Following the recent changes to the diagnostic category for addictive disorders in DSM-5, it is urgent to clarify what
constitutes behavioural addiction to have a clear direction for future research and classification. However, in the years
following the release of DSM-5, an expanding body of research has increasingly classified engagement in a wide range
of common behaviours and leisure activities as possible behavioural addiction. If this expansion does not end, both the relevance
and the credibility of the field of addictive disorders might be questioned, which may prompt a dismissive appraisal
of the new DSM-5 subcategory for behavioural addiction. We propose an operational definition of behavioural addiction
together with a number of exclusion criteria, to avoid pathologizing common behaviours and provide a common ground
for further research. The definition and its exclusion criteria are clarified and justified by illustrating how these address a
number of theoretical and methodological shortcomings that result from existing conceptualizations. We invite other
researchers to extend our definition under an Open Science Foundation framework