Proceedings B 2025: the year in review

It has been another successful year at Proceedings B with increased submissions and by year's end, we surpassed our target and received 3239 submissions, an increase of 8% over 2024.Our rejection rate was 76%, remarkably similar to the 77% rate from the previous year.Our time (in median days) to first decision was 16 compared with 15 in 2024, although days from submission to final decision increased to 183 from 171 in 2024 because of the time required for data checks, the anonymization requirements for double-anonymous peer review, and production delays.61% of all papers were published open access, a small drop since 2024.In common with other journals publishing similar content, our impact factor dropped (3.8 to 3.5).Proceedings B is currently ranked 20 out of 107 journals in the Journal Citation Reports category 'Biology'.Ecology, evolution and behaviour remained the most popular subject areas for submission and publication.Our submissions continue to be from diverse geographical regions, with the largest numbers coming from the USA (677), China (479), UK (357), Germany (165), Australia (147), France (138), Canada (119), Japan (97), Brazil (91) and India (84).We continue to diversify our editorial board, and this year, of the 23 new Associate Editors, 48% are female, and the 2025 editorial board was 42% female.In the current round of new recruits, 21% of the new Associate Editors who start their terms in 2026 are from Asia, Africa and South America.These efforts to diversify the editorial board are obviously important, but we also decided to address several more general problems in scientific publishing: (i) the vast over-representation of a tiny handful of countries and scientists as sources of authorship, and especially primary authorship, in peer-reviewed publications; (ii) so-called 'helicopter science', in which the authorship of papers is primarily based on data and knowledge generated from ecosystems or species in low or middle-income countries but credited to people who live or are from elsewhere, particularly high-income countries, and (iii) the absence of critical perspectives on important aspects of the natural world because of under-representation of authors from most of the world.It is important to recognize that Proceedings B is very much part of this phenomenon, with 75% of submissions in the last 5 years coming from just 12 high-income countries.These issues inspired a group of editors (Sarah Brosnan, Stephanie Meirmans, Maurine Neiman, Guadalupe Peralta and Shalene Singh-Shepherd) to guest edit a Special Feature in 2025 titled: 'The other 1%: Showcasing science and scientists from the Global South and indigenous communities', focusing on countries submitting 1% or less of the remaining 25% of our submissions.The goal of this issue was to solicit papers by authors who are either (i) working at institutions in low and middle-income countries, with an emphasis on authors raised in or indigenous to these countries, or (ii) indigenous scientists working on systems/species from their native countries or historically under-resourced geographic areas, such as indigenous scientists in the USA and Canada.We made use of the fact that four of the five Guest Editors had substantial cumulative experience as Proceedings B Associate Editors and Senior Editors.This enabled them to mentor authors, some of whom might be new to publishing in broad and high-profile biology