The IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (J-SAC) is in its twentieth year of existence. A typical J-SAC issue is organized by one or more Guest Editors and is devoted to a single specialized topic in the field of communications. Currently nine such issues are published each year. From March 1999 to December 2001, J-SAC was expanded to include a wireless communications series that addressed the large and rapidly growing interest in wireless communications. The series was highly popular and led to the successful launching of the new journal Transaction on Wireless Communications in January of this year. J-SAC is now ready to address another large and rapidly growing area, that of optical communications and networking.

Starting from the second half of 2003, the regular issues of J-SAC will be supplemented each year by two or more issues dedicated solely to optical communications and developed from articles submitted in the general optical communications and networking area. Manuscripts can be submitted at any time. Each submission will be reviewed by at least three experts and evaluated by an editorial board dedicated to the optical communications and networking area. Proposals for the regular J-SAC issues, including those dealing with specific topics within optical communications, will continue to be encouraged and will be evaluated in the traditional way.

For the new publication, we invite the submission of high-quality manuscripts on advances in the state-of-the-art of optical communications and networks. Both theoretical contributions (including new techniques, concepts, and analyses) and practical contributions (including system experiments and prototypes, and new applications) are encouraged.

The general scope of the series includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• Enabling technologies and their applications in optical networks; topics include (a) increased spectral efficiency; (b) tunable lasers; (c) impact of new transmission technologies (40G vs 10G, WDM vs TDM, OEO vs OOO switches)
• Architecture and design of fiber-based DWDM including global and transcontinental, metropolitan, local and enterprise networks
• Architecture and design of free space and hybrid optical networks including satellite, wireless, and cable networks; optical systems interconnect
• Architecture and implementation of I/XX/DWDM and the Optical Internet
• Survivability, reliability, and security of optical networks; techniques for protection and restoration
• Techniques and algorithms for wavelength routing, assignment and management
• Transparency and all-optical networks; optical packet, burst and flow switching
• Network control and management; signaling and information models; optical networking standards
• Operations support systems of optical networks, including economic models
• Performance modeling and simulation of optical networks; QoS in optical networks
• Network applications of advanced optoelectronic circuits and optical signal processing
• Network applications and control/management of emerging optical sub-systems and systems, including large MEMS arrays, nano-scale and atomic structures.
• Impact of quantum communication and computing on the future of optical networks; quantum cryptography and optical networking

Please submit pdf or postscript manuscript to jsac-ocn@mit.edu or send 6 copies of paper manuscript to

Prof. Vincent W. S. Chan
Editor-in-Chief, J-SAC OCN Series
Dept of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 35-308
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 USA
Telephone: +1 617 258 8222
Fax: +1 617 253 3578
chan@mit.edu

**For additional guidelines on manuscript preparation, please see the Information for Authors on the inside back cover of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications or the IEEE Transactions on Communications.