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Introducing the International Journal for Bullying Prevention

By: Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D.

Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida Atlantic University; Co-Director of the Cyberbullying Research Center.

As a cyberbullying scholar, I engage in research related to its identification, prevention, and response and seek to get them published in academic journals so that other scholars and practitioners (e.g., educators and mental health professionals) can become equipped with the knowledge they need to make a difference among the populations they serve. Justin and I have been doing this for almost fifteen years now, and through the process have learned that research on bullying and cyberbullying is being done across an incredible range of disciplines: child, adolescent, and school psychology; public health; social work and counselling; criminology; child and adolescent psychiatry; human resource management; sociology; anthropology; education; pediatrics; information technology; and other associated fields within social or computer science.

It is really hard to know where to submit one’s work, and I also believe that spreading research so widely and disparately contributes to gaps in knowledge because of disciplinary siloing. If I’m only seeing what is in criminology and sociology-related journals, I miss what IT scholars or those in clinical medicine are finding out about bullying and cyberbullying. In order to move the field forward and make meaningful progress in this area, I’ve always thought that there should be a journal specifically devoted to these topics.

So, after almost two years of proposals, submissions, discussions, and hard work, I am thrilled to announce the launch of the International Journal for Bullying Prevention (IJBP), to be published by Springer. Publishers are extremely hesitant to create new topical journals because of fear of cannibalization from their other journals. However, they realized the tremendous gap that exists among other journals where issues related to bullying prevention are not given a specific focus in scholarship.

IJBP will provide an interdisciplinary scholarly forum in which to publish current research on the causes, forms, and multiple contexts of bullying and cyberbullying, as well as evolving best practices in identification, prevention, and intervention. The journal welcomes empirical, theoretical and review papers on a large variety of issues, populations, and domains. Since everyone is wanting to know what to do and what not to do, we also require authors to include meaningful relevant discussion on policy and actionable practice in schools, universities, communities, the workplace, and/or online.

To provide a little more specificity, we expect to receive papers on the following topics:

  • Identification of important correlates, predictors, and outcome variables specific to bullying and cyberbullying
  • Effective school- and community-based youth bullying prevention and interventions
  • Effective workplace-based bullying prevention and interventions
  • Effective cyberbullying prevention and interventions
  • Methods for measuring key constructs in bullying prevention for use as prescriptive, descriptive, or outcome variables
  • Evaluation of mediators and moderators of response to prevention and intervention methods
  • Evaluation of outcomes of bullying prevention policy and programming
  • Development and early evaluation of bullying interventions and preventions and treatment strategies
  • Evaluation of web-based or app-specific cognitive and behavioral interventions to reduce bullying and cyberbullying
  • Cross-cultural comparative research on aggressors, targets, and interventions
  • Meta-analyses focused on relevant causes, correlates, and outcomes
  • Dissemination, training, and fidelity issues in bullying prevention, interventions, and treatment techniques
  • Reviews of these topics that summarize and coalesce findings to inform next steps in research and practice

There continues to be a growing amount of interest in the public sphere for strategies and solutions, and a growing number of professionals who care deeply about helping those who are bullied and cyberbullied. As we feature quality research and its implications for policy and programming in schools, communities, workplaces, and online, we hope to significantly move the needle forward in this field.

The journal will be the official scholarly publication for the International Bullying Prevention Association (IBPA), the premier global membership organization dedicated to advancing bullying prevention best practices. Members of the IBPA will receive access to the journal as part of their IBPA membership. As Co-Founders, myself and my colleague Dr. James O’Higgins Norman will serve as Editors-in-Chief as we get the journal off the ground with our first issue slated for March 2019. It will be published four times a year with 5-6 articles in each issue.

We would love for you to consider IJBP as your “go-to” outlet for papers you write in any of the aforementioned areas. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out. Honestly, we believe that this is part of our legacy and will serve as a significant contribution to the field, outliving us and affecting for generations to come the way we promote civility, kindness, tolerance, and peer respect in all interpersonal interactions.

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