Going down dangerous paths? (An editorial)

At the end of my 6-year tenure as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE/OSA Journal of lightwave technology, I would like to take the opportunity to not only reflect on this very special journal that has served our photonics community for the past 35 years, but more generally on the state and evolution of global research and publication policies, as seen from both the viewpoint of an Editor and of an actively publishing industrial researcher. I will touch on a few rather worrisome trends leading our community down some dangerous paths, and I encourage you, irrespective of how you may view these issues yourself, to broadly engage in related discussions and to actively shape the future of our scientific community and its invaluable allvolunteer-based peer-review publication processes.