In its first year of existence, it is somewhat difficult to objectively evaluate an international journal's audience. Clearly, it takes time to accumulate enough data to produce meaningful statistics. Furthermore, the response of the community to a new professional journal can be measured only over a few years' span. And more volumes are required to settle Optical Fiber Technology's scientific reputation, as well as its interest to a variety of contributors from industry and academia. However, the limited data available so far from Volume 1 show encouraging trends.
The international makeup of Optical Fiber Technology's audience is revealed in the manuscript submission by country histogram in Fig. 1. To date, institutions from 22 different countries have submitted papers (contributed and invited). This number almost matches that of subscribing institutions (23). About 20% of all manuscript submissions are from the United States, while an average of 10% are issued from each of the following countries: France, Japan, United Kingdom, Russia, and Italy (2% being not meaningful in these statistics). The remaining 30% come from 14 countries in Europe, Asia, and South America, plus Canada and New Zealand. Such a distribution possibly reflects the larger number of research institutions in the United States, Japan, and Europe, as well as the progress of the Journal's promotion throughout the international community. The corresponding proportion of invited papers, which are shown in black reflects the Editor's attempt to cover a broad variety of fields and invited authors' institutions.
Manuscript submission by field is illustrated in Fig. 2. It is seen that about 50% of submitted papers concern fiber devices, lasers, and amplifiers. All types of fiber-optic communications represent 30% of submissions, and 40% of those relate to soliton systems. The field of fiber sensors represents 14% of submission while fiber materials account for less than 5%. The corresponding proportion of invited papers, appearing in black, shows an emphasis on fiber-optic communication systems (8%), while fiber devices and materials represent 3 and 1%, respectively. Invited papers concerning the area of fiber sensors are scheduled for Volume 2.