Well, like most other societies, OSA was concerned about the decreasing number of journal subscriptions that was threatening the Society’s revenues, and we wanted to find a solution. We were asking questions like: What was the next paradigm of publishing? How do we make sure that the main economic engine of the Society, the journals, stayed viable? At the same time Joe Eberly was proposing a number of ideas. One was that this journal would be multimedia capable right off the bat. Second of all, he proposed that it would not be copy-edited. The articles would always be peer-reviewed, but once they were accepted, we would publish whatever the author submitted. The articles would not be tampered with. Of course, we realized that if we have a non-native English speaker writing the article, there might have to be some way to make sure it was readable. In that case, the author could either get a colleague whose English was fluent to help, for instance, or get it copy-edited independently. But once the article reached a certain level of readability, it would not be copy-edited.

Speed of publication and lower cost. Both were of interest because it was understood that copy-editing was one reason why journals took longer to publish the papers they received, and we also recognized it as a cost driver. It costs money, so this was one way to slim down the cost of the journals, which would make them more attractive to libraries in a subscription-model, or cheaper to produce in a non-subscription model. We had to do something.

The other thing that was kind of new is that the journal would not be a subscription model. At that time, the term "open access" was not being commonly used. But that’s what Joe Eberly was proposing. The journal would become an author-supported journal. This meant there would be page charges, but it would be free to readers worldwide. It would be totally accessible. The author charges would be minimal, but they would be there. So that’s the genesis of the journal. There were a lot of implementation issues that had to be worked out. I was on the implementation committee at the time. Joe was the very effective driver of that process. And the Society, under his urging, created an all-electronic platform to produce the journal, to have editors, authors, and readers interact with it.

A number of issues had to be dealt with. New software had to be written, for instance, and the Society developed it all. At the end of that process, when the journal was actually launched, we had all these features. We had an electronic system, whereby authors could send in papers electronically. The editors would see these papers as they were assigned, and they would then assign reviewers electronically. A lot of journals have now gone to this system, but we were among the very first to do so. It was also really the first open-access journal like this in the physical sciences, when it came out—certainly the first serious journal with peer-reviewed papers.

As for the challenges, the biggest was probably a continual economic tussle with the Society itself. What I mean by that is that elements of the Society leadership saying that the electronic journal development is costing a lot of money and, by the way, you predicted that it would be hard to ever recoup money and make this a profitable journal, so remind us again why we’re doing this. So the Society had to make a large financial commitment at the leadership level to make things happen, and that was somewhat controversial. A lot of hard questions were asked about when the journal was going to break even; when are we going to stop having to put money into the development of software to run the journal Lots of "when"-type questions. That was a difficult thing.

For the most part, because at the beginning the journal was such a minor part of what the Society was doing, and since there was no positive economic impact at the beginning, people didn’t pay too much attention, other than to what we were spending. The first three or four years of its existence, it was this thing that the Society, of course, acknowledged and was proud to have as a test of what a future journal might be, but it was not in the mainstream by any means. So it avoided controversy just by being so small.

That’s at the core of what we were doing in the first three or four years. We had a very, very collegial way of meeting and talking about the journal and trying to figure out how to make it successful. The editors were a very select group, hand-picked by Joe Eberly. They were known quantities in the academic world. And so at the very beginning it was clear: we just asked everyone we knew to contribute papers. This is typical of all new journals. You rely on word of mouth and your colleagues. You talk to your buddies and you say, "I’m involved in this new journal; please submit." Joe then helped this process by coming up with the idea of focus issues. Those are issues that bring together a number of papers in an important or emerging subfield. They would be identified as a coherent set of papers. We would identify people who would be appropriate guest editors for one of these issues—focus issue coordinators, we called them—and they would help gather the papers in the subfield. Good subjects were identified by making sure that all the associate editors were thinking about this.

Once a subject was decided upon, a focus issue coordinator would be chosen, someone who would be working in the area, maybe a leader in the area, and who would talk to people, colleagues, and get submissions in the area. They would all be submitted in a certain time frame and brought out in one issue in Optics Express. This was really critical in getting the new journal going and getting it known throughout the optics community. We had a number of these issues come out in the first few years, and they were fundamental to establishing a critical mass to the journal.

Once we got to that point, the next crucial factor was that we now had a number of people who knew how we published and saw that we would publish articles within about seven or eight weeks of submission of the manuscript. That is phenomenal. Once people saw that, and they realized they could do a multimedia submission if they wanted to, and would have a complete worldwide audience for their paper, and all that within seven weeks of submission, versus four to six months in the fastest paper journals or a year in a standard journal, I think the authors thought it would be silly not to take advantage of it. At first, maybe they wouldn’t submit their very best work, because they couldn’t know if this journal would stay around, but they would submit nonetheless. At that point we turned the corner and started growing at a phenomenal rate.

We went from publishing 100 to 200 articles each year through 2002 to more than double that in 2004 and we’ll probably have 30-40% growth on top of that in 2005.

The acceptance rate for this year to date is 62%. And the time-to-publication average this year is 56 days. So eight weeks.

That’s a good question, but I don’t have an answer for you. I can give you little snippets of what I’ve tried to do as editor and what might be happening, but this is really in the realm of speculation. One thing that we did capture in a few cases was a pretty new emerging field in some of these focus issues. One focus issue was in this field called meta-materials, negative index of refraction materials. We had John Pendry as the focus issue coordinator, and he is kind of the modern father of the field. He helped to establish us as a place people could think about for submitting articles in these new areas. I’m not sure we ever took off in the meta-material region, but it was nice to have, and it established our position.

What we did capture as a mainstream field early on, and I’m not sure why, is photonic crystal fiber work and, to some extent, photonic crystals. We have really become the home for these papers. I’ve had to continually augment the number of associate editors we have in those areas, because we receive a huge number of these papers. In general, though, the thing that brings people to us for their good work is that they want to get it out quickly, and so we’re the place to go for that.

We are profitable now. We have, of course, gotten more staff support from the Optical Society as we have grown, so our expenses have increased, but we are profitable. Although we are by no means at the same kind of level as the traditional subscription-based journals. We are a new model, but a successful model. And it took us a large volume of papers to get to that point.

Just that from the very beginning, Optics Express has been very international in its character. The editorial support for the journal was very international. We have editors in Russia, in Australia, and in various other places besides the U.S. And I have really tried to enhance that. Perhaps 50% of the editors are non-U.S. based. We have them all over, including one editor now from mainland China. We consider that a very important flavor for the journal. And, of course, just like all other journals in the Optical Society, we are dominated by foreign submissions so this works to facilitate that.

Optics Express
Michael Duncan, Editor-in-Chief
Optical Society of America, publishers