OSA to Launch New Gold Open-Access Journal, OSA Continuum

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The Optical Society (OSA) today announced it will begin publishing a new Open-Access journal, OSA Continuum, in September 2018. The new Journal will accept contributions from the broad optics and photonics community and will provide rapid dissemination of research articles meeting OSA’s high standards of accuracy, scientific rigor, and presentation standards without judgment of impact or significance. In addition to traditional research, OSA Continuum will consider negative results and reproducibility studies—the first journal in OSA’s portfolio to provide a venue for these types of articles.

OSA Continuum will open for submissions in mid-June. Authors may submit directly to the Journal or easily transfer manuscripts from other OSA journals—a task that will be made easier by using OSA Publishing’s new universal manuscript template and that will eliminate the need for reformatting. OSA Continuum will also be the first in OSA’s journal portfolio to introduce an option for transparent peer review, where authors and reviewers may choose to publish the peer review correspondence (reviewer comments, decision letters and author response) with the final article.

Dr. Takashige Omatsu, Professor, Graduate School of Engineering, and Director, Molecular Chirality Research Center at Chiba University, Japan, has been selected as the inaugural editor-in-chief of the Journal. Omatsu’s approach for OSA Continuum’s editorial board is that it consist of active researchers representing the Journal’s broad topical scope and geographic reach. He will be supported by deputy editor, Dr. Erik Vartiainen, Associate Professor, School of Engineering Science at Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland.

“I am honored to lead the effort to launch this new journal for OSA Publishing,” said Omatsu. “There is great value to the optics and photonics community in disseminating solid research across the continuum of the discovery process, whether the research builds upon existing work in an incremental way or even when the results are inconclusive.”

Article publication in this Gold Open-Access journal will be supported by Article Processing Charges, though the fee will be waived for all articles published in 2018. After the introductory period, OSA Continuum will offer discounts and waivers to authors from 100 qualifying low- and middle-income countries.

“One of OSA Publishing’s key goals is to continually identify and implement ways to better meet the needs of the global optics and photonics community. With the launch of OSA Continuum, we are able to advance this objective in a number of ways,” said Elizabeth Nolan, OSA Deputy Executive Director and Chief Publishing Officer. “Not only are we introducing new article types that can help to accelerate scientific discovery, but we are also unveiling the option for a more open and transparent peer review process and eliminating a key author pain point with the introduction of our universal manuscript template. We believe that these elements, coupled with our constructive peer-review process, speed to publication, and more accessible approach to article processing charges, will be key to the success of OSA Continuum.”

For more information on the new journal, visit www.osapublishing.org/OSAC.

About The Optical Society

Founded in 1916, The Optical Society (OSA) is the leading professional organization for scientists, engineers, students and business leaders who fuel discoveries, shape real-life applications and accelerate achievements in the science of light. Through world-renowned publications, meetings and membership initiatives, OSA provides quality research, inspired interactions and dedicated resources for its extensive global network of optics and photonics experts. For more information, visit osa.org.

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