After Govind Agrawal became the second editor of Advances in Optics and Photonics (AOP) in 2014, every time I met him at conferences or OSA events I inquired about the health of “my baby.” I now know well that the baby has become a healthy “adult” and continues to be a member of the caring and supportive OSA family. It is now evident that AOP is meeting its original goal of capturing the most significant advances in optics and photonics by means of in-depth state-of-the-art reviews and serious peer-reviewed and well-illustrated tutorials and is having a significant impact on research and education in the field.

As I wrote in my editorial in the inaugural issue, the idea of AOP emerged at meetings of the OSA Publications Council and the Long-Term Planning Group and was enthusiastically supported by the OSA Board of Editors and favored at forums held at the OSA annual Leadership Conference [1]. The OSA Board of Directors subsequently endorsed the concept and envisioned AOP as an effective medium for advancing education and research. Since this was a new publishing domain for OSA, the planning phase of the new journal involved lengthy discussions and debates about issues such as subscription versus open access, possible honoraria for authors, free introductory access for a limited time following the Journal launch, and the level of copy editing and assistance for production of multimedia. I recall many discussions about the models adopted by similar successful publications, including Progress in Optics, Review of Modern Physics, and Lasers & Photonics Reviews, in an effort to determine the desired distinct character of AOP.

The initial development of AOP was not easy. Persuading leading figures in the field to write long review articles for a yet-to-be-established new journal was rather difficult. The question was always asked about sustainability of the Journal and its expected ranking in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). I had to mention that OSA is the world’s most respected publisher of archival material in the field and note its access to an excellent network of subject-matter experts and peer review infrastructure. I requested the author’s trust in my expectation, or “promise”, that their contributions would be widely read and highly cited and that the Journal would survive, prosper, and eventually receive a very high Journal Impact Factor. Some potential authors did not wish to take the risk of putting significant effort into a publication in a nascent journal anyway. Nevertheless, thanks to the enormous effort of OSA’s outstanding publications staff, the inaugural issue was published on time and OSA’s high standards of production quality and reliability were met and maintained thereafter. Volume 1, published in 2009, had eight review articles and two tutorials, with a total of 636 pages.

In the early years, submissions continued to be sparse and the annual number of papers remained small. Since all articles are invited, securing new manuscripts was always a stimulated process involving the proactive contact of potential authors and the planting of seeds for a review or tutorial in their areas of expertise, rather than waiting for the manuscripts to be spontaneously submitted as in other OSA journals. I often had to exercise considerable persuasion, pointing out the value of reviews and tutorials to the community of researchers and students and highlighting the visibility attained by authors of successful reviews. Author promises were sometimes unfulfilled, and deadlines were often missed, either because the necessary time to write comprehensive reviews and well-illustrated tutorials was underestimated or because such articles were generally given lower priority compared to contributed articles that report current research results.

In soliciting invited papers, I aimed to create a broad and comprehensive scope covering all of the topics highlighted in OSA meetings and publications and endeavored to cover both fundamental and applied optics and photonics. A balance between reviews and tutorials was also maintained, although the distinction between these categories was sometimes vague. Since the papers were all invited, the acceptance rate was very high. I often had to help authors make major enhancements in their manuscripts before sending them out for peer review. Nevertheless, a few papers had to be rejected after several rounds of reviews, and this was painful.

Although the lack of a JCR listing and ranking had a negative impact on the Journal and the recruitment of authors in its early years, the quality of the content remained excellent and the rate of downloads continued to be high. The Journal slowly gained reputation and a few requests for invitations to contribute were received from prominent authors. The Journal’s visibility was also helped by an aggressive marketing campaign coordinated by OSA staff. Toward the end of my term as editor, staff computed the rates of citations of published AOP articles and concluded that the impact factor would be very high. Eventually, when the JCR ranking was formally announced, it was no surprise. My promise to the authors about eventual success of the Journal was fulfilled. I recall calling one author of an early paper who has repeatedly asked me about the ranking and proudly informing him about the fulfillment of my “promise.”

In my inaugural-issue editorial, I wrote “I can unequivocally say that this journal will have a great impact on work being done in the field, and I am honored to be its founding editor [1].” Now, I can confidently say that AOP has exceeded my expectations. As I delivered the “baby” to Govind in 2014, I was certain that it would continue to grow and prosper and become a mature, successful, and influential “adult”—and there is no question that it has.