With this issue Optics Express begins Volume 5 of publication, and continues to set international standards for electronic publishing.

Authors around the world are learning about, and then taking advantage of, our exceptionally rapid turn-around. The average time-to-publication in Optics Express, including two peer reviews, is many months shorter than normal scientific journals and approximately two months shorter than what is available in familiar letters journals.

Articles in Optics Express are being cited in the highest-impact journals of physical science; and for the past 3 volumes of publication authors have been assured that citations of their articles in Optics Express have been recorded in the standard citation database maintained and distributed by the Institute for Scientific Information (Science Citation Index).

Over 725 authors have contributed to the journal, and roughly one-third are taking advantage of the multimedia opportunities provided through the journal. Many more are enhancing the presentation of their research with color graphs and figures.

As many readers know, we offer a free e-mail alert of each issue’s contents. This has been so popular that a recent reminder to OSA members prompted so many sign-ups that we temporarily saturated the service limit. I have to apologize to those who were not able to subscribe this past week. We quickly upgraded the list capacity and have contacted all those who reported receiving an error. The list is open again and now unlimited in capacity, so we invite further subscriptions. If you would like to be included, send an e-mail message to opexsubs-request@woolly.osa.org with the word “Subscribe” in the body of the message.

For approximately 6 months now OSA has been able to guarantee authors publication of accepted, peer-reviewed manuscripts within 8 weeks of receipt and as usual provides free distribution around the world via the Internet. In return, authors pay a low publication fee of $300 for all standard articles. I invite you to join this new wave of scientific publishing. Manuscripts submitted this week will be on schedule for publication before the end of August. To obtain author information try the link:

http://www.opticsexpress.org/submission

J. H. Eberly, Editor