If Joe Eberly oversaw the birth and formative years of Optics Express, I think I must have been Editor-in-Chief during its teenage and early adult years. Joe had the sleepless nights that come with bringing something to life and nurturing it, and I had the task of watching something grow with astonishing speed and begin to discover what wonderful potential it has.

So, what was it like for Optics Express 15 years ago? When I took over as Editor-in-Chief from Joe Eberly in 2002, Optics Express was a small, relatively obscure, online-only journal. We had made continual refinements and upgrades of the software used by authors, editors, and reviewers to interact with the Journal, and we had a workable system. The number of submitted manuscripts had increased since the Journal’s founding, but not by much. We offered free access to the Journal content, the free use of color figures, and even the support of multimedia files, something new for a scholarly journal in the field of optics. Oh, and we could publish a paper, from receiving the manuscript, through peer review, to electronic publication, in a little over seven weeks.

And then Optics Express started to grow. By 2003 the number of submissions to Optics Express doubled, and in 2004 they doubled again. This was the true beginning of the tremendous growth that Optics Express experienced for the next 10 years. And the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) grew, too. It went from small, to respectable, to excellent, even at one point surpassing the JIF of Optics Letters towards the end of my tenure as editor (Table 1). But why? What had happened? Why did Optics Express grow so much in those years? Was it the free access? The freedom to use multimedia? The speed of publication? A combination of factors? Or something else entirely?

Table 1. Ranking in Optics Category and JIF of Optics Letters and Optics Express, 2002–2006^a

View Table

At the time, being consumed with the day-to-day activities of the Journal, it was quite hard to know what factors actually led to the surge in growth and the increase in the JIF. However, by the end of my time as Editor-in-Chief, I think I could isolate the key factors that led to the success of Optics Express. And with the 20th anniversary of Optics Express upon us, those factors are even clearer.

One factor, starting from the very beginning of Optics Express, was the creation and successful implementation of something we named “focus issues.” Focus issues were single issues of Optics Express that published a handful of papers devoted to a single technical topic. The concept was created by Joe Eberly and was originally used as a way to showcase the fact that Optics Express covered all fields of optics. There was a designated focus issue editor, usually the individual who proposed the topic (or who an Associate Editor or the Editor-in-Chief targeted and twisted his or her arm), who would contact and coordinate the authors submitting papers. All the Optics Express Associate Editors were involved in developing interesting topics for focus issues, and many prominent researchers became “guest” editors for focus issues. Their use allowed Optics Express to become known to many authors who otherwise would not have thought to publish in this new (and unproven) journal. These focus issues were different from the standard “special issues” that were used in other OSA journals, mainly by their relative informality in coordination, short gestation time, and tight technical focus. Focus issue papers, of course, went through the same rigorous peer-review process as any other paper. The impact of focus issues on the growth of Optics Express took a number of years to build, and I was lucky to be Editor-in-Chief when that happened.

Another factor, certainly, was the universal accessibility of Optics Express. This was due to it being an “open access” journal, a quality that was at odds with standard scientific publishing at the time. This universal access meant that as long as the author paid the article processing charge (APC), his/her article in Optics Express could be read by anyone, anywhere, anytime, as long as they had Internet access. No other journal in optics had the same exposure. Authors who published in Optics Express had an immediate worldwide audience for their work. And since the papers were accessible, they could be, and were, cited often, leading to a higher JIF for the Journal. Again, I think the true importance of this feature took some time for the optics community to understand, appreciate, and use.

Yet another factor (in fact, what I believe became the dominant factor) was the speed with which papers were published in Optics Express. Consistently, the time between paper submission and publication was phenomenally short (60 days or less for most of the years while I was Editor-in-Chief). This was clearly important to individual authors whose work could now be accessed and read so quickly, but it was also important to the optics research community, where peer-reviewed research results were available in a time that was faster than any print-based journal could achieve. This in turn led to a faster cycle for individual research groups to absorb and build upon current published results. One author at the time described this cycle as “addictive.” While the quick time to publication was a design feature of Optics Express from the beginning, it took tremendous effort by the Associate Editors and reviewers (to quickly complete the peer-review process) and by OSA staff (for rapid production) to actually make it happen year after year.

All of these factors combined to contribute to the almost exponential growth of Optics Express during most of my time as Editor-in-Chief (see Fig. 3 from Joe Eberly’s recent editorial [1]), as well as the increase in its JIF (Table 1). I remember that time as a frantic period during which it seemed like all I was doing was finding, vetting, and appointing Associate Editors, in order to keep up with the increasing flood of submitted papers. And make no mistake, it was these same Associate Editors who were doing the vast majority of the editorial work that was contributing to the success and growth of Optics Express. In general, the number of papers each Associate Editor was assigned was way larger than those assigned to the Editors of any other OSA journal. They not only handled the standard tasks of finding and assigning reviewers and making acceptance decisions (time-consuming and arduous jobs by themselves), but they also were serving as the group that gave continuous feedback to the OSA editorial staff on how to improve the existing, home-grown, Internet-based peer review software that was essential for them to perform their duties at all. It was an intense time!

There you have it—a picture of Optics Express as it “grew up,” at least from my point of view. Of course, no retrospective would be complete without at least some attempt to thank and give credit to the people who helped me as Editor-in-Chief, and who were essential to the success of Optics Express. In any shared endeavor that number is large, but I want to make sure that some specific individuals are recognized. On top of that list is Joe Eberly, the founding Editor-in-Chief of Optics Express. Joe had the vision for the Journal and then put in tremendous effort and time to see that it was created, launched, and set on a good course. It was an extraordinary creation from an extraordinary individual. Joe has already mentioned a number of people who helped him in the early years, both volunteers from the community and OSA staff, and I want to add to that list. On the volunteer side, I depended heavily on all of my Associate Editors, but especially Martijn de Sterke and Miguel Alonso. They were hard-working (an understatement!), always thoughtful, and always had good ideas about how to improve the Journal and the editorial flow. To get a full list of all of the Editors during that time, see the list of editorial board members on the Optics Express 20th Anniversary website and explore the names from the years 2002 to 2006. To echo Joe from his editorial, the whole optics community owes each of these Editors a huge debt of gratitude.

On the staff side, I must mention Deborah Herrin, Jennifer Mayfield (nee Martin), Scott Dineen, and John Childs. Deborah was involved in many aspects of the Journal as it was created and put on the Web, and she heavily contributed to making Optics Express a stable, usable platform for authors, editors, reviewers, and readers. Jennifer was the Managing Editor for Optics Express during the time I was Editor-in-Chief and handled the increasing workload of the Journal with humor, grace, and incredible competence. Scott was the Director of Editorial Services and had the world-class technical capability to make all of the intricate pieces of Web technology (not easy in those Wild-West days of the early Internet) work together for the benefit of the Journal. And John Childs was the Senior Director of Publications, truly the man behind the curtain who made sure the appropriate resources were always there for Optics Express, while at the same time beginning to craft the electronic future for all of the OSA journals. All of the OSA staff were delightful to work with and showed the highest level of professionalism.

Many, many thanks to everyone who contributed to the growth and success of Optics Express during those years. Being the Editor-in-Chief of Optics Express was one of the highlights of my professional career.