In trying to assess the challenges researchers from lower income countries may face in seeking to publish their work, it is instructive to analyse the experience in seeking to publish in one particular journal. The analysis here is based on the Review of Development Economics, a well known international journal in development economics, which was launched in 1997 and is published by Wiley. The reason for the choice of the journal is that the author of this note has been the Managing Editor of this journal from 2015 to date; this gives access to unusually detailed data on all papers which have been submitted over this period and about the eventual outcome of these submissions (where this has been decided). The Review of Development Economics is not the leading development economics journal; that would be either the Journal of Development Economics or Economic Development and Cultural Change. But it is a good second tier journal; it attracts submissions from many good quality authors; but it is also a plausible journal for good researchers from lower income countries to submit to. The analysis presented and discussed here is based primarily on a full census of submissions since 2015 up until March 2020 (when the data set was first assembled); most of the analysis presented here is based on the papers where a final decision has been taken. The note is structured as follows. First some background information about the journal is presented. Following this an analysis of submissions by country is presented, classifying by type of country and identifying the countries with the highest numbers of submissions. The main part of the analysis focuses on the outcomes of these submissions for the cases where a decision had been taken by March 2020. Some brief preliminary observations are made at the end. The analysis here is of course only based on one journal and cannot be extrapolated to other journals. It nonetheless may offer some insights about possible challenges authors based in developing countries may face in publishing their work in international journals, and may be a basis to consider possible actions which might help in reducing or overcoming these.
Project leader: Andy Mckay
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