Tobaccology 20 years: past, present and future| Tabaccologia

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Yes, it’s true. As already well described by Giacomo Mangiaracina, former Editor in Chief of the magazine from 2002 to 2020, in his previous editorial [1], Tobaccology was born 20 years ago thanks to the optimism and enthusiasm that led the Board of Directors of the Italian Society of Tobaccology (SITAB) to self-tax, in the absence of sponsors, to give birth to Tobaccology, giving me a mandate to continue in the project that among a thousand vicissitudes and many satisfactions we have carried out until today.

Although with the globalisation of information technology that was also advancing in the way of scientific publishing, one might not feel the need for a new scientific journal, various considerations led me to put forward the proposal for a scientific journal of training and information on tobacco, smoking and smoking-related diseases, which was enthusiastically embraced by the entire Board of Directors.

The problem was the challenge we were facing, and that had been the motive that had led us to found SITAB in 1999, as a society not of organic pathology, but of a transversal etiological agent such as tobacco.

We felt the need in the country for a scientific and educational body that would fill the cultural void that was present at the academic level, and medical except for a few rare exceptions, and that would give voice, encouraging it, to Italian research in the tobacco domain. I struggled so that the magazine was born not only to deal with smoking cessation, but also with the tobacco problem of which smoking is an important but not sufficient part to understand and contrast this devastating phenomenon represented by what the WHO calls “Tobacco Epidemic” but that we think is more correct because it is more realistic to talk about Tobacco Pandemic, given the widespread use of tobacco in the world [2].

I led a personal battle on the term “tobaccology” that someone had criticized when, already 3 years before, we had named the blossoming Society as the Italian Society of Tobaccology as if this neologism had been invented by “four mates having a drink at the bar”. In fact, for us this neologism, composed of “tobacco” and “logos”, which represented the right term able to define the science that gravitates around tobacco, from botany to agronomy, from the processing technique to consumption, from the economy to smoking-related diseases up to litigation. Meanwhile, the French “tabaccologie” appeared for the first time in France in 1986 when the Societé de Tabacologie was founded. Its president, Prof. Robert Molimard, testified to us as follows: “When we founded the first scientific society in 1983, to promote research on the phenomenon that seemed to us the most important at the time, that of tobacco addiction, we called it the Society for the Study of Tobacco Use Addiction. We realised then that the title was reductive and too long, so a few years later we changed it to Societé de Tabacologie. This term did not exist before in France as well as in Italy or other parts of the planet. However, we considered that the term, as a neologism, was correct on the lexical level, in the same way as most medical disciplines. Certainly, it is not possible, for obvious reasons, to find a term in ancient Greek to designate tobacco, but this word has become universal to such an extent that it is not clear why it should be claimed to descend from ancient Greek language! Nevertheless, it seems that the term tobacco is not so new, indeed it seems to come from afar (as per research by dr. Vincenzo Zagà in the Archiginnasio Library of Bologna), having been employed already in the seventeenth century by Johann Neander in 1626. It is fortunate for science that this word has been found and accepted by the Italian Society of Tobaccology (SITAB)” (Figure 1).

In fact, the volume cited by Professor Molimard, written by Johann Neander and published in 1626, is the first in the world to feature the word “tabacologia” (in Latin) in the title. I remember that it was an exciting moment when in 2001 I found, almost by chance, the title of this book in the Library of the Archiginnasio in Bologna (Italy). The emotion was even greater when the librarian of the National Library of Rome, where one of the few originals in the world was kept, brought it to me to view it and then digitize it. We hope to be able to send it to print, shortly, in the double Latin and Italian version. Therefore, the journal Tobaccology was born just three years after SITAB foundation of which it became the official scientific journal. In the autumn of 2003, invited to Paris by Professor Molimard for the 20th anniversary of the Societè Française de Tabacologie (Figure 2), I received admiration and astonishment from our Transalpine colleagues, that such a young scientific society already had such an interesting and attractive scientific journal, something they themselves lacked after 20 years of life.

In these 20 years, the journal has undergone various changes dictated by the economic crisis that hit various sectors, due also to the galloping digitisation. Therefore, after 13 years from the four colours we have moved to the two colours with the Midia publishing house and then with Sintex Servizi that from 2021 has brought Tobaccology exclusively online and usable in open access (). Given the growing positive reception that Tobaccology collected at national and international level, in addition to indexing the journal on Google Scholar, in 2009 we applied for indexing on PubMed collecting a score of 2.5 out of a maximum score of 5.

Not bad for a magazine born a few years earlier. Even if we did not reach the score useful for indexing, we were given valuable advice that we gradually put into practice. Therefore, also strengthened by the now almost total bilingualism of the magazine, for the 20 years, with the new director, Silvano Gallus of the Mario Negri IRCSS Pharmacological Research Institute and M. Sofia Cattaruzza, Scientific Director and current SITAB President, we will forward a new request for indexing on PubMed, a request accompanied by sponsors such as Michael C. Fiore, Jeffrey Wigand, Ivana Croghan, María Paz Corvalán, Esteve Fernandez, Jean Perriot, M. Underner, Girolamo Sirchia and Silvio Garattini. A small international “parterre de Rois”.

Not bad for a magazine born a few years earlier. Even if we did not reach the score useful for indexing, we were given valuable advice that we gradually put into practice. Therefore, also strengthened by the now almost total bilingualism of the magazine, thanks to effective editorial collaborators such as Daniel L. Amram, Alessandra Lugo, Martina Antinozzi, Carlotta M. Jarach, Chiara Stival, Irene Possenti and Marco Scala, for the 20 years, with the new director Silvano Gallus of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research, who succeeded Giacomo Mangiaracina in 2021, and Maria Sofia Cattaruzza, Scientific Director and current President of SITAB, who took over the baton from prof. Gaetano M. Fara, we will forward a new request for indexing on PubMed.

I wish to end with the flattering words of esteem that M.C. Fiore addressed to us in the letter sent to Donald Lindberg, then Director of PubMed: “As an Italian-American medical scientist, I showed a particular interest in this publication and found it informative, scientific, balanced and independent. It has become a fundamental resource for the Italian research community on tobacco control and beyond... Foreign journals of this stature are sometimes overlooked in terms of indexing; but I believe Tobaccology plays a vital role that would be strengthened if it were included in the list of indexed journals for Medline”.

Figures and tables

Figure 1.Title page of the volume Tabacologia: hoc est tabaci, seu nicotianae descriptio medico-cheiurgico-pharmaceutica vel ejus praeparatio et usus in omnibus fermè corporis humani incomovis by Johann Neander (1626).

Figure 2.Vincenzo Zagà and Robert Molimard (Paris, 2003).

References

1. Mangiaracina G. Tabaccologia: i miei primi 20 anni. Tabaccologia. 2022; XX(3):3-5.
2. Zagà V, Gorini G, Amram DL, Gallus S, Cattaruzza MS. Epidemia o pandemia da tabacco. Tabaccologia. 2020; XVIII(4):3-4.