MRM Letter from the Editor: July 2026

Dear Magnetic Resonance in Medicine Subscribers,

At this time of the year journals receive their dreaded 2-year Impact Factor from Clarivate. These are much vaunted numbers by the journals, and tend to be what some agencies focus on when assessing the ‘importance’ of a journal. Others regard them with suspicion and feel that agencies should judge the impact of individual papers rather than the impact of a particular journal. Magn Reson Med has received its latest number, which is slightly up on last year (now 3.2 rather than 3.0), but probably masks the true impact that papers published in this journal have had (for example, in 2025 Magn Reson Med had one of the highest numbers of overall citations to papers published across all years, indicating that these papers can take some time to be picked up, but then make a significant impact in the field.

To help recognize this disparity, Diego Hernando (one of Magn Reson Med’s Deputy Editors) proposed an initiative to examine the ‘true’ impact of the Society’s journals. The ‘ISMRM Impact Group’ was formed in 2025, to highlight the clinical impact of research done by the ISMRM community and published in the Society’s journals. This past spring, the Impact Group produced its first article, which focused on parallel imaging acceleration (much of whose developments have been published in the Society’s journals) and is available through the ISMRM website and the MRM Highlights Magazine. Starting this summer, the group will reunite to brainstorm ideas for one or two additional articles to develop this year. They are looking for volunteers to contribute their ideas and help write these articles. They would particularly like to include volunteers from diverse areas of MR research that are underrepresented in the current group (e.g.: contrast mechanisms, MR safety, hardware, etc.). If you are interested in joining the group, please reach out to Diego Hernando (dhernando@wisc.edu).

Best wishes,

Peter Jezzard, PhD

HEADLINES

According to the relevant ISI Web of Knowledge™ and Journal Citation Reports® statistics, Magn Reson Med’s 2025 2-year impact factor (released mid-2026) was 2.
The newest virtual issue of MRM Highlights is now online! There are several articles about MRI in Africa, along with interviews with the 2025/26 ISMRM and ISMRT presidents, and features on all the YIA finalists (see below for the winners).
The International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine announced the winners of the competition for the 2026 Young Investigator Awards held in Cape Town, South Africa Congratulations toI. Rabi Award winner Saurin Kantesaria, Ph.D., University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN, USA for the Magn Reson Med article, Designing B1-Selective Pulses by Frequency Modulating in a Second Rotating Frame.
- More information on the awards and runners-up can be found here.
Don’t forget to keep checking Study Group Virtual Special Issues that can be found at the journal homepage. Most ISMRM Study Groups have created Virtual Special Issues, with the aim of summarising the latest research in these topic areas. The idea is to update these at least annually to ensure that they remain “living documents” and hopefully will be a valuable resource to Study Group members. We have recently added or updated ones from the Ultra High Field Study Group; the Pulmonary MR Study Group; the Quantitative MR Study Group; the Placental and Fetal MRI Study Group; the MR in Radiation Therapy Study Group; the Motion Detection and Correction Study Group; the MR Elastography Study Group; and ones that are imminent from the Diffusion MR Study Group and the CEST MR Study Group!
In partnership with the Reproducible Research Study Group (RRSG) we offer authors the option of a Code Review of any code they provide in a Data Availability Statement. If authors request it in their cover letter, the RRSG will download the code and check that it installs and can be run. For details see here and an editorial on the experiences of the first year of its use here.

JULY ISSUE

Attached you will find, in PDF format, the Magnetic Resonance in Medicine Table of Contents (TOC) for the Volume 96, Number 1, July 2026 issue. Additionally, clicking on a title in the attached PDF will take you directly to its abstract. To view the entire article, please use either your log-in information for the Wiley website or your institutional access. Note that many papers in Magnetic Resonance in Medicine are published as Open Access articles and can be freely downloaded by anyone.

July’s Cover Art: This month’s cover art is from:

Chemical Shift Separated and Compensated Ultra-Short Echo-Time Imaging, by Martin Krämer, Lumeng Cui, Jürgen R. Reichenbach, Stefan Sommer

July’s Editor’s Picks: Each month, we highlight articles from the current issue that might be of particular interest to our readers. The articles will be available online to anyone for a period of two years, regardless of their subscription status. This month’s selections are:

FEATURES

*The MRM Highlights Magazine, Volume 11, is available online!

YIA submissions for the 2027 ISMRM Annual Meeting in Vancouver, BC, Canada

The International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine announces the competition for the Young Investigator Awards for the ISMRM & ISMRT Annual Meeting & Exhibition, in Vancouver, BC, Canada, 08-13 May 2027. The deadline to submit a manuscript for the competition is 11 September 2026. For more information about the YIA competition, please visit here.

Full Issue PDFs

Full Issue PDFs are now available for download. Please follow the link available at the journal home page. You will be prompted for your ISMRM login information.

LINKS OF INTEREST

July Articles
Early View
ISMRM Journal Page
Journal Home Page
Highlights Page