Guidelines to Improve Internationalization in Psychological Science

Conversations about the internationalization of psychological science have occurred over a few decades with very little progress. Previous work shows up to 95% of participants in mainstream journal studies are from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD) nations. Similarly, a large proportion of authors are based in North America. This imbalance is well-documented across a range of subfields in psychology, yet the specific steps and best practices to bridge publication and data gaps across world regions are still unclear. To address this issue, we conducted a hackathon at the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science 2021 conference to develop guidelines to improve international representation of authors and participants, adapted for various stakeholders in the production of psychological knowledge. Based on this hackathon, we discuss specific guidelines and practices that funding bodies, academic institutions, professional academic societies, journal editors and reviewers, and researchers could engage with to ensure psychology is the scientific discipline of human behavior and cognition across the world.