The scientific and technical "Optical Journal" (until 1992 - "Optical and Mechanical Industry") was created on the initiative of Academician D.S. Rozhdestvensky, an outstanding physicist, founder and first director of the State Optical Institute (GOI), and I.A. Uvarov, director of the All-Union Association of Optical and Mechanical Industry, approved by the executive editor of the new journal. The first issue of the journal was published in August 1931.

The appearance of such a publication was the result of intensive development of  domestic industry and, in particular, its optical industry at the turn of the 20-30s.. The rapidly expanding front of work on optical instrumentation, technology and optical materials, the need for a wide exchange of research and development results required the creation of a journal covering almost all of the above areas. An important role in its organization and formation was played by the employees of the GOI. S.I. Vavilov, primarily academicians V.P. Linnik, A.A. Lebedev, I.V. Grebenshchikov, A.N. Terenin and many others, who simultaneously became active authors of the new journal. For more than 90 years, the  journal has been the country's leading print organ on applied optics.

Since 1966, the journal has been translated into English by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and published by the Optical Society of America (OSA - now OPTICA Publishing Group) under the name "Journal of Optical Technology," which allows the world scientific community to get acquainted with the achievements of Russia and other states in the field of optics and optotechnics.

Every year, “Optical Journal” publishes more than 120 articles authored by the scientists and engineers from Russia, as well as countries near and far abroad. The topics of the  journal have gradually became wider and more diverse, going far beyond the tasks of the initial period. Now  it contains, along with traditional areas - physical and computational optics, optical instrumentation, materials, technology, etc., more and more attention is paid to relatively new relevant scientific areas, such as icons, holography, nonlinear optics and laser optics, adaptive optics, nanooptics, biomedical optics. The results of studies of a mixed interdisciplinary nature are published in the journal depending on the volume and significance of the optical aspects of these studies. Every year, several issues of the  journal are devoted to certain topics or activities of any optical industry enterprise.

 “Optical Journal” is the monthly peer-reviewed publication;  since 01.12.2015  it is allowed by the Higher Attestation Commission to publish the main results of dissertations as the publication included in the international abstract databases of citation systems (WoS, Scopus).