IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Magazine

About IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Magazine

Overview

The IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Magazine is the quarterly member magazine of the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society (IEEE EMC Society, EMCS), published by IEEE in the United States. It is the society's flagship practitioner publication: a magazine written for working EMC engineers, compliance and test engineers, standards developers, researchers, and students — not a peer-reviewed archival research journal.

Every issue blends hands-on technical content — design tips, troubleshooting case studies, measurement and test methods, signal- and power-integrity topics — with community content: a President's Message, a Letter from the Editor, Chapter Chatter reports from EMC Society chapters around the world, an EMC Personality Profile, book reviews, and a regular "50-25-10 Years Ago" history column that mines the society's own newsletter and magazine archives.

The magazine is distributed quarterly (four issues per year, labeled by quarter, e.g. Volume 15, Issue 3 = 3rd Quarter 2026). IEEE EMC Society members receive the magazine free in both electronic and print form as a membership benefit, and the full content is archived in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

At a Glance

History: From Newsletter to Magazine

The newsletter era (1954–2011)

The magazine's lineage stretches back to the earliest days of the EMC community — before the society itself existed. In 1954, Rexford Daniels started an informal newsletter called "Quasis and Peaks" to coordinate happenings in the technical area of radio interference. When the IRE Professional Group on Radio Frequency Interference (PGRFI) was founded, it published its first official newsletter on January 2, 1958, written and edited by Milton Kant, one of the founders of the EMC Society.

Editorship then passed through long tenures: Rex Daniels edited issues #2–#53 (until 1968), Robert Goldblum edited issues #54–#173 (1968–1997), and Janet O'Neil took over from 1997 onward. The title changed repeatedly to track the society's own evolution: from "The Professional Group on Radio Frequency Interference Newsletter" (issues #1–2), through the IRE/IEEE transitions of the early 1960s, to the "IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Group Newsletter" (from August 1964), the "IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society Newsletter" (from issue #98, summer 1978), and finally the "IEEE EMC Society Newsletter" (from issue #146).

The 2012 upgrade: launch of the magazine

At the beginning of 2012, the EMC Newsletter was formally upgraded into the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Magazine. As the society's president explained at the time, the newsletter had already looked like a magazine for many years; the transition was chiefly a status upgrade: in the IEEE periodicals ranking a magazine is valued above a newsletter, and — crucially — the magazine's content would be included in the IEEE Xplore digital library and indexed in citation databases, giving the published practical papers and technical content far wider exposure. The final newsletter issue was the Fall 2011 issue (the annual symposium issue, over 100 pages); the inaugural magazine issue was Volume 1, 1st Quarter 2012.

The first magazine issue set the template that endures today: a Letter from the Editor (Janet O'Neil), a President's Message (Ghery S. Pettit), a guest-edited technical theme section — the first theme was "Transportation Systems EMC," guest-edited by Mark Steffka of General Motors, with a cover photo of a full-sized car undergoing EMC testing inside a large semi-anechoic chamber — plus Practical Papers, Articles and Application Notes, Book Reviews, Chapter Chatter, and an Education Committee column on lifelong learning. A new regular column on signal integrity (SI) by Jun Fan also began in 2012.

The magazine today

The magazine has published quarterly ever since, reaching Volume 14 in 2025 and Volume 15 in 2026 (the 3rd Quarter 2026 issue is the latest, available on IEEE Xplore). Society board records show the magazine has operated under an annual page budget of about 400 pages per year across its four issues. Since the 2nd Quarter 2017 issue, members have been able to download the complete issue as a PDF from IEEE Xplore — either the full issue or individual articles — a choice offered through quarterly email blasts from IEEE headquarters.

Editorial Leadership

Janet O'Neil was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the magazine, carrying over from her long tenure as newsletter editor (1997–2011); she led the publication through its launch and its first years, still in the role at least through 2017–2018 per society board minutes. The current Editor-in-Chief is Susanne Vogel (LUMILOOP GmbH, Dresden, Germany), announced as the new Editor-in-Chief in an IEEE Xplore notice and leading the magazine through 2025 into Volume 15 (2026). The Managing Editor is Kye Yak See, himself a frequent magazine contributor. The masthead also includes editors Gabe Alcala, Alistair Duffy, Frank Sabath, Janet O'Neil, Dan Hoolihan, Karen Burnham, Thomas Braxton, Flavia Grassi, and Patrick DeRoy.

Note: the exact year-by-year sequence of editors-in-chief between O'Neil's later years and Vogel's appointment is not published in an official source we could verify; the gap is acknowledged rather than filled.

Scope and Regular Departments

The magazine's scope is practical electromagnetic compatibility and closely related fields: EMI/EMC design and troubleshooting, emission and immunity testing, shielding, grounding, filtering, signal and power integrity, computational EM model validation, automotive and transportation EMC, medical-device EMC and wireless coexistence, railway EMC, 5G/IoT EMC, and EMC standards and measurement methods.

Each issue is built around a technical theme section (guest-edited by a recognized expert — past themes include Transportation Systems EMC, Resilience to EMI in Safety-Critical Systems, Computational EM Model Validation, IoT and the IEEE 5G Initiative, EMC Testing for Medical Devices, Architectural Shielding, and EM Immunity Testing) plus practical papers, which the society describes as the magazine's core technical offering. Recent issues typically carry three practical papers per issue.

Regular departments and columns, verified from the 2012 inaugural issue and the 2nd Quarter 2026 issue, include:

• Letter from the Editor — opening editorial
• President's Message — society leadership update
• Practical Papers / Theme Papers — the technical heart of each issue
• Articles and Application Notes — shorter technical contributions
• Chapter Chatter — news and activities from EMC Society chapters worldwide
• EMC Personality Profile — profiles of community members
• Book Review — reviews of EMC-related books
• EMC Society History / "50-25-10 Years Ago" — a retrospective column mining old newsletters and magazines (e.g., reviews of the 1954–1964 Armour Conferences on Radio Interference Reduction)
• Signal Integrity column — running since 2012
• AI/ML & EMC column — a new column launched by the society in 2026, with a dedicated associate editor
• Symposium and event reports — e.g., reports from the annual IEEE EMC + SIPI Symposium and APEMC

Selected Notable Articles

The following articles are recorded in citation databases with verified DOI prefixes (10.1109/MEMC, the magazine's DOI prefix) and are representative of the magazine's practical-technical content:

DOI verification note: the DOIs above are as listed in third-party citation records under the magazine's official 10.1109/MEMC prefix; readers should confirm any individual DOI on IEEE Xplore before citing.

Metrics and Indexing — Read With Care

Because this is a practitioner magazine and not a peer-reviewed journal, citation metrics must be interpreted cautiously:

• Indexing: the magazine's full text is archived in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library (IEEE publication number 5962381) and it is covered by Scopus (coverage 2012 onward, classified as a trade journal). It is listed in the NLM catalog (ID 101704555).
• JCR listing: when the magazine launched, the society president stated that its content would be indexed in the official Journal Citation Report — so third-party aggregators do compute citation figures for it. These figures are not peer-reviewed-journal impact factors in the usual sense and must not be presented as if the magazine were an archival journal.
• Third-party estimates (labeled, unofficial): aggregator sites report, for example, a Scopus CiteScore of about 1.2, an SJR score of about 0.242 with a Q3 ranking in its subject categories, and a Scopus h-index in the high teens to mid-20s (sources disagree: 19 vs. 26 — the discrepancy itself shows these are estimates). Another aggregator (SciJournal, 2025 metrics) lists a computed "impact factor" of 0.610 for 2025. These are third-party computations from databases, not official figures published by the IEEE EMC Society.
• Not published officially: the society does not publish an acceptance rate, an article processing charge (APC), or submission-to-decision statistics for the magazine. Magazine contributions are solicited and editorially reviewed rather than peer-reviewed through a journal submission system, so journal-style metrics simply do not apply.

The Society Behind the Magazine

The magazine is published by the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society, one of IEEE's technical societies. The society traces its own origins to 1957, when it began as the IRE Professional Group on Radio Frequency Interference; in 2027 it will celebrate its 70th anniversary. It has grown into an international professional society with dozens of chapters worldwide and a membership in the thousands, governed by a Board of Directors with vice presidents covering member services, technical services, communication services, conferences, and standards.

The society's publication family gives each outlet a distinct role. The IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility is the peer-reviewed archival journal. The IEEE Letters on Electromagnetic Compatibility Practice and Applications (L-EMCPA) publishes short peer-reviewed letters. The IEEE Journal on Multiscale and Multiphysics Computational Techniques (J-MMCT) covers computational electromagnetics. And the Magazine is the connective tissue: the quarterly publication every member receives, where practical knowledge, society business, and community history live. The society also produces a separate EMC-S Newsletter (email bulletin) and the "Hear Us Above the Noise" podcast, but the Magazine remains the flagship print-era-style periodical.

Each year the magazine devotes significant space to the society's annual IEEE International Symposium on EMC (EMC + SIPI): advance programs, best-paper candidates, symposium reports with photos, and distinguished-lecture coverage. The 2nd Quarter issues have traditionally carried the symposium special coverage (for example, the 2nd Quarter 2021 special symposium issue featured best paper candidates and the advance program). Chapter Chatter, meanwhile, functions as a global activity log — the 2025 issues, for instance, reported on chapters from Poland to Taiwan to Romania, and on events ranging from Distinguished Lectures to the EMC EUROPE conference.

A Closer Look at the Departments

Practical Papers — the technical core

The magazine's signature contribution is the practical paper: a technically substantive article written for engineers solving real problems, lighter in formalism than a Transactions paper but grounded in measurement, simulation, or design experience. Topics run the full span of EMC practice — power-bus decoupling on multilayer PCBs, selection and placement of decoupling capacitors in high-speed systems, physics-based via modeling for signal integrity, AC railway electrification from an EMC perspective, and medical-device wireless coexistence evaluation. Each year's issues are organized around guest-edited themes (past themes include Transportation Systems EMC, architectural shielding, EM immunity testing, and EMC testing for medical devices), and the society has recently added an AI/ML & EMC column to track machine learning's growing role in the field.

History and people columns

Few engineering magazines invest as much in their own history as this one. The "50-25-10 Years Ago" column systematically reviews the society's newsletter and magazine archives — for example, the 1st Quarter 2025 installment revisited the Winter 1975 newsletter (when Robert Goldblum was editor), the Winter 2000 newsletter (issue #184), and the magazine's own first decade. Related history features have included a ten-part review of the 1954–1964 Armour Conferences on Radio Interference Reduction and explainers on society lore such as the significance of "EMC-27." The EMC Personality Profile introduces active community members, while the "Completed Careers" obituaries honor departed contributors — a record of the community's human fabric that no citation database captures.

Book reviews and chapter news

Book reviews have run since the inaugural 2012 issue (the first reviews covered titles on EMC in power electronics and cable shielding). Chapter Chatter reports chapter-level activities — technical meetings, distinguished lectures, outreach events — giving the magazine a genuinely global newsroom feel: dozens of chapters on multiple continents contribute each quarter.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Magazine peer-reviewed?

No. It is a practitioner magazine, not a peer-reviewed journal. Technical contributions are editorially solicited, reviewed, and edited, but the magazine does not run a conventional anonymous peer-review process. Researchers needing peer-reviewed publication should submit to the IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility or the IEEE Letters on EMCPA.

Does it have a Journal Citation Reports impact factor?

The magazine's content is indexed in IEEE Xplore and covered by Scopus, and third-party aggregators compute citation figures for it (for example, SciJournal's database-derived figures). However, these are not official journal metrics published by the IEEE EMC Society, and because the publication is a magazine rather than a peer-reviewed journal, such figures should never be presented as a journal impact factor. The society publishes no official impact factor, acceptance rate, or APC for the magazine.

What is the difference between the Magazine and the Transactions on EMC?

The Transactions (founded 1959, bimonthly) publishes peer-reviewed archival research; the Magazine (launched 2012, quarterly) publishes practical papers, application notes, columns, and society news for working engineers. They share a publisher and a technical community, but they serve different purposes.

How can I read it?

IEEE EMC Society members receive the magazine free in print and electronic form. Full issues from the 2nd Quarter 2017 onward and individual articles are archived in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library, and each issue is produced as a digital edition.

How can I write for it?

The society welcomes practical papers, design tips, and application notes from EMC practitioners — the standing invitation dates back to the magazine's 2012 launch. The IEEE EMC Society's publications pages list the submission route for the Magazine alongside its peer-reviewed outlets.

Access and Submission

Reading: IEEE EMC Society members receive the magazine free in print and electronic form as a membership benefit. Full issues (from 2nd Quarter 2017 onward) and individual articles are available through the IEEE Xplore Digital Library, and a digital flipbook edition of each issue is produced. The society's homepage at emcs.org highlights each new quarterly issue.

Writing for the magazine: the society actively solicits practical papers, design tips, and application notes from EMC practitioners — the 2012 launch appeal for "the outcome of their practical research and design tips" remains the magazine's standing invitation. The society's publications pages list submission routes for the EMC Magazine alongside its peer-reviewed outlets (Transactions on EMC, Letters on EMCPA, and the Journal on Multiscale and Multiphysics Computational Techniques), and authors can consult the IEEE EMC Society's "ways to publish" guidance to choose the right venue.

Distinguishing the siblings: newcomers to the IEEE EMC Society's publications sometimes confuse the magazine with the IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility (ISSN 0018-9375 print / 1558-187X online, bimonthly, peer-reviewed, founded 1959). Rule of thumb: the Transactions is where archival research papers are peer-reviewed and published; the Magazine is where the community shares practical knowledge, news, and history — quarterly, readable, and written for engineers at the bench.