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Not only for the creators of the Archives of Budo project, the year 2024 is a special anniversary – unfortunately Dr. Waldemar Sikorski (1937-2022) did not live to see it. It is, after all, with the creative support of Web of Science (WoS) visionaries that we have been building together since 2005, a positive image and a humanistic perspective on the practice of hand-to-hand combat.
Twenty years ago, the first volume published with only five works, and the growth in the following four years was not impressive either: 10-; 15-; 22-; 25 articles. In 2010, Archives of Budo was recognized by WoS with an immediate 5-Impact Factor (2005-2009) and the first 2-IF. Soon judo issues dominated the submitted manuscripts, and the response from the Editorial Board was the creation of the branch journal Archives of Budo Science of Martial Arts and Extreme Sports (first edition 2013). When the Emerging Sources Citation Index began its mission, this branch journal was among the earliest to be evaluated. This is at the same time an important expression of acceptance in the global science space of the new sub-discipline science of martial arts.
Unfortunately, for several years, the pathologies of bloody spectacles (modern gladiatorialism) have been camouflaged under the attractive name of ‘martial arts’. Thus, in the situation of the accepted sub-discipline science of martial arts one has to reckon with the temptations to manipulate the authority of science to justify the expansion of this pathology. Emperor Constantine the Great banned this pathology with an edict in 326 but the procedure to banish gladiatorial games, took more than 350 years – until 681. It is doubtful that modern gladiatorialism, and for that matter in increasingly drastic forms, will ever disappear from the Internet and from the electronic media space.
But is it just a Pyrrhic victory – promoting since 2005 in the field of science the health, humanistic and ethical values of many exercises and hand-to-hand fighting systems but also utilitarian in the most positive sense, such as derived from the practice of combat sports of the safe fall techniques, gentle forms of self-defence, etc. On the contrary, it is certainly a scientific success, and in a sense a cultural one as well, since it's probably hard to find a more vivid indicator of global public health.
Man en bloc mentally has not changed for thousands of years, since the acceptable attraction is to massacre each other in cages. The second indicator compromises the social elite to no lesser degree, but understanding it requires a bit of subtle thought – the absence in the media, if only for the sake of apparent symmetry, of scientific debate about this phenomenon. Not surprisingly, MMA promoters would be helpless, not least because among the most influential are the media authorities. In such a debate, it is impossible to miss an elementary resolution – to point out even one benefit of this legalized pathology (marketing criteria aside): either health, educational or ethical. When utilitarian benefits are indicated, it is difficult to imagine arguing that the motor patterns of neo-gladiators massacring each other in cages to respect the highest standards of necessary defense under the law. Moreover, since the word ‘arts’, is in the name, what aesthetic value to attribute to these bloody spectacles – the most rhetorical question of all.
The absence of even one such debate, capable of being widely reproduced without restriction, is precisely the perverse proof of the success of science. This gap in the public space has been filled for 20 years by the Archives of Budo. After consultation with WoS Clarivate jubilee volume 20 (under the same eISSN) is supplemented with a subtitle that does not imply a change in the mission of the journal and the subject of scientific exploration, but makes the message more precise – Archives of Budo: Journal of Innovative Agonology.
Reason for separation of publishers of Archives of Budo: Journal of Innovative Agonology and the current branch journal Archives of Budo Science of Martial Arts and Extreme Sports was explained in the latest editorial – The only reason for the separation of the publishers of the two scientific journals with the partially shared name 'Archives of Budo’ (Arch Budo Sci Mart Art Extreme Sport 2023; 19: 247-253). A synthetic explanation, although mostly implicite, is the content of the above paragraphs.
My author's view on the relationship between BUDO and INNOAGON (acronym Innovative Agonology) is contained in the first article of the anniversary volume. The authors of the first publications of this volume are researchers who have already promoted this new applied science and are leaders in fulfilling the scientific and social mission of the Archives of Budo. Important confirmations of their methodological competence are the papers included in AHFE publications – Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (2023, 2024), as well as oral presentations during AHFE conference sessions dedicated for the second year just to this science.
Before the platform of the new publisher Archives of Budo: Journal of Innovative Agonology is installed, potential authors are asked to contact the deputy editor-in-chief (habilitated doctor Artur Kruszewski, mail: artur.kruszewski@archbudo.eu). Authors of manuscripts already submitted to the Archives of Budo platform have two options: withdraw the manuscript and send it to the address indicated above; determine with Editor Bartłomiej Barczyński whether the manuscript can be processed in the journal Archives of Budo Science of Martial Arts and Extreme Sports. For the same reason, please direct inquiries regarding Authors Fees to Editor-in-Chief (email: roman.kalina@archbudo.eu).
Editor-in-Chief
Roman Maciej Kalina