Author Guidelines
The Journal of Leadership and Developing Societies welcomes original work from scholars at every career stage. These guidelines cover scope, submission, formatting, and the peer-review process.
Scope
LDS publishes original research on the interaction between leadership and the security–development nexus, with a particular focus on the developing world. We welcome empirical, theoretical, and methodologically diverse contributions — including those from junior scholars and authors from the Global South.
Article types
- Research Articles — 8,000–10,000 words including references. Original empirical or theoretical contributions.
- Leadership Commentaries — 3,000–5,000 words. Critical reflections on leadership practice, policy, or current events.
- Practice of Leadership — 4,000–6,000 words. Case studies and practitioner-oriented analyses.
- Book Reviews — 1,500–2,500 words. Reviews of recent scholarship relevant to the journal's themes.
- Editorials — invited; addresses themes of the issue.
Before you submit
Please contact the Managing Editor before preparing a submission. This helps us advise on scope fit and avoid duplication with work already in our pipeline. Contact details are on the About page.
How to submit
- Register or sign in at the submission portal.
- Create a new submission, complete the metadata (title, abstract, keywords, co-authors with ORCID where possible), upload your manuscript (PDF, DOCX, RTF or TEX; 50 MB max) plus any supplementary files.
- Confirm the ethics and originality declarations.
- Submit. You'll get an automated acknowledgement plus a tracking number of
the form
LDS-YYYY-NNNN.
Formatting
- Language: English (UK or US spelling — be consistent).
- Font: 12pt, double-spaced, 2.5 cm margins.
- References: APA 7th edition.
- Anonymise: remove author names, affiliations, and identifying self-references for double-blind review.
- Figures & tables: included in the manuscript at first mention; high-resolution originals can be supplied separately if accepted.
- Word count: excludes abstract and references.
Ethics
Authors must confirm:
- The work is original and not under consideration elsewhere.
- All co-authors have approved the submission and meet authorship criteria.
- Funding sources and conflicts of interest are declared in full.
- Human subjects research has appropriate ethical clearance, named in the methods section.
- Data is accurately represented and original; manipulated or fabricated data is grounds for rejection or retraction.
Use of generative AI
Authors must disclose any use of generative AI tools in preparing the manuscript, including which tool and the specific contribution (e.g. language editing, literature search, code generation). AI tools cannot be listed as authors. Authors remain fully responsible for the originality, accuracy, and integrity of the work.
Peer review
LDS operates double-blind peer review. Submissions that pass initial editorial screening are sent to at least two external reviewers. The full process typically takes 6–12 weeks to first decision. Decisions are: accept; minor revisions; major revisions; or reject.
Authors are encouraged to suggest reviewers, though the editorial team makes final decisions on reviewer selection.
Copyright & licensing
Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Authors retain copyright. Every article receives a DOI under the 10.47697 prefix.
Post-publication
Once an article is published, authors are encouraged to share the DOI link, deposit
the final version in their institutional repository, and engage in scholarly
discussion on the work. The journal indexes via OAI-PMH at
https://lds.alcafricanos.com/oai for harvesters and discovery services.