This year, we celebrate the 10^th anniversary of Biomedical Optics Express. This celebration will be accompanied by some special features, like an anniversary logo and collections of the most highly cited papers of our Journal in different fields of biomedical optics. Please watch out for them in the coming months.

Founded in 2010 as a spin-off from Optics Express by founding Editor-in-Chief Joseph A. Izatt [1], the first issue of Biomedical Optics Express was published in August 2010. The new Journal was quickly embraced by the biomedical optics community, leading to a solid growth of the number of papers published in the Journal over time (Fig. 1). Furthermore, authors submitted some of their best papers to our Journal, which led to an Impact Factor greater than 3.0 already for the first full two-year observation period of the Journal (2012 Impact Factor). Since then, the Impact Factor constantly has been above 3.0. With a 2018 Impact Factor of 3.910 and a total of 472 published papers in 2019, Biomedical Optics Express is now the leading journal in the field of biomedical optics and biophotonics, both in terms of quality (impact) and quantity.

 

Fig. 1. Number of papers published in Biomedical Optics Express per year.

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Several factors have contributed to the success of our Journal: (i) Biomedical Optics Express is a truly international journal with 61% of its editors from outside the U.S. and 71% of submitted papers from countries outside North America; (ii) its rapid time to publication—with a median time of 86 days from submission to publication, Biomedical Optics Express is the fastest journal in the field of biomedical optics and among the fastest journals in the entire Optics category; (iii) its open access policy, ensuring the broadest possible readership; (iv) an editorial board consisting of dedicated scientists who are experts in their fields and who strive for a fast and fair peer review process; (v) a large pool of diligent reviewers, experts in their fields, who strive to provide comments helping to improve the papers—their work still does not get enough credit, so I would like to express my sincere thanks to them on this occasion; (vi) and last, but not least, the professional staff of OSA Publishing, whose dedicated work behind the scenes is decisive for the functioning and success of the Journal.

In addition to the remarkable success of Biomedical Optics Express, I would like to mention here a pioneering role that the Journal played among OSA journals: In 2016, we introduced a new Conflict of Interest (CoI) policy that requires authors to declare possible conflicts of interest in a formalized way [2]. This policy was introduced to improve the transparency of published research. After successful implementation in Biomedical Optics Express and evaluation of authors’ responses, this new CoI policy will now be implemented in other OSA journals.

An anniversary celebration like this is also an excellent opportunity to thank all the people who support me in this endeavor and who helped to shape the Journal and to maintain its quality: my special thanks go to Joe Izatt, the founding Editor-in-Chief, who now serves in the new role of Reviews Editor, responsible for organizing invited reviews; to Adam Gibson, my Deputy Editor who helps me coping with the increasing number of submitted papers as well as with various editorial decisions; to our entire Board of Associate and Advisory Editors (both present and past); and to the OSA Publications staff—Kelly Cohen, John Long, Nicole Williams-Jones, Dan McDonold, Sarah J. Walker, Meredith Rountree, Julie Rovesti, and many others, without whose dedicated and tireless hard work this Journal would not be what it is. Finally, I would like to thank all our reviewers and authors who submit some of their best work to our Journal. We welcome your submissions for another successful decade.