EIC Remarks for a Special 20th Anniversary Issue of MRMS

Magnetic Resonance in Medical Sciences (MRMS), the official journal of the Japanese Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (JSMRM), has reached the milestone of Vol. 20. To celebrate the occasion, we have invited a group of researchers who have made certain outstanding contributions over the years to write a review article for this special 20th anniversary issue. We sincerely thank the authors for their contributions and believe that you will find the reviews informative as they contain a lot about the recent state of the art. For the 20th anniversary, I would like to present here a short history of the journal and talk about some of the major contributors to MRMS over the years. MRMSwas first published in 2002 under the leadership of Professor Kazuro Sugimura, the 1st Editor-in-Chief (EIC). His mission was to create an internationally recognized journal published by JSMRM for all active MR scientists and engineers. At first, MRMS was unfamiliar to people in the field of MR, but under the 2nd EIC, Dr. TsuneyaWatabe, the editorial committee endeavored to raise the profile of the journal. Happily, the number of submissions has gradually increased over time. At about the time Dr. Shigeki Aoki was selected as the 3rd EIC, MRMS succeeded in acquiring an Impact Factor (IF), and from that time, the number of submissions has significantly increased. Although there have been some fluctuations, the IF has been on an upward trend with the most recent value, announced in June 2021, being 2.471 (Fig. 1). We are extremely grateful for the contributions of both the authors who submit important research and the reviewers who volunteer their time to review and comment on those submissions. From here, I would like to introduce some of the major contributions.