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For the past six years, I have had the distinct privilege and pleasure to serve our community as Editor-in-Chief of Optics Letters. During this time, I have gained a much deeper level of appreciation for the extremely high quality and selfless dedication of our volunteer editors, reviewers, and OSA publication staff. They have inspired me.
There have been some changes to Optics Letters over the course of my tenure, including:
- 1. The number of submissions for 2013 is manuscripts, up from 6 years ago. Furthermore, the number of downloads of our papers has exceeded 1 million per year, clearly having an impact on our community.
- 2. We have added a superb team of Deputy Editors to help manage this larger enterprise. Peter Andersen, Brian Justus, and Antonio Mecozzi (and, previously, Brian Pogue and Jinendra Ranka) have made a profoundly positive impact on Optics Letters. I have relied on their invaluable wisdom and efforts.
- 3. Our Topical Editor team has nearly doubled, and it is more geographically and technically diverse than ever. Our editorial team is the foundation on which Optics Letters operates.
- 4. Our time from submission to publication has dropped dramatically, from 107 days to a mere 74 days, an astounding 30% drop. Moreover, the average days that a reviewer holds a paper before submitting a review is 10 days, the lowest among all OSA journals. Our volunteers and staff work tirelessly and efficiently, and it shows.
In what may have been the simplest and yet most impactful change implemented to Optics Letters in the last several years, our recent increase in the page limit from 3 to 4 pages has had a dramatic and positive impact, allowing authors the ability to more fully describe their results and more fully cite relevant prior works. We have seen an enthusiastic embrace of the new page limit, and we are seeing an even higher increase in submissions.
I am delighted that the next Editor-in-Chief will be Xi-Cheng Zhang of the University of Rochester. Xi-Cheng brings a history of significant scholarship and dedicated OSA service to the position. On behalf of Robert Terhune, Paul Kelley, Peter Smith, Anthony Johnson, and Tony Campillo, our distinguished past Editors-in-Chief, I wish Xi-Cheng much success in leading Optics Letters to new and prosperous heights, for the benefit of our entire community.
On a personal note, I am deeply indebted to the entire OSA publications staff for their outstanding dedication, professionalism, and good cheer; there are simply too many wonderful people to name individually. I have been deeply moved by the respect they have all shown both to our excellent volunteers and for the technical quality we hold dear at Optics Letters. Furthermore, Michael Duncan and Tony Heinz have been crucial as Chairs of the OSA Board of Editors in helping guide me and Optics Letters with deep insight. Finally, I want to thank Tony Campillo, my predecessor as Editor-in-Chief. With his giving nature and keen wisdom, he kindly mentored me throughout the past seven years. He was always there to help, and I will forever be grateful.
I hope that our community will benefit from the high-quality scholarship of Optics Letters for many years to come.
Respectfully and warmly submitted,
Alan Willner
University of Southern California