It is our pleasure to introduce this year’s OFC Special Issue, composed of the outstanding networking papers from OFC 2015. As in past years, the Editors-in-Chief of JOCN, in collaboration with the OFC Program Chairs, have overseen the production of a high-quality article collection on an expedited schedule. Our editors and reviewers worked hard to accelerate the time to publication without compromising the rigorous selection process typical of JOCN.

The 25 papers published in this OFC 2015 special issue were drawn from OFC invited papers and highly ranked OFC contributed papers. This collection of top-quality optical networking papers has been screened twice for relevance, innovation, and quality—once through the OFC selection process and once through the JOCN selection process.

Within the broader areas of elastic optical networks, network virtualization, and software-defined networking, hot topics this year include vendor interoperability of elastic interfaces, optical network recovery, and multi-domain optical network control and performance. Other important results include node architectures, data center architectures, and the use of super-channel formats. Once again, optical access systems for both residential services and mission critical services are represented. Radio over fiber networks, mobile fronthaul and midhaul, as well as access network resiliency and protection are all covered.

We hope you enjoy this special issue.