Submission Guidelines for Authors: All researchers and development practitioners, including young researchers and students, are welcome to submit articles to Development Letters. Authors are encouraged to read the Writing and Formatting guidelines and the Submission Checklist before submitting their work(s). All submissions, including the Title Page and Manuscript, should be uploaded as editable .doc/.docx file format.

For any issues and further queries, please email at editordl@rapidbd.org

Peer Review and Editorial Process: Once a submission passes the initial desk screening by the editors, it will go through a single anonymised peer-review process. A paper can either be rejected, accepted as it is, or accepted upon minor revisions which will be communicated to the author through the editor. Where authors will be required to make revisions to their submissions, they will not receive a full review report, rather a short explanation from the editor to streamline the reviewing process. Authors should expect a response on their submission’s acceptance status within 15 days from submission, after which, they are free to submit their work to other publications. Final decisions regarding acceptance (for all articles) will rest solely with the editorial board and are not subject to further appeal.

To maintain fairness and transparency, our editors are not involved in making decisions about papers which they have written themselves, or have been written by family members. Any such submissions will be subject to the journal's usual anonymous peer-reviewing procedures and peer review will be handled independently of the editor involved.

Ethics and Policies: When authors submit an article to Development Letters, it is implied that:

• The work described has not been published previously in any other established academic journal, nor is it under consideration for publication elsewhere (sharing preprints, such as on a preprint server, will not count as prior publication. However, the author(s) must inform the Development Letters editors about their pre-print sharing status while submitting the article for publication).
• The article's publication is approved by all authors and the responsible authorities where the work was carried out.
• If accepted, the article will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically, without the written consent of the editor(s) of Development Letters.

Authorship: All authors should have made substantial contributions during planning and designing of the study, collection and analysis of the data, and interpretation of the results. Writing parts of the manuscript or making important revisions to improve its quality through editing will also be eligible for authorship. All authors should agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work to ensure that the questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. Authors should also appoint a corresponding author to communicate with the journal during the editorial process, and specify the corresponding author’s name along with their active email address in the Title Page.

Changes to Authorship: All authors must be listed in the title page and any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should only be made prior to acceptance, and only if approved by the journal editor.

Declaration of Competing Interests: Authors are required to disclose any financial or personal relationships that could influence or bias their research. This includes ties such as employment, consulting roles, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patents, funding sources, or editorial affiliations with the journal. Authors with a journal affiliation to declare should enter the following text in their declaration:

Given their role as [insert journal role title], [insert your name] had no involvement in the peer-review of this article and has no access to information regarding its peer-review. Full responsibility for the editorial process for this article was delegated to another journal editor.

Authors with no competing interests to declare should include in their Title Page the declaration: "The authors have nothing to declare that may constitute conflicting interests."

Declaration of Generative AI Use: While authors preparing a manuscript for Development Letters are encouraged to use AI Tools to support themselves, these tools must never be used as a substitute for human critical thinking, expertise, and evaluation, and must always be applied with human oversight and control. Additionally, authors must not list or cite AI Tools as an author or co-author on the manuscript since AI cannot take responsibilities for the tasks/contents it is credited for through authorship. The use of AI Tools in the manuscript preparation process must be declared by adding a statement at the end of the manuscript when the paper is first submitted. The declaration applies to the use of basic tools, such as tools used to check grammar, spelling and references. The statement will appear in the published work and should be placed in a new section before the references list.

An Example:

• Title of new section: Declaration of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the manuscript preparation process.

• Statement: During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [NAME OF TOOL / SERVICE] in order to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the published article.

If you have nothing to disclose, please include the sentence: “No Large Language Model or Artificial Intelligence tools were used for any purpose in the preparing of this article.” in the declaration for Generative AI Use. Furthermore, the authors are responsible and accountable for the contents of their work. This includes accountability for:

• Protecting rights and privacy by checking the terms and conditions of the AI tool used to make sure it does not misuse any data that has been used or violate copyright or privacy rules.
• Checking AI-generated content carefully to make sure the information is correct, complete, and unbiased as AI can sometimes give wrong or made-up sources.

Writing and Formatting: Each submission should include a Title Page and a Manuscript.

The Title Page must contain—

• The title of the article/submission.
• The full names and institutional affiliations of all the authors.
• The email address of the corresponding author for further communication.
• All the necessary declarations, including Declaration of Competing Interests and Generative AI Usage.

The Manuscript will contain—

• A Title, an Abstract, a list of Keywords, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusion sections containing the academic discussion along with all tables, figures, appendices, and list of references mentioned in the submission.
• A concise abstract of maximum 150 words briefly discussing the purpose of your research, the methodology used, and the major research findings/conclusions.
• A list of 1 to 7 keywords in English.
• A list of references, prepared following the APA style of referencing.

It is strongly recommended to minimise literature review/background discussion and explain the methodological section in a simplified manner so that the discussion is easily accessible to the reader. Lastly, while we do not require authors to submit datasets and codes with the manuscripts, the authors must be prepared to share them upon request from the editors. If the data cannot be made accessible—due to reasons such as the inclusion of sensitive or confidential material—you should provide a clear justification during the submission process as a Data Statement.

N.B. The manuscript must not contain the name(s) of the corresponding author or any co-author(s) or their affiliation(s) in any location of the document to facilitate effective blind peer-reviewing.

Manuscript Formatting: We ask you to provide editable source files for your entire submission (including figures, tables and text graphics). Some other guidelines:

• Please limit the articles to 2,000 words excluding references.
• Divide your manuscript into clearly defined and numbered sections and use the numbering format when cross-referencing within your article (e.g., as mentioned in Section 1 of this text).
• Adhere to British English orthography (e.g., organisation, programme, colour, etc.).
• Abbreviations: Define abbreviations in full form upon first appearance followed by the capitalised initials in brackets. Only the initials should be used in subsequent uses.
• Titles of programmes, projects, key treaties, laws, etc. should be capitalised, with no quotation marks (e.g., West Africa Food Markets Programme, the Maastricht Treaty).
• Please provide definitions of field-specific terms (jargons) used in your article as footnotes on the relevant page where it appears for the first time and not as glossary.
• Submit math equations as editable text and not as images.
• Display equations separately from your text, numbering them consecutively in the order they are referred to within your text.
• Font: Please use Palatino Linotype throughout the body.

o Article title: 13, each word should be capitalised (e.g. Economic Trends Unveiled).
o Body Text: 10, double column with 1.15 line spacing.
o Footnotes: 9, add footnotes at the end of respective pages. Put the number of footnote at the end of the sentence and just after the full stop.

Tables and Figures: Tables must be submitted as editable text, not as images. We recommend you ensure that any data presented in tables is not duplicating results described elsewhere in the article. Additionally:

• Provide a caption for the tables and figure titles as a text of the manuscript at the top of the relevant table/figure and not as a part of the table or figure.
• Mention the source of the tables and figures at the end of the relevant table/figure as a text of the manuscript.
• Place tables and figures next to the relevant text.
• Number tables and figures separately and consecutively according to their appearance in the text.
• Cite all tables and figures in the manuscript text.
• Place any table and figure notes below the table body.
• Avoid vertical rules and shading within table cells.
• Figures, images, artwork, diagrams and other graphical media should be supplied as separate files along with the manuscript (e.g., Figure_1, Figure_2 etc.).
• We generally ask authors not to use Generative AI or AI-assisted tools to create or edit images in their submissions, unless those tools are part of the study’s actual methodology or research design.

References: Any references cited within your article should also be present in your reference list and vice versa. Development Letters follows APA style of referencing. Authors may use any edition of the style as per their choice, ensuring that consistency has been maintained throughout the submission.

• References cited in your abstract must be given in full.
• Any unpublished results and personal communications included in your reference list must follow the standard reference style of the journal.
• References cited as "in press" imply that the item has been accepted for publication.
• When listing web references, provide the full URL and the date when the reference was last accessed. Additional information (e.g., DOI, author names, dates or reference to a source publication) should also be provided, if known.
• We encourage you to cite underlying or relevant datasets within article text and to list data references in the reference list.

Submission Checklist: Before completing the submission of your manuscript, we advise you to read our submission checklist:

• No mention of the authors’ names has been made in the manuscript.
• One author has been designated as the corresponding author and their full contact details (email address, full postal address and phone numbers) have been provided in the Title Page, along with all applicable declarations.
• All files have been uploaded, including keywords, figure captions and tables (including a title, description and footnotes) included.
• Spelling and grammar checks have been carried out.
• All references in the article text are cited in the reference list and vice versa.
• Permission has been obtained for the use of any copyrighted material from other sources, including the web.

Disclaimer: This guideline has been prepared following the practices of established academic journals and revised to better suit Development Letters with the help of generative AI.