that they are too high for some researchers, the Journal's continuing success, in both in the number of submissions and the number of published papers, could be interpreted as evidence that the rate was roughly right.

In 2007, I wrote an Editorial for Optics Express’ 10th anniversary [6]. One passage reads as follows: “Both Quantum Optics and Atomic & Molecular Physics each represented well over 10% of submissions in Volume 1, whereas thus far this year they represent less than 2% of submissions put together.” No doubt this is because quantum science has evolved into a more general physics subject. I was curious to see if this trend has continued in the past 10 years. John Long (Editorial Development Manager) and Kelly Cohen (OSA Senior Publisher) provided me with the following data: Quantum Optics and Atomic & Molecular Physics have hovered around 3–4% over the past years and were 4.1% in 2016. So the trend has not continued, but actual numbers remain low. In contrast, Lasers and Laser Optics, Nonlinear Optics, and Fiber Optics and Optical Communications remain among the largest categories.

Like the other Editors-in-Chief, I am grateful for the support I have received over the years from OSA staff and from many colleagues who have contributed to Optics Express as editors, reviewers, authors, or readers. Most of the key people during my time as Editor—Jennifer (Martin) Mayfield, Joe Richardson, Scott Dineen, Kelly Cohen, Dan McDonold, Carmelita Washington, Sharon Jeffress, Lynne Sturtz, Theresa Miller—have been thanked in the other Editorials [1–3]. One person not mentioned is Meghan (Ely) Cook—she was the central operational node of Optics Express for many years, and the first point of contact for both authors and editors. She joined in 2005 and left OSA in 2011 to start her own business.