Editorial

Archives of Behavioral Addictions: A new journal for a new era

Author

E. Sacchetti, S. Pallanti, H. Bowden-Jones

 

Whenever a new scientific journal is launched, it is common for potential new readers and contributors to wonder on the need for such a publication.

We feel that the recent and growing interest in the area of behavioural addictions has led to an increased need for more articles than the currently available ones and look forward to providing our international colleagues with the opportunity of expanding their knowledge further in this area. The annual citations extracted from the National Library of Medicines PubMed online search engine using the key words gambling, gaming, and internet addiction are fully representative of this growth trend (figure).The results relative to the first 10 months of 2018 confirm this trend. The availability of internet access has contributed to the diversity of compulsive behaviours that people may indulge in from the privacy of their homes.

Topics that are currently drawing interest in the field are linked to the wish for validated therapies that are effective with these excessive behaviours. There is also a need for a more in depth understanding of individual markers of vulnerability for these disorders be it from a biological, social or psychological angle.

The public health perspective is an area gaining more followers in the field of behavioural addictions and we intend to cover a significant amount of material particularly when looking at prevention at population level.

The impact of these diseases on family members, the genetics of the presentations, the speed and nature of the evolution from risk to pathological are also areas of research we will be seeking to publish.

 

As far as the salient characteristic of the journal, ABA intends to be a dedicated,   multidisciplinary journal and thus it will be opened to contributions from all professionals working with or researching behavioral addictions. ABA will report full and short experimental articles, reviews, meta-analyses, consensus papers, guidelines and letters to the Editors. We also decided to introduce an innovative “Visual Communication” section, which consists of an image with a brief explanatory caption, and a “Poster for young researchers” section in order to facilitate the young researchers involvement in the behavioral addictions scientific community. In the meantime, however, the journal will also pursue three objectives. The first intends to capture the opinions of the health care professionals on specific aspects of behavioral addictions: to this aim, the readers will be solicited to complete ad hoc questionnaires included in a supplementary section, the data will be stored in a database waiting the completion of the predetermined sample size and then will be analyzed in detail by a steering committee that will have the responsibility to submit the final report to ABA for publication. The second will be represented by the introduction of a special forum in which patients and their families will give voice to their opinion about behavioral addictions. The third policy pursued to stimulate contributions of young researchers, will consist in a special discount on publication fees reserved to authors under 30.

Only the direct experience of future readers and contributors will be able to determine whether and to what degree ABA comes up to these promises.

The Editors

Emilio Sacchetti, Brescia – Stefano Pallanti, Stanford – Henrietta Bowden-Jones, London

Doi

https://doi.org/10.30435/ABA.01.2019.01

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