Neuroscience-based Nomenclature (NbN) for Journal of Psychopharmacology.

As of May 2016, the Journal of Psychopharmacology will fully adopt Neuroscience-based Nomenclature (NbN) for all publications and correspondence. In this, we join many other leading journals in our field, including European Neuropsychopharmacology, Biological Psychiatry, CNS Spectrums, European Psychiatry, International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, Neuropsychopharmacology, Pharmacopsychiatry, World Journal of Biological Psychiatry and others that will also recommend the use of NbN. This decision has been ratified by the British Association for Psychopharmacology (BAP) council. For the Journal of Psychopharmacology and the BAP, this step marks the output of a process that we have been involved in developing with the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP). Part of the impetus to this initiative came from an editorial in Journal of Psychopharmacology back in 2009 (Nutt, 2009). Most of the vital background data collecting and organisation of the knowledge base has been done by a BAP member, Dr Sue Wilson. Under the leadership of the ECNP in 2008, a taskforce for psychotropic nomenclature composed of representatives from five international organisations: the ECNP, American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Asian College of Neuropsychopharmacology, International College of Neuropsychopharmacology and International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology. The group tasked itself ‘to examine ways of improving the current nomenclature in psychopharmacology’. Specifically, the new nomenclature was to (a) be based on contemporary scientific knowledge, (b) help clinicians to make informed choices when working out the next ‘pharmacological step’, (c) provide a system that does not conflict with the use of medications and (d) be future proof to accommodate new types of compounds. An initial proposal (Zohar et al., 2014) was discussed in the scientific community and accordingly revised (Zohar et al., 2015). It is this revised system that Journal of Psychopharmacology will use. NbN is a pharmacologically driven system. In this, it is scientifically precise and extensible: new drug targets or modes of action can be easily added to the system once accepted by the scientific community. It is fairly comprehensive: at the present time, it includes 108 compounds which span the great majority of what is currently used in the practice of psychopharmacology. However, this very precision requires of authors and readers to adjust some well-worn habits: for example, use of the terms ‘second-generation’ or ‘atypical antipsychotic’, or even more so a group reference such as ‘anxiolytics’ referring to a group of substances with quite heterogeneous receptor targets and mode of action. From an editor’s point of view, we realize that this will pose some additional challenges for our authors, but we believe that readers and ultimately the field will benefit greatly – first, by the self-imposed terminology precision itself, and second, by sometimes making it clear where gaps in our knowledge still exist, especially when the modes of action of drugs with relationship to our evolving understanding of the neurobiology of mental illness are concerned (Millan et al., 2015). Using NbN will require authors to clarify their meaning when they use a term for a drug. To ease the transition, Journal of Psychopharmacology will adopt NbN in stages: the first, effective as of May 2016, requires authors to define their usage, in the paper, of a term such as ‘antipsychotics’ using NbN at the point that it first appears in the main text of the paper. Furthermore, to make all new papers searchable by NbN, the NbN nomenclature of the substances that the paper covers has to be added to the keywords of the paper. To this end, we are dropping our previous limitation (of five) for keywords and have added a specific subcategory NbN to the keyword finder. The new keywords include 11 pharmacological domains and 10 modes of action which are the building stones of NbN. It will make this process easier for authors and readers searching for one of our publications. How does NbN work in practice? To ‘translate’ between old and new nomenclature, the easiest and recommended way is to use the approved app, which is available on the project’s website (http://nbnomenclature.org/), as well as in the software repositories of the various platforms for which it is available. On this website, there is a special tag – For Authors. A link to these resources is also now included in our Instructions For Authors. The NbN effort is still in its infancy. Some necessary steps, such as the inclusion of paediatric psychopharmacology and neuropharmacology in domains such as epilepsy are already being Neuroscience-based Nomenclature (NbN) for Journal of Psychopharmacology