We are honored to be appointed as Editor-in-Chief and Deputy Editor of Biomedical Optics Express (BOEx), The Optical Society’s (OSA’s) principal journal for the biomedical optics and biophotonics community. Both of us have followed the development and progress of BOEx with great interest and enthusiasm.

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate and thank the founding Editor-in-chief, Joseph A. Izatt, and the founding Deputy Editor, Gregory W. Faris, for their achievements: launching a new journal and raising it into the top 10 journals (ranked by Impact Factor) in ISI Web of Science in the optics category and to number one among all non-review journals of OSA within less than six years. These extraordinary achievements are based on the visionary leadership and hard work of the founding editors, but also on the diligent contributions of a well-selected board of Associate Editors, of the dedicated staff at OSA, and on insightful comments and guidance by a board of experienced senior Advisory Editors. Of course, the success of BOEx is also due to the support of authors who quickly realized the potential of the new journal and sent in some of their best manuscripts. Furthermore, the journal has benefited from the willingness of many excellent reviewers to help improve the papers by providing insightful comments (and we would like this work to be better recognized and rewarded).

For the coming years, we strive to continue the success story of BOEx. Both of us have contributed to BOEx as Advisory and Associate Editors, as Guest Editors, authors, and reviewers. Based on our experience with the journal and on discussions with the founding editors, editorial board members, and OSA staff, we think the key success factors of BOEx are: (i) high-quality published papers; (ii) rapid publication (average time from submission to publication: 70 days); and (iii) the open access policy ensuring the broadest possible readership.

To maintain the success of BOEx and to continue its growth, we will face some challenges: Open access is now adopted by more and more journals. With new online journals pushing into the market and some established journals switching to the online-only publication scheme, speed and open access will no longer be unique features. Therefore, it will be imperative to maintain high standards in combination with short publication times. Further growth of the journal must not be based on lowering the acceptance threshold and compromising quality. To continue the growth of BOEx, both in quality and in quantity, we ask authors in those fields of the biomedical optics community for whom BOEx is already their “home” journal to continue to submit their best papers. In addition, we invite authors working in fields of biomedical optics that are under-represented in BOEx, as well as authors of emerging fields, to submit high-quality papers to our journal and enjoy the advantages of rapid, open access publication. We also plan to publish distinctive invited reviews in various fields of biomedical optics and biophotonics to broaden the journal’s coverage.

We look forward to working with all of you–Editorial Board, OSA professional staff, authors, reviewers and readers. Together we will be able to continue the success story of BOEx. We welcome your comments, suggestions and feedback at boemss@osa.org.Happy New Year!Christoph K. Hitzenberger, Editor-in-ChiefAdam Gibson, Deputy Editor