The journal provides a forum for rigorous and critical analysis of the processes of social, political, and economic change that characterise development.

ODS publishes articles grounded in one or more regions of the world as well as comparative studies, and is open to work that is interdisciplinary or rooted in a single discipline.

The journal provides an outlet for contributions to development theory and for original empirical analyses, both quantitative and qualitative, as well as mixed methods.

[1] Previous editors have included George Peters, Sanjaya Lall, and John Toye.

The prizes honour the memory of the distinguished development economist Sanjaya Lall, who was a former editor of the journal and who died in 2005.