History

Our History

Actas Españolas de Psiquiatría was founded after the Civil War, in 1940, by Juan José López Ibor (1906-1991) when he was living in Madrid after finishing his training in France and Germany. The following year, the Journal changed its name to Actas Españolas de Psiquiatría y Neurología, as, at the time, psychiatry and neurology were closely linked. Indeed, López Ibor and his school have always considered these areas related fields. In 1944, he went into exile and lost some of his privileges, including the right to direct doctoral theses or edit publications. As a result, the Journal became international and was known as Actas Luso-Españolas de Psiquiatría y Neurología, directed by Prof. Henrique J. Barahona Fernandes, then a professor at the University of Lisbon. A few years later, Jose Leme Lopes, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Rio de Janeiro, joined the Board of the Journal. At the beginning of the 1970s, coinciding with the birth of neuroscience, the Journal again changed its name by adding "y ciencias afines" (and related sciences) in order to complement psychiatry and neurology with ideas from associated disciplines. In 1979, Professor Juan José López-Ibor Aliño joined the editorial board of the journal and held the position until his passing in January 2015. That same year, his daughter, Professor María Inés López-Ibor, took over the reins of the journal.

In 1998, for a series of reasons, the Journal regained its original name. On the one hand, the number of neurology (and related sciences) journals had increased, as had the number of publications in Portuguese. Most of the Journal's readers are Spanish-speaking. It was also decided that original articles would be published in parallel in English. In 2010, the Fundación Juan José López-Ibor took over the running of the Journal in order to maintain the continuity that until then had been threatened by editorial differences. 

Since its beginnings, Actas Españolas de Psiquiatría has garnered attention from the academic community in Spain and Europe. With its internationalization, the journal's influence has gradually expanded to Asia and other regions, attracting increasing submissions from international scholars and further diversifying its author base and academic reach. Simultaneously, the editorial board continues to promote internationalization, actively recruiting outstanding scholars from Asia since 2023 to expand its global academic collaboration network. To further facilitate exchange and cooperation with regions outside Spain and to better support international authors and editorial board members, the journal established a representative office in China in August 2026. The representative office is dedicated to supporting international communication, promoting the visibility of the Journal, and providing assistance to authors and readers. All editorial decisions, peer review processes, and publication-related evaluations remain fully independent and are managed by the Journal’s editorial group.