You can help us to make Eldis a valuable tool for all of us working in the development sector. You can contribute in the following ways:
Write for Eldis
Get in touch if you would like us to profile your research in one of our Key Issues Guides or if you would like to write for our blog.
Support Eldis
Eldis does not receive any core funding and relies on project funding and selling services to cover operational and staff costs. You can help us to continue our work supporting free and open access to global research about key development challenges by making a donation to IDS via our fundraising page.
Share your research via Eldis
Tell us about a document which is already online by completing our document submission form.
To make sure you get the most from being included on Eldis please read our general editorial policy for guidance on what kind of documents we will include - and what we won't.
If you have multiple documents you would like us to include, or you have a document that is not yet online, you might prefer to email us.
Document submission policy
Our editors source new documents for the Eldis collection from a variety of sources including submissions from Eldis users. The following are some of the criteria taken into account when selecting content for Eldis:
Origin: we prioritise research from, and about developing countries but we will include other research we think is relevant to our users.
Copyright and licensing: Documents included on Eldis must be available online in full text (or substantially complete) and available free of charge to a public audience. The copyright of the authors and publishers is not affected by inclusion on Eldis and we do not require documents to be licensed as Open Access (although we would certainly encourage this!). The metadata record created by Eldis to link to the documents is licensed as Open Access under a creative commons license (CC BY 3.0).
Format: We prefer to link to documents in PDF format but will include other file types such as Word or HTML.
Hosting: We prefer to be able to link documents to the organisation that produced them, and conversely to link organisations to their publications. This aids our users in being able to judge the quality and relevance of a particular document. If necessary we can host documents for you provided you give permission.
Quality: Eldis provides access to published research but from a very broad range of research producers with variable standards and interpretations of what constitutes quality. Our editors will include research which they think is relevant to the topic but that should not be seen as an endorsement of either the quality of the research or its findings. The views expressed in materials linked to from Eldis are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Eldis, the Institute of Development Studies, our partners or funders. To learn more about assessing the quality of evidence, please see this useful article by our editor, Tracy Zussman.
There are certain types of document that we will NOT accept including:
- news stories
- unpublished essays, dissertations, theses
- mission statements, or items that do not provide substantive researched information
- research data sets
What we do accept includes:
- research reports, working papers, discussion papers, conference papers
- case studies
- policy briefings
Please contact us if you have any further questions.