In the short time that Optics Express has been publishing articles, less than four months, it has become clear to the Editorial Board that it will be helpful to call attention to the guidelines mentioned in the Editorial accompanying the first issue. At the same time, a different kind of guidance, unavailable before, may be provided by some early statistics describing the operation of the journal.

First, with respect to the original guidelines, the Editorial Board will begin to take them more seriously. We will attend much more consistently to the proposition that an article longer than six pages may be better suited to a conventional journal, or at least may be more suitable for Optics Express if recast in a shorter form.

Obviously, articles with multi-media content are not well-suited for any other journal, no matter what their length, and Optics Express will continue to accept for review all such articles. However, authors of articles much longer than six pages cannot continue to expect that their articles will receive the same prompt attention by two reviewers and the same relatively very rapid publication schedule [see statistics below] afforded to shorter articles.

As for multi-media content, the closer authors can maintain adherence to recommended standard formats, the less frequently they will need to correspond with the OSA technical staff about special publication requirements and non-standard options. Unfortunately, the gif format for video presentation is not yet standard enough across all platforms to allow guarantees to be made about straightforward publication, although gif images have been successfully published. In contrast, the QuickTime format is by now almost completely standard, and its use is generally trouble-free.

Another technical issue remains unresolved for the time. Even the latest Microsoft browser, MS Internet Explorer 4, still does not have a completely acceptable ftp capability. Our experience suggests that authors who find MS Internet Explorer to be their only satisfactory browser should contact the Optics Express site via e-mail to infobase@osa.org for assistance.

After publication of only eight issues, any statistical analysis of the Optics Express publication process will be influenced by start-up transients of many kinds. But still our current time-to-publication records will probably be helpful to prospective authors. I am here releasing our statistics on mean days-to-publication (days following receipt of electronic submission) with the warning that they will almost certainly change as the journal reaches steady state operation.

As the Table below shows, the time-to-publication record so far is very strongly in favor of our electronic procedures, but this is influenced by the fact that our reviewers and editors have been able to concentrate on a relatively small number of submissions. This will change as the optics community acquires a better understanding of the standards that the journal has set, and as we gradually ask a wider pool of reviewers to become familiar with our review procedures. This will be a challenge for the journal, and we are trying to prepare to meet it.

In closing, I would like to repeat the invitation expressed in my opening editorial. Optics Express intends to publish articles from all areas of optical science and technology. We request articles from all members of the optics community. We will continue to publish special Focus Issues devoted to specialized areas of optical interest, and Focus Issues devoted to Bose-Einstein condensates, coherent phenomena in semiconductors, signal collection and recovery, biomedical optics and quantum light states can be expected in the coming few months.

During our partly experimental run-in phase of operation to date, which continues, we have successfully demonstrated the ability to handle multi-media submissions of various types, and to do so with two professional reviews of every paper, without significant delays, and to provide continuing open archival access and electronic linking of published articles.

This has been done without author submission fees. In order to continue to provide the world-wide readership and convenience of access that is available only via the Internet, this will clearly have to change, because there are real costs of operation, but no fees are scheduled before 1998.