Editorial: The growth of the journal of early and intensive behavioral intervention.

Abstract

The Journal of and Intensive Behavioral Intervention continues to grow. Currently, we have over 40 manuscripts still in the review process for this year issues and every day brings one or two more. The sheer number of manuscripts has been both blessing and curse. It has been a blessing in showing that online journals have come of age. When I began online publishing of psychological journals, the American Psychological Association was in the middle of its failed experiment to bring psychological journals online. APA eventually abandoned its journal, and Treatment, after three years. The editor called the experiment a failure and reported that the journal was over $100,000 in debt. The reason their attempt failed was that authors were concerned that online publications were new and not very well accepted. Concern existed that such journals would not be highly ranked or would not positively effect tenure and merit pay evaluations. Time has proved these concerns to be without merit. As to the curse aspects of online publishing, moving such large numbers of manuscripts has overwhelmed our small editorial board. For the last issue, we placed a call for guest reviewers and we received about 12 people who wished to join the team. Many highly respected professionals in the field honored us with coming on board as permanent editorial board members. However, we still need more help, so I would like to extend that call in this issue. If you would like to be a guest reviewer or join the review board for the journal, please contact me directly at jcautilli2003@yahoo.com. Additionally, we are proud to announce that David Richman has agreed to become an associate editor for the journal. Dave is already hard at work on getting out a special issue this December on prevention. It should be noted that we will be publishing four issues this year. The Journal of and Intensive Behavioral Intervention had originally planned to only do three issues this year (and this was an expansion from our original commitment of two issues a year), but given the large number of high quality articles that we have received (over 100 this year), the editorial team decided to publish four issues. So this will be a bonus issue for our valued readers. The current issue is loaded with high quality and very interesting articles. We start off with an article on a three tiered model of evaluating children. Many of our U.S. readers know that the federal government has proposed that before children are diagnosed with a learning disability, they are tried on a researched based form of reading instruction that has empirical support. The article by Stewart, Martella, Marchand-Martella, and Benner suggest a three tier model to meet the regulations. Their model proposes an integration of behavioral interventions with reading interventions to help children not be left behind. In addition, the model points out a gating process from less restrictive to more restrictive interventions. Along the lines of meeting federal regulations, the new Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act is calling for greater use of positive behavioral support. Tobin and Sugia's Preventing Problem Behaviors: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Level Prevention Interventions for Young Children look at the response of kindergarten and first grade children with internalizing and externalizing disorders to positive behavioral support programs. I believe that this article represents an excellent method of evaluating such school wide programs. Moving from system support to early identification and treatment, Manno, Fox, Eicher and Kerwin, in an article titled Early Oral-Motor Interventions for Pediatric Feeding Problems: What, When and How, explore oral motor problems. …