After extensive consideration, and based on input from the entire Editorial Board, I am pleased to announce a revamp of the topic categories for OMEX. The complete new list is shown below.

Our goal with this effort has been to ensure that the Journal accurately reflects current research trends in the field and to encourage submissions in pertinent areas of optical materials research. As expressed in my inaugural editorial [1], we would also like to enhance the relevance and visibility of OMEX, solidify the Journal’s position as a leading publication in optics and materials science, and enable it to continue to serve the community well into the future.

Submitting authors are able to choose the most appropriate category for their manuscript from the updated list during the submission process. We then use this topical information to help select—in a prompt and proactive way—the most suitable associate editor, facilitating a smoother review process and an even faster publication time. OMEx is already one of the fastest journals in the field. We believe this change will further reduce the time from submission to publication. In addition, published papers will be grouped using these topics and we hope that this will help give visibility to these diverse and exciting areas and attract new communities and new authors, since we are always on the lookout for the best science in emerging areas.

I am grateful to the Editorial Board for their help developing these new topical categories, and would appreciate your feedback as authors and readers to make sure that they remain up-to-date and relevant for our broad community.

Andrea Alù

Editor-in-Chief, Optical Materials Express

City University of New York, USA

Artificially structured media, metasurfaces and metamaterials

Bio-materials, bio-inspired materials and bio-sensors

Computation and first-principle methods

Crystalline and dielectric optical materials

Doped and fiber optical materials

Epitaxial photonic materials

Fluorescent and luminescent materials

Glass and other amorphous materials

Laser materials and processing

Materials for integrated optics, optomechanics and quantum optics

Nanostructures and nanomaterials

Nonlinear, electro-optical and magneto-optical materials

Optical materials for photovoltaics and energy applications

Organics, polymers and soft matter, liquid crystals

Plasmonics and polaritonics

Self-assembly and templated assembly for photonic materials

Stimuli-responsive, reconfigurable and programmable optical materials

Thin films and flexible materials

Two-dimensional materials

Wide-bandgap optical materials