In 2017 I was approached by the ad hoc search committee of ESMRMB charged with finding a replacement for Patrick Cozzone as Editor in Chief of MAGMA. I felt very honoured to be considered for this position, and after some consideration with regard to my workload, I decided to apply. After many years of interviewing candidates for positions at every level in academic life, it was a strange experience for me to be interviewed as a candidate by the search committee. Fortunately, I was able to convince them of my enthusiasm and qualifications, and was very happy and honoured to be invited to take over as Editor in Chief starting January 2018. My appointment was confirmed by ESMRMB at the annual meeting in Barcelona, and since 1st November 2017, I have been acting as Editor in Chief, supported where necessary by Patrick and his very capable editorial assistant Marguerite Izquierdo. Having served my short apprenticeship, I now feel comfortable with taking full responsibility for editing MAGMA.

My first statement as Editor in Chief has to be one of thanks to Patrick for his great work as my predecessor. Under his leadership, MAGMA has established itself as a quality journal which offers a high standard of service to its readership and authors. Indeed, he has built up the journal so successfully that all the issues for 2018 are already filled with accepted papers! Of course, in an age of electronic publishing, new articles will still be published in advance online, once they have gone through the production process. This solid position gives me a very comfortable start in life, and I intend to use it to further modernise and streamline the journal, while building on Patrick’s good work. One of his most successful innovations were the special issues of MAGMA, for which it is justly well known, and I am happy to announce that the first issue of 2019 will be a special issue entitled Fluorine-19 Magnetic Resonance: Technical Solutions, Research Promises and Frontier Applications. I am also happy to announce that the journal will be published in electronic form only starting in 2018.

The highest priority for a scientific journal is that its publications make a positive contribution to the advancement of science. For a specialist journal like MAGMA, this means that we will serve the entire breadth of activity within the MR community, including areas that may be considered by some as niche. It also means that relevant negative results and replications of other work are also deserving of publication, measured against the same criteria for acceptance as all other articles. It is the responsibility of the journal to bring its articles to the attention of the broadest possible readership, and I intend to explore a range of avenues for improving the dissemination of MAGMA. In particular, articles that are assessed as excellent by the referees will receive some measure of special attention.

The bread-and-butter work of an editor is to ensure that all submitted articles receive expert, courteous, and timely reviews, and that editorial decisions are consistent and transparent. In the articles that I have handled to date, I have been happily impressed with the support that I have received from both Springer and members of the Editorial Board, and also with the willingness to promptly referee for the journal. This, for me, is solid evidence of the good standing of MAGMA within our community, and makes me very optimistic for the future of the journal.

MAGMA is the journal of ESMRMB, and while we are truly international in our authors and referees, I hope that we can exploit synergies between the Journal and the Society to the mutual benefit of both. I am currently looking at ways in which MAGMA can play a positive role in reporting some of the most successful features of ESMRMB, including the hot-topic debates and round-table discussions at the annual meeting, and the excellent teaching offered by the Society.

I very much look forward to working with the entire MR community on the continuing success of the journal and hope that together in the coming years we can showcase the best of magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy.

David Norris, Nijmegen, December 2017.