Snakes & Ladders is a space for anyone with an interest in international development to discuss development topics, issues, approaches and impacts. We welcome contribution from you.
What we cover
Snakes & Ladders hopes to bring the many different voices to discuss issues from different perspectives- think gender, climate change, migration, poverty or any global and social concerns that impede the development and growth of our societies. The aim is to create a robust intellectual exchange of knowledge, ideas and solutions.
Here are a few suggestions for blog posts:
- Highlighting a social or economic issue.
- Response to a current event and its impact on growth.
- Review and analysis of approaches to a specific developmental issues, and suggestion for looking through a new lens.
How to submit your idea
If you have an idea for a blog post, please get in touch with us at snakesandladdersteam@gmail.com with a brief outline. Our editor will give you feedback and discuss deadlines.
Length and format
- In order to increase readability and accessibility, we typically aim for our posts to be between 800 and 1,000 words long
- Please send us your draft in Word format, with your name at the top.
Audience, writing style and language
- Be clear and concise.
- Your post should be written with a relatively wide audience in mind.
- Blog posts that are written in a natural sytle often get the most readership. Since this is not an academic platform, we recommend that you avoid overusing academic language. Also avoid saying things like “in this paper I will…”, or “this paper aims to…”, and go straight into your discussion of the topic.
Referencing
- We use links (preferable) and citations for references. Links should direct readers to more detailed reports or other pieces of research, news items, or other blog posts. Open access sources are preferable.
Images, graphs, and charts
- We encourage the use of images, charts, and figures. Graphs and charts are preferable to tables, as they are easier for readers to interpret quickly. In all cases, please send us the raw data of your chart, table, or figure in Excel format.
- Each chart needs a clearly labelled heading, labels for the X and Y axes or histogram bars, including units of measurement and a readable scale or background grid.
- For images, the editor will find a suitable image to accompany the blog post if you don’t have anything.
Biography and contributor photo
- We’re proud of our contributors, so we like to give you full attribution. Please send us a three to four line biographical note.
- Contributor photos are optional but preferable! Please send us a small, colour photo headshot, ideally as a .jpg file.
Our editing process
In most cases submitted posts will be reviewed by the editor within a two-week period. The post will be edited to enhance its readability; always considering the blog’s wider audience. Once these edits are complete, we will send you the final version of the post, and give you an opportunity to make final edits.
These edits may include:
- Shortening of text if the article is above our stated 1,000 word limit
- The addition of a title to sum up the post’s main findings
- The addition of short introductory paragraph outlining the article’s main arguments and findings, and any relevant background information for readers.
Once these edits and revisions are complete, we will send the final version of the blog post to authors with an estimated date of publication, and give the author an opportunity to make any further edits deemed to be necessary. Please note that owing to events and other circumstances beyond our control, we may have to change our posting order at very short notice.
Once posts are published, we are very happy to make further edits afterwards should the author deem them to be necessary. A short note would be added to the end of the post, acknowledging any post-publication edits.
Snakes & Ladders 