George Carlin once said, “Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it!” My girlfriend says that I change my mind as often as most people change their clothes. Some people resist change; perhaps I embrace it too much. Regardless of your attitude, change is necessary and often leads to positive outcomes. If you are unwilling to change, you could miss out on exciting opportunities, fall behind the curve, or stay on a harmful path.

At Applied Optics, we continuously seek ways to improve the journal and better serve our constituents. To that end, we are updating the page layout of Applied Optics papers. JOSA A, JOSA B, and Optics Letters are also going through this process, and you will begin to see these updates in published papers in the spring of 2015. Print readership is declining, so the new page layout is more optimized for online viewing, including the use of color to incorporate the visual identity from Applied Optics’ cover. The fonts will also look more modern, but the format will remain two columns per page. Updated Word and LaTeX templates for Applied Optics, JOSA A and JOSA B are now available for authors to use when preparing manuscripts for submission, if they wish to do so, to see how their papers will look in the new layout. New templates for Optics Letters will be released later this year.

The new format has been tested and reviewed by a number of people in the community, and the results were very positive. There were some concerns that articles might be longer in the new format, but, generally, paper length remains the same. Other good news is that the author names are bigger and some of the front material is easier to read.

President John F. Kennedy said, “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” Each year, more people are reading technical papers on screens instead of in print. Our changes will improve the look of our papers and make them more functional for the majority of readers in this changing environment. I welcome your feedback about the updated page layout. You can contact me at aomss@osa.org.