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worlddev-topic-selection

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Use when deciding whether a development question fits World Development (WD) and which sibling journal it really belongs to. Tests scope, relevance, and outlet fit; it does not invent evidence or citations.

World-Development-Skills/skills/worlddev-topic-selection/SKILL.md

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# Topic Selection (worlddev-topic-selection)

## When to trigger

- A development paper exists but it is unclear whether WD or a sibling (JDE, WBER, JDS, EDCC) is the right home
- A reviewer or coauthor says the question is "interesting but not development" or "too narrow / too local"
- The paper is methodologically strong but its **real-world development stakes** are implicit
- The contribution is a clean estimate with no obvious audience beyond the method's specialists
- A qualitative or single-country study needs to argue why it travels beyond its case

## What WD actually selects for

WD is a **multidisciplinary** journal. The desk-screen question is not "is the identification clean?" but **"does this advance how we understand or improve development in low- and middle-income contexts, and will a multidisciplinary readership care?"** Three things must be present, in roughly this order:
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