The first issue of Optics Express was published on July 7, 1997. This year we celebrate our 20^th Anniversary. At its inception, Optics Express was a bold innovation, a first-of-its-kind experiment with all-electronic, open access journal publication. The experiment proved to be remarkably successful. Optics Express now publishes more than 3,000 articles and 30,000 pages per year and is ranked #2 among Google Scholar’s top publications in Optics & Photonics (ranking is based on the most recent Google Scholar Metrics from June 2016). Moreover, the Optics Express model has been highly influential on scientific publishing, not only in optics and photonics but in many other fields as well.

In order to commemorate this milestone anniversary, we are planning a number of special features which will appear throughout the coming year. Founding Editor-in-Chief J. H. Eberly will reminisce on the formation of Optics Express in a guest editorial tentatively titled “Optics Express — How Did It Happen?” Subsequent Editors-in-Chief Michael Duncan and Martijn de Sterke have also agreed to contribute guest editorials. In addition, we will solicit review and perspective articles from some of our most prolific and highly cited authors, highlight the journal’s most cited papers, collect historic content from and about the journal, recognize those who have served on the editorial board in the past, and compile a collection of Editor’s Picks. This content will be made available through an anniversary web site planned to launch in April.

We are pleased that our sister journal, Optics Letters, will be celebrating an anniversary this year as well (its 40th). We will be staggering some of the special features to avoid overlapping those from Optics Express and Optics Letters.

Within a few years of its inception, Optics Express enjoyed phenomenal growth. Overall, 33,712 papers comprising 331,975 pages have been published through 2016. Figure 1 presents data on the number of papers submitted per year. The rapid expansion phase of Optics Express took place from 2003 until 2010–2012, when the number of papers published per year reached 3,000 and has remained near or above that mark since. The Optics Express model was replicated with the introduction of two new specialty journals, Biomedical Optics Express and Optical Materials Express, in 2010 and 2011, respectively. In 2016, these offshoot journals accounted for over 1,500 papers submitted and 800 papers published beyond the totals for Optics Express alone. Optics Express is truly international, with 90% of the most recent year’s submissions coming from outside the United States. Optics Express garnered 84,397 citations in 2015, which is second highest in the Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters’ Intellectual Property and Science business) Journal Citation Reports Optics category. The journal’s Impact Factor has been above 3.0 for 13 consecutive years, achieving the highest impact factor of all optics journals in 2006.

 

Fig. 1 The number of articles submitted to OSA’s “Express” journals since the launch of Optics Express in 1997.

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Within this content, a number of truly groundbreaking papers can be found. These contributions include: a heavily used, freely available algorithm for calculating the states of arbitrary period structures such as photonic crystals (“Block-iterative frequency-domain methods for Maxwell's equations in a planewave basis” [1]); comparisons of Fourier domain vs. time domain optical coherence tomography that helped to establish today’s dominant high sensitivity OCT implementations (“Performance of Fourier domain vs. time domain optical coherence tomography” [2] and “Sensitivity advantage of swept source and Fourier domain optical coherence tomography” [3]); demonstration of optical angular momentum data encoding onto a laser beam for free space optical information transfer (“Free-space information transfer using light beams carrying orbital angular momentum” [4]); and an influential subwavelength imaging concept based on strongly anisotropic metamaterials (“Optical hyperlens: far-field imaging beyond the diffraction limit” [5]).

The publication volume accommodated by Optics Express would not have been possible without a large and dedicated cadre of editors. Figure 2 shows the size of the Optics Express editorial board by year. A total of 249 individuals have served or are currently serving on the editorial board. A list of all these editors acknowledging their service will be placed on the journal’s anniversary web site. At present, the Optics Express Editorial Board comprises 115 editors, including 104 Associate Editors, 9 Deputy Editors, a Senior Deputy Editor, and the Editor-in-Chief. The Optics Express Deputy Editor role was introduced in 2007 and expanded in 2010, by which time the number of papers received had become too large for the Editor-in-Chief to assign to the Associate Editors himself. Table 1 lists Optics Express editors who have held leadership positions along with their years of service.

 

Fig. 2 The number of editors on the Optics Express Editorial Board each year.

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Table 1. Individuals Who Have Held Leadership Positions with Optics Express

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Despite the very large publication volume, one of the hallmarks of Optics Express has been its speed. Figure 3 shows the median time to publication over the last 20 years. In 2016, the median time to publication was 63 days, one of the best numbers for any refereed, electronic publication. Thanks are in order to our editors, staff, and reviewer community for working together to achieve such efficient operations!

 

Fig. 3 The median time from submission to publication for Optics Express articles each year.

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At this point I would especially like to call out the OSA Publications staff. Their hard work and dedication has been, and continues to be, crucial to the success of Optics Express. Sincere thanks are in order to Kelly Cohen, Dan McDonold, Carmelita Washington, Sharon Jeffress, Sarah Walker, Sara Naughton, Sika Dunyoh, John Long, Lynne Sturtz, Theresa Miller, Marshal Staggs, Venice DeLeon, Marco Dizon, Shyla Lapidez, and Abraham Calicdan.

The publishing landscape within which Optics Express operates has changed dramatically since it was launched as an all-electronic experiment in 1997. The field of optics remains vibrant, evidenced for example by the number of Nobel Prizes with optics connections and by large national investments in photonics being made by many countries. However, a large number of competing journals emulating the Optics Express open access, all-electronic model have sprung up in the optics and photonics space (not to mention most other areas of science), and this trend has accelerated in the last few years. In the face of this increasing competition, we will continue to focus on what we believe has made Optics Express an attractive publication venue so far: assembling an outstanding editorial board made up of active scientists and engineers; striving to meet the expectation for high quality and innovation in published articles; and providing a fair review process while maintaining fast turnaround consistent with the rapid pace of today’s research innovation.

We hope that you will help us celebrate this 20th anniversary by checking out our planned special anniversary content and submitting some of your best work to the journal. Happy Anniversary, Optics Express!