From the Pandemic to the Present Day: Launching With Purpose

It is hard to believe that just a few years ago, we were all floundering in uncharted territory with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the United States, the shutdown began almost exactly 6 years ago to the day at the time of this writing. No one knew what the next day was going to bring, but as physicians and front-line responders, we knew that we had a duty. Although elective clinical activity was coming a grinding halt, many physicians were getting re-deployed to help care for the increasing number of patients crowding the intensive care units. Because of the requirements for social distancing, even laboratory work also decreased. However, medical publications saw something different: although clinicians were going to work to see patients with urgent and emergent problems, many were not performing routine or elective care, and they may have found some extra work time on their hands. Those with academic interests began dusting off their long-ago written manuscripts and research data, and submissions to journals increased dramatically during the first year or so of the pandemic, with our parent journal, Cornea, seeing an incredible 40% increase in submissions in 2020 compared with in 2019. Coupled with an already low acceptance rate, this deluge of submissions made the choices for acceptance of papers even harder. Truly excellent research and clinical observations were often unable to be accepted simply because there was not enough space in the journal. Noting this need for more space, the decision was made to investigate the creation of a companion journal. With the support of Dr. Reza Dana, the editor-in-chief of Cornea, and with the help and collaboration of our publishing team at Wolters Kluwer, Cornea Open was launched in December, 2022 as the Official Open Access Journal of the Cornea Society, and I am deeply honored to have been appointed as the inaugural editor-in-chief. Our goal is to publish unique and important basic research, clinical research, techniques, and case reports related to diseases and medical and surgical treatment of the cornea and external eye, and to make all of this freely available to eye specialists around the globe. We are achieving this goal. Over the last 3 years, with our outstanding associate editors, Drs. Matilda Chan, Shahzad Mian, and Divya Srikumaran, along with our dedicated editorial board, reviewers, and our publishers, we have continued to receive an increasing number of excellent submissions each year over year, allowing us to choose important and timely research and observations to publish online immediately, with papers curated into quarterly issues. The process is helped along by a most useful option that is given to some authors who submit to Cornea but are not able to be accepted: they are allowed direct transfer to Cornea Open. In addition, we have published the abstracts from both 2022 and 2025 World Cornea Congress: these meetings, sponsored by the Cornea Society, brought together the best minds in cornea from all around the world. I would like to make a special note of thanks to our authors who have entrusted the editorial board, the journal, and the Cornea Society with their work and given us the opportunity to review and publish it. The increasing recognition of the journal and the quality of the work being published in just the first 2 years allowed us to prepare the journal for submission for indexing. After a yearlong process to ensure that the journal is ready, Chelsea Martinez, our loyal publisher for the last 2 years has guided us to a point where we are just about to submit for indexing. And there are other exciting initiatives that will be coming to the journal very soon, as well. One of the most exciting bits of news is that Dr. Divya Srikumaran has been selected and appointed as the next editor-in-chief of Cornea Open. As an associate editor for the journal, Dr. Srikumaran has demonstrated her outstanding judgment and leadership in helping to curate manuscripts for our journal. With her vision for the future, I am confident that Cornea Open will not only succeed, but it will thrive and grow under her stewardship. I would like to thank Dr. Dana and the Cornea Society for giving me the opportunity to develop and lead this journal, and I am excited to now pass the baton to Dr. Srikumaran, who is poised and ready to take the journal to new heights.