Journal of Development Economics - Impact Factor, Indexing, Rank, and APC 2025

Aims & Scope

The Journal of Development Economics publishes original research papers relating to all aspects of economic development - from immediate policy concerns to structural problems of underdevelopment.

The emphasis is on quantitative or analytical work, which is novel and relevant.

The Journal does not publish book reviews.

We welcome papers that take up questions in development economics that are of interest to the general readers of the journal, and then use data from a particular country or region to answer them.

However, we do not publish articles that are essentially in-depth studies of a specific country, region, case, or event whose findings are unlikely to be of great interest to the general readers of the journal.

In our review process we pre-screen all papers, some of which are immediately rejected.

This includes papers that are not considered to be a good fit in terms of the topic or the methodology even though development is a broad field and sometimes this is a matter of subjective judgment.

This also includes papers that fall short of our high standards, in terms of the contribution or value added to the literature, or in terms of methodological rigor.

The Journal receives approx. 1300 papers per year and publishes only a small fraction (around 6-8%).

To make this work in a timely fashion we only send 1/4 papers out for review.

Given this volume we regret that we cannot provide explanations on our desk reject papers.

Under normal circumstances, an author cannot submit (either s/he directly or through a co-author) more than three papers within any 12 month period.

Papers that are once rejected by the JDE will not be considered for publication again, even if the authors use a new dataset or a new model.

This is only possible if the editor in his or her decision letter explicitly leaves open this possibility.

View Aims & Scope

Metrics & Ranking

Impact Factor

Year	Value
2025	4.6

SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

Year	Value
2024	3.945

Quartile

Year	Value
2024	Q1

h-index

Year	Value
2024	182

Impact Factor Trend

Abstracting & Indexing

Journal is indexed in leading academic databases, ensuring global visibility and accessibility of our peer-reviewed research.

Subjects & Keywords

Journal’s research areas, covering key disciplines and specialized sub-topics in Economics, Econometrics and Finance and Social Sciences, designed to support cutting-edge academic discovery.

Most Cited Articles

The Most Cited Articles section features the journal's most impactful research, based on citation counts. These articles have been referenced frequently by other researchers, indicating their significant contribution to their respective fields.