The State of Development Journals 2025: Quality, Acceptance Rates, Review Times, Open Access, and What’s New

This is the ninth in my annual series of efforts to put together data on development economics journals that is not otherwise publicly available or easy to access (see 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 for the previous editions). I once again thank all the journal editors and editorial staff who graciously shared their statistics with me.

Journal Quality

I compare journals here on three types of measures of quality and impact. The first, and most well-known, is the impact factor. The standard impact factor is the mean number of citations in the last year of papers published in the journal in the past 2 years, while the 5-year is the mean number of cites in the last year of papers published in the last 5. As noted in previous years, the distribution of citations are highly skewed, and while the mean number of citations differs across journals, there is substantial overlap in the distributions – most of the variation in citations is within, rather than across journals.  Second, I include RePec’s journal rankings which take into account article downloads and abstract views in addition to citations.  Third, I show (and order the journals by) the SJR (SCImago Journal Rank), which is a prestige-weighted citation metric – which works like Google PageRank, giving more weight to citations in sources with a relatively high SJR. These rankings across all the measures have remained pretty stable over the last couple of years.

How many submissions are received, and what are the chances of getting accepted?

Panel A of Table 2 shows the number of submissions received each year (see previous years posts for statistics before 2019). The total submissions in the 12 journals tracked is 12,491 papers.  If I exclude World Development Perspectives and the Review of Development Economics (the first is new, and the second I do not have data from for each year), the total is still 10,287, just above the previous 2020 Covid-peak of 10,144.  Figure 1 uses the data I have going back to 2016, and indexes each of the 6 journals that had 400 or more submissions in 2016 so that 2016=100. This shows the trend of increasing submissions at most of these journals over the past 9 years, with a Covid peak that has now been reached again. World Development (WD) has seen a 74% increase in submissions since 2016, the Journal of Development Economics (JDE) a 67% increase, the Journal of Development Studies (JDS) a 70% increase, and World Bank Economic Review (WBER) a 50% increase. The Journal of African Economies (JAE) has seen submissions bounce up and down a lot more, while Economic Development and Cultural Change (EDCC) introduced a submission fee at the start of 2021 to help discourage frivolous submissions and reduce editorial workload and saw submissions fall. 

Figure 1: Relative Growth in Submissions 2016-2024 (2016=100)

Panel B of Table 2 shows the total number of papers published in 2024 in each journal. 937 papers were published in 2024 across these journals – a lot of new research!  Figure 2 shows the trend in number of papers published relative to 2016 for the same set of journals as Figure 1. We do see that the growth in submissions has been accompanied by a growth in article numbers at many journals. EDCC only published 24 papers in 2016, compared to 64 in 2024; the JDE published 80 papers in 2016 compared to 151 in 2024, and the WBER (21 to 38) and World Development (183 to 289) also show growth, but with peak numbers following the Covid surge in submissions. In contrast JAE and JDS have not seen growth in papers published. We also see steady numbers each year in journals that only publish 25 or fewer papers a year (WBRO, Journal of Development Effectiveness, Economia)

Figure 2: Relative Growth in Papers Published 2016-2014 (2016=100)

Finally, panel C of Table 2 shows the acceptance rates.  The ratio of the number of papers published to those submitted is approximately the acceptance rate. Of course papers are often published in a different year from when they are submitted, and so journals calculate acceptance rates by trying to match up the timing. Each journal does this in somewhat different ways. We see that because the number of articles published at many journals has increased with the number of submissions, acceptance rates have been relatively stable. They are lowest (3%) at the Journal of African Economies which has seen a big rise in submissions without increasing the number published.  Of course the quality of submissions varies across journals and with the number of new submissions, and so comparing acceptance rates across journals does not tell you what the chances are of your particular paper getting accepted is at these different journals.  

Updates on the JDE Short Paper and Registered Report Tracks

The Journal of Development Economics has two other categories of papers that differ from other development journals:

The short paper format has proved popular. There were 205 submissions in 2024 (up from 148  in 2023), and 13 were published. I note the number published is down from 22 in 2022 and 21 in 2023. These papers follow the model of AER Insights, ReStat, etc in which papers are either conditionally accepted or rejected, and so any revisions are minor and are not sent back to referees. None of the other development journals have a special short category format (although Development Policy Review notes they did publish a collection of short papers as part of their annual written symposium Climate and development: What opportunities, what threats? - Prizzon - 2024 - Development Policy Review - Wiley Online Library). I understand a short paper format is being considered at WBER, and I’m sure other journals (and referees) are happy to get sent shorter papers for regular review, so don’t feel like you need to make your paper long again!

The JDE registered reports had 25 phase 1 submissions and accepted 15 phase 1 registered reports, as well as publishing 2 phase 2 acceptances. (Recall phase 1 is acceptance of papers pre-results, and phase 2 is when the authors come back with the completed study).

How long does it take papers to get refereed?

In addition to wanting to publish in a high quality outlet, and having a decent chance of publication, authors also care a lot about how efficient the process is. Table 3 provides data on the review process (see the previous years’ posts for historic data). The first column shows the desk rejection rate, which averages 72%. Column 2 uses the desk rejection rates and acceptance rates to estimate the acceptance rate conditional on you making it past the desk rejection stage. On average, 39% of papers that get sent to referees gets accepted, with this varying a lot across journals.

The remaining columns give some numbers on how long it takes to get a first-round decision. The statistics “Unconditional on going to referees” includes all the desk rejections, which typically don’t take that many days. The average conditional on going to referees is in the 2-5 month range. The last two columns then show that at most journals, almost all papers have a decision within 6 months – so in my opinion, you should feel free to send an enquiry if your paper takes longer than that.

Progress towards Open Science

In my 2021 check on journals, I collected information on what share of papers were published open access in 2020, and thought I’d check again this year. Table 4 shows considerable growth in the share published open access, with Economía LACEA now 100% open access, and World Development, Development Policy Review, and the JDE having about half the papers open access. This is fast changing, with the Journal of Development Effectiveness noting that while 39% of the 2024 published volume is open access, 61% of the papers accepted and posted online in the past year are. One reason is through the read and publish deals signed by different countries or universities with publishers, which pay for their authors’ work to be made open-access – rather than from individual authors paying the $3,000+ dollars. I also note that now four of the journals require data sharing, while it is encouraged or strongly encouraged at almost all the rest. Those without policies tend to publish few quantitative papers.

Other Development Journal News

Finally, I asked the journals if they had any other major news or changes to report. Here are what they wanted to share:

·         New Editorial Boards:

o   JAE has a new Chief Editor, John Hoddinott (Cornell University). In the last year, we have added three new Managing Editors: Girum Abebe (World Bank), Harounan Kazianga (Oklahoma State University), and Bob Rijkers).  Joining as Associate Editors are: Alemayehu Seyoum Taffesse (IFPRI, Ethiopia), Romain Houssa (University of Namur), Christian Meyer (University of Oxford), and Oyebola Okunogbe (World Bank).

o   In May 2025, RDE changed the leadership structure of the journal to establish a team of four Editors-in-Chief (Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay, Katsushi Imai, Wanglin Ma, Andy McKay) supported by a strong team of Co-Editors.  We are in the process of implementing changes aimed at improving service to authors and reviewers, speeding up decision-making at all stages, enhancing the quality of publications, increasing academic and policy impact, and promoting inclusiveness to cover more authors based in low- and middle-income countries.

·         Tracking the share of authors based in low- and middle-income countries: In addition to RDE aiming to promote this, the Journal of Development Studies notes that of their 2024 published papers, 31 papers (32%) had at least one author based in the Global South (mostly China and India). This is not a statistic that most journals currently track – it would be interesting to see trends in submission numbers as well by country of authors over time.

·         Moving to online only: The Journal of Development Effectiveness notes that their publisher (Taylor & Francis) has discontinued the print version this year, and gone online only. They note that demand for physical copies has been declining,  and that going online only will reduce production costs and their environmental footprint.

Finally, thanks again to all the editors for all the time and effort they devote to improving the quality and visibility of development research. As you can see, they have a lot to deal with!