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.

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.

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

To read more of Sameer Hinduja, Ph.D.'s article, please click here.