About

A running record of what is being published about gambling, kept by one clinician-researcher, free of industry money.

What this is

The Gambling Research Index is a running index of new peer-reviewed studies and preprints about gambling in all its forms: sports betting, online casinos and slots, lotteries, loot boxes, prediction markets and the trading that behaves like gambling. Every night it collects what PubMed, OpenAlex, Crossref and the journals' own feeds have added, removes duplicates, tags each study by topic, design and where it was done, and lists it with a link to the publisher's record. Beside the index sits a feed of policy, legal and public-health news, and a short weekly digest of the studies worth reading.

The reference pages are the things people in this field keep looking up: where to publish, the conference calendar, public datasets, screening instruments and how to do research without a university behind you.

Who edits it

Chris Beerman, LCSW, CADC, is a clinical social worker in Chicago. He has worked in addiction treatment for about eight years, in hospital detox and residential programs before opening Chicago Addiction Therapy in 2022, a private practice in Logan Square that treats gambling disorder, sports betting, high-risk trading and alcohol problems, in person and by telehealth across Illinois and Minnesota. He holds a Master of Social Work from Loyola University Chicago (2020), is licensed as a clinical social worker in Illinois (LCSW) and Minnesota (LICSW), is a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor, completed the Illinois Council on Problem Gambling's 30-hour problem gambling counselor training, and is a member of the National Council on Problem Gambling.

His own research grows out of what clients bring in: help-seeking for sports betting and how it follows the sports calendar, behaviour on prediction markets, and how fully self-exclusion programs cover the ways people can now wager. He preregisters his studies on OSF before running them; anything of his that is published enters this index under the same rules as every other paper and is marked as the editor's in the digest. ORCID 0009-0004-8277-2086.

He started this index in October 2026 because the field had no single place to see what was new. Studies, bills and rulings about gambling appear across dozens of databases, legislatures and courts, and checking them was the tedious part of staying current; the site is the tool he wanted, published for everyone else who needs it.

Independence

This site takes no funding, advertising, data or affiliate income from gambling operators, suppliers, affiliates, lotteries, prediction-market exchanges or bodies they fund. It carries no advertising of any kind and no tracking beyond what the hosting provider logs. Studies appear in the index because they match the search rules on the methodology page, and in the digest because the editor judged them worth reading, never because anyone asked.

Interests to declare: the editor runs Chicago Addiction Therapy, a private practice that treats gambling disorder, and may benefit reputationally from this work; he maintains HowToStopBetting.com, a free, non-commercial educational website about stopping sports betting; he edits Gambling Literacy, a free youth gambling education site for teachers, coaches and parents, which links here for research; any study he authors is treated exactly like every other entry and is marked as his wherever the digest discusses it. He has no relationship with any wagering operator, exchange, intermediary or exclusion service, and no industry body funds his practice, his research or this site.

How it is made

The index is software: a nightly job that queries public bibliographic databases and feeds, with its rules published in the repository. The digest and the reference pages are written by the editor with AI assistance for research and drafting, and checked by him before publication. Errors are his.

Corrections and contact

A misfiled study, a wrong date, a missing journal: write to editor@gambling-research.com or open an issue on GitHub. Corrections are made in the data, not quietly on the page, so they carry forward.

Citing the index

The index data is released under CC0 at /data/papers.json. Cite the underlying study, not this site; if you need to cite the index itself, "Gambling Research Index (gambling-research.com), retrieved [date]" is enough.

If you need help with gambling

This site is for research. If gambling is causing harm to you or someone close to you, the National Council on Problem Gambling's helpline in the United States is 1-800-MY-RESET (call or text), available around the clock, and many states also run 1-800-GAMBLER. Outside the US, your national helpline is listed by your gambling regulator or health service.