The International Society for Comparative Psychology, (ISCP) was founded in Leipzig in 1980, with an initial steering committee being organized in 1983, the constitution and by-laws finalized in 1984 lead by Ethel Tobach (American Museum for Natural History).

The International Journal of Comparative Psychology (IJCP) was founded in 1987 by Ethel Tobach to help realize some of the goals of the ISCP, such as to promote the development of Comparative Psychology, broadly defined as the study of the evolution and development of behavior. The journal has published more than 500 high quality articles between 1987 and 2020.

After Tobach's founding term as editor, others took the post, including Robert N. Huges (1994-1996), Leslie J. Rogers and Sally A. McFadden (1997-1999), Mauricio R. Papini (2000-2005), David Washburn (2006), Stan Kuczaj (2007-2013), Daniela Brunner, and Heather Hill. Since its founding, the IJCP has been managed and maintained by scientists, a fact that makes this a unique, non-profit journal.

To promote the dissemination of scientific research in Comparative Psycology, the ISCP and IJCP underwent a number of significant changes in recent years. In 2008 (1) ISCP membership dues were eliminated and membership became determined by meeting participation; (2) The IJCP became a free-access electronic journal charging no fees to authors for their right to publish their contributions, while maintaining a rigorous peer-review process; and (3) A concerted effort was initiated to develop an agreement with UCLA to utilize its resources as a way of further developing the IJCP as an open-access scientific journal. Starting in November 2013, all articles are and will be under the Creative Commons license (CC) which leaves the copyright assigned to the author but allows reproduction of the published material with the simple requirement of due attribution.

The IJCP has expanded to incorporate commentaries and video submissions in addition to its traditional research articles and special issues. The journal also refreshed its face, with a new logo and article layout, a facebook page, and improved indexing in several search engines and organizations.

The ISCP and IJCP aim at promoting research in animal learning and cognition, behavioral neuroscience, brain-behavior evolution, developmental psychobiology, and research highlighting the evolutionary basis of human behavior. It is hoped that the ISCP and IJCP will continue to be an inclusive umbrella supporting of all those who contribute to our field, independently of their founding tradition.

The society and editorial board thanks the efforts of previous editors and their teams.