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Editorial, volume 1, number 2
The Editorial Board of Development In Practice has asked me to explain in more depth, for readers and contributors alike, some of the assumptions behind this new journal's editorial policy.
The journal will publish contributions from development practitioners which reflect on their own experience and its wider implications for other development workers, both policy makers and field workers. To this extent we do not pretend to be a technical journal, but will always seek to range across disciplines and geographical areas. By our focus on the social dimension of development work, we hope that people working in different institutional contexts will be able to gain from the insights offered by our contributors. This is not to say that we seek to be prescriptive, or to offer blueprints for successful development, for we realise that simple `cure-all' remedies are unlikely to help us to respond to the complex development challenges that we all face. Therefore we will also exclude articles that are very highly technical or site-specific, unless they offer reflections, synthesis, and conclusions that may be transferable to other contexts.
Development In Practice is produced primarily for the voluntary sector of non-governmental development organisations (NGDOs). However, since we want to stimulate a two-way exchange between the voluntary and official sectors, we will also publish articles from official development agencies.
The role of our Editorial Board and our International Advisory Panel is to encourage contributions from the widest possible range of agencies, countries, and professional contexts. (The only distinction between the two bodies is that the members of the Board, living in northern Europe, will meet once or twice a year to review the progress of the journal, while members of the Panel, who are more widely scattered around the world, will keep in touch by correspondence.)
We want to encourage readers to send us not only articles, book reviews, technical notes, project notes, and conference reports, but also books for review. We are only too aware of the extent to which international publishing is dominated by large Western-based companies, and of the problems faced by small Southern-based publishers in reaching an international readership. We would like to provide an outlet for reviews of Southern publications, whether produced commercially or by NGOs.
Although Oxfam UK And Ireland has commissioned Development In Practice, we are not aiming to produce an `in-house' magazine. One role of the Editorial Board and the International Panel is to ensure that the journal provides a forum for the whole international NGO community. Not everything published in these pages is expected to conform with Oxfam policy; only where inclusion of material might directly endanger the safety of field workers will we decline to publish items which otherwise reflect our editorial policy.
Development In Practice is not intended to be a mirror of the status quo in development, but seeks to identify future directions and fresh approaches from current experience. The development literature is dominated by a small group of writers, so we are trying to provide a forum for a wider group to share their experiences, ideas, and concerns. We are happy to advise potential contributors about their material, and to help where necessary to edit it to publication standard.
Brian Pratt
Oxfam (United Kingdom And Ireland)
May 1991
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