Both societies behind Animal Behaviour (ABS and ASAB) are active in increasing diversity in the field. We hope this article will help in recognising where biases may exist and encourage work on better understanding it.

The historical data shows a skew in success rates: authors based in North America, Europe and Oceania are more likely to get a submission accepted than authors based in Asia, South America and Africa.

As a reviewer pointed out: maybe authors in Asia, South America and Africa tend to publish elsewhere. Thanks to the reviewer’s suggestion and the editors’ intervention we were sent historical data on author country for all submissions to Animal Behaviour as well as the outcomes of those submissions.

It turns out authors from North America, Europe and Oceania appear to be overrepresented in the articles published in Animal Behaviour.

To check if this reflected the state of the field we compared publications in Animal Behaviour to where authors who cite Animal Behaviour articles or who publish on related topics (in other journals) are based.

We asked which countries and continents authors publishing articles in the journal Animal Behaviour are based in and found that authors are predominantly in institutions in North America and Europe.

This went into my junk emails and I assumed it was predatory.

They say they have matched my work to a publication in their project... but the publication is not mine and from a completely different field!!

Find out more what Nirvana's research was about in her Science Communication video: youtube.com/watch?v=xWSt...