A Message to Our Authors, Reviewers, and Readers Regarding Optica Publishing Group and COVID-19

We recognize that our authors, reviewers, editors, and readers are dealing with new and unexpected professional and personal challenges due to COVID-19. While our journals are currently operating at full capacity, we anticipate that these challenges may result in delays in the publishing process over the coming months. In anticipation of this, we have put several measures in place to help keep all steps in the process moving as efficiently and smoothly as possible.

We greatly appreciate the effort that everyone in our community is making during this difficult time and wish everyone good health. If you have an issue or question that is not addressed below, please contact us at Prism@optica.org and we will do our best to assist. For additional information from Optica on COVID-19, please click here.

For Authors

  • Revised manuscripts are generally due within 7-21 days, depending on the journal. Please let us know if you need more time to complete revisions, and we will do our best to accommodate those requests.
  • If you receive a manuscript decision that includes requests for additional results that are impossible to produce at this time, please indicate this in your response to the editor. The editor will take this into account when making a final manuscript decision.
  • If you have questions or concerns about making your APC payment because of closures at your institution, please contact us at Prism@optica.org, and we will work to assist you.

For Reviewers

  • If you cannot perform a review for any reason, a prompt response declining the request and providing suggestions for alternative reviewers is appreciated by the editors.
  • If you need additional time to complete a review, please contact the editor through the Prism system. We will work with you on a new due date and will keep the authors informed about the delay.
  • Since authors may not be able to access their labs right now, please consider the necessity of any requests for additional results. If the paper is publishable and the additional results are 'nice to have,' please make your recommendation accordingly.

For Readers

  • Some universities do not currently have enough bandwidth within their VPNs to meet the needs of those working remotely. To help overcome this challenge, we have significantly expanded the number of federated authentication options available to our institutional subscribers. Federated authentication delivers content directly from Optica Publishing Group to you, without relying on your university's network.
  • If you are having trouble accessing subscription-based content, please contact your institution's librarian and ask them to contact Optica Publishing Group at elec@optica.org or direct them to our Librarian Resource Center.
  • To ensure that you can access our content without always logging into your university system, we have enabled Google CASA. This allows you to easily and quickly download content from Google Scholar if you have authenticated your access on your institutional network within the last 30 days. When you download an article from Google Scholar, Google CASA places a secure token on your laptop or other mobile device that later enables seamless access to our content.
  • We are working with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) to provide educators with an option to easily acquire the rights to use our copyrighted materials in their distance learning models during the pandemic. At launch, the program will be specific to U.S.-based educators. Once in place though, our goal is to quickly enable educators across the globe to acquire the same type of limited-term license for educational purposes.