It has been a year now since we published the inaugural issue of Advanced Photonics Nexus (“APNexus” – www.apnexus.org) in September of 2022. During this time, APNexus has published 64 reviews and research articles from 16 countries. They cover exciting topics of imaging and sensing, nonlinear optics, nanophotonics, quantum optics, and plasmonics. The breadth of topics is reflected in the carefully selected cover articles: “Orbital angular momentum comb generation from azimuthal binary phases” (Vol. 1, Iss. 1), “Centimeter scale color printing with grayscale lithography” (Vol. 1, Iss. 2), “Deterministic $N$-photon state generation using lithium niobate on insulator device” (Vol. 2, Iss. 1), “Relative phase locking of a terahertz laser system configured with a frequency comb and a single-mode laser” (Vol. 2, Iss. 2), “High-repetition-rate seeded free-electron laser enhanced by self-modulation” (Vol. 2, Iss. 3), and “Complex-domain-enhancing neural network for large-scale coherent imaging,” (Vol. 2 Iss. 4). Some of the excellent articles have attracted general and professional press coverage, and have been commented on by internationally renowned scientists, with commentary published in Advanced Photonics, such as “Hyperentanglement goes deterministic and large-scale” (Pooser, doi 10.1117/1.AP.4.5.050502), “High-dimensional orbital angular momentum comb” (Wang, doi 10.1117/1.AP.4.5.050501), and “Accelated hyperspectral imaging via temporal compressive sensing” (Zhang, doi 10.1117/1.AP.5.4.040502).

Designed as a Gold Open Access journal, APNexus provides the optics community an excellent opportunity for fast-track publication of suitable articles which undergo strict peer-review, either directly submitted or transferred from its well-established sibling Advanced Photonics. For some manuscripts that have undergone peer-review and revision in Advanced Photonics but might not be a good fit there, we eliminate the second round of peer-review in APNexus to accept the manuscripts directly so as to publish the work in a timely manner. We would like to sincerely thank all the authors who have contributed papers to this new journal and all our editorial board members and reviewers for their great support.

The SPIE–CLP Conference on Advanced Photonics 2022 (AP 2022) was held successfully in a hybrid mode 21–23 November, 2022. We were delighted to see over 1000 representatives in the field of optics and photonics gathered to share their latest research progress. An inaugural in-person event was collocated with SPIE Optics + Photonics in San Diego, 22–23 August 2023.

Along with Advanced Photonics, APNexus will continue to make high impact articles freely available to the research community. We welcome your thoughts and suggestions on how we can further improve the journals to meet the needs of our authors, readers, and reviewers.