Author guidelines

Open PEA delivers practical political economy analysis on binding constraints in growth and development, with action-oriented advice for increasing the effectiveness of policy and investment. Decisionmakers, policymakers, practitioners, donors and civil society use our products to make sense of the hidden politics shaping their areas of intervention and to better adapt their strategies to them. Our work is written in plain language and published open access so that all stakeholders may benefit.

Open PEA products are 6,000-8,000 words long (excluding references) and follow a strict, five-part format.

I. What is the problem? 
II. Who are the players?
III. What are the rules of the game?
IV. What is the state of play?
V. Propositions

All products undergo a rigorous quality control process prior to publication. Drafts are submitted for both internal and external review, and authors should expect multiple rounds of revisions at different stages of the process based on this expert feedback.

Our process breaks down into the following:

1. Identify a theme and suitable and interested expert to be sole or co-author.
    
2. If interested, they produce a summary ‘problem description’ and a skeleton of the narrative for the product based on the 5-step format.
    
3. If accepted and contracted, they present this skeleton to Open PEA editorial board. If approved, they incorporate any feedback and proceed with production, with close support from the Open PEA team.
    
4. The near final draft is sent to ‘critical friend’ reviewers (experts in that country and field) and then the Open PEA editorial board for final approval.
    
5. It is then published on the Open PEA website along with allied communication such as blogs, social media, and events (live, online).

In addition to the main product, all authors must also prepare a blog post (1250-1500 words) detailing the key takeaways of their larger work for publication on the Open PEA website and potentially a third-party outlet.

Interested in writing for us? Submit a 1-2 paragraph pitch detailing the problem and the PEA angle, alongside your CV, to open.pea@bsg.ox.ac.uk and we’ll get back to you.

More information

Referencing: Open PEA products are analytical policy documents, not op-eds, and all claims and facts are expected to be referenced to the same standard as modern scholarship. References should be in footnotes following the Chicago Manual of Style 18th Edition (notes without bibliography) format.