Aims and Scope

Animal Behavior and Cognition (Online ISSN: 2372-4323) publishes original empirical research, replication reports, target review articles, opposing viewpoints, brief reports, and theoretical reviews on all aspects of animal behavior and cognition. All articles undergo peer review and editorial review. Four issues of Animal Behavior and Cognition are published a year, with issues released in February, May, August, and November.

Topics of interest:


Animal Behavior and Cognition offers readers open access to recent important research on all aspects of behavior and cognition assessed in a comparative perspective. For authors, the journal offers no publication fees, rigorous peer-review, rapid turnaround on decisions for submissions (average time to first decision is 47 days), and the chance to provide free access to their research and broader contributions to this field. Articles are indexed in Google Scholar. Although Animal Behavior and Cognition is still undergoing the process to obtain an Impact Factor from Web of Science (Clavariate), the following metrics were calculated from Google Scholar citation metrics: the citation rate for articles published in 2020 was 1.95 times per article, with 91% of the articles published that year being cited at least once.

Call for Submissions

We are currently looking for high quality original research reports, brief reports, replication reports, target reviews, and opposing viewpoints for the journal. Please see "Author Guidelines" for further details on each of these manuscript types.

Call for Proposals for Special Issues

We are soliciting proposals for special issues reflecting any of the general topic areas covered in our aims and scope. Special guest editors would be responsible for recruiting 6-10 articles that may fit within any of the accepted categories of animal behavior and cognition. Please note these special issues can consist of empirical reports of new data, broader summaries of research areas, theoretical debates, or a combination of those perspectives. Guest editors will be responsible for the peer review process with final acceptance dependent on approval by the editors-in-chief. Please email us with proposals (e.g., a working title and tentative list of authors and article titles/topics) at animalbehaviorandcognition@gmail.com.