With the opening of this issue, we mark the 10th anniversary of the
Journal of Vision. While the idea was first envisioned in the 1980's, it was not until the end of the 1990's that the conditions were right for the creation of an online open access journal of vision science. Built from scratch in a single year and launched at the dawn of a new millennium,
Journal of Vision published its first paper on May 1, 2001 (Artal, Guirao, Berrio, & Williams,
2001). Elsewhere in this issue I will provide a brief history of the journal, including events that preceded our first publication and the tortuous but ever ascending path we followed thereafter (Watson,
2011).
Ten years ago we launched this journal based on the simple premise that authors wanted their articles to “be free, be everywhere, be forever” (Watson,
2001). The advent of the internet made it possible to be “everywhere,” while the emergence of the concept of open access allowed us to be “free” by allowing completely unrestricted access to every article. Today, as we look back over our first decade, we see that our premise was correct. In a short time, the journal has risen from nothing to become a leading publication in vision science. Numbers for submissions, publications, internet access, downloads, and citations all have reached remarkable levels and continue to increase. We thank the 2,650 authors who have powered this amazing trajectory.
We celebrate this anniversary with this special issue, composed of invited review articles from a number of distinguished authors. In vision science we are perhaps too often darting from one shiny intellectual bauble to the next, without taking the time to arrange those gems into a larger treasure. But anniversaries are a time for reflection and synthesis. The authors in this issue have surveyed a broad range of topics, with a special emphasis on matters of current interest. Since articles at the Journal of Vision are published when ready, we are launching this issue with only a few of the articles. The remainder will appear in the coming weeks as a movable feast. We hope you will enjoy these contributions, as we hope you will enjoy the next decade of the Journal of Vision.