Call for Papers for Special Issue on the role of the private sector in knowledge partnerships for agricultural and rural development

The Knowledge Management for Development Journal (KM4D Journal) is currently inviting papers for an upcoming special issue on the private sector in knowledge for development, to be published in September 2020. The journal is an open access, peer-reviewed community-based journal on knowledge management for development – for and by development practitioners, researchers and policymakers, published since 2005. For information about submission, please see the journal website.

Rationale

The way in which development initiatives incorporate the private sector is a particularly important issue because sustainable development will require transformation using all the practical means at the disposal of the international community, going beyond ‘business as usual’. However, the role of the private sector in knowledge brokering and knowledge partnerships has not received much attention from researchers. Given the huge diversity of private sector actors, we are looking, in particular, for contributions which make it possible to learn about how the private sector contributes to agricultural and rural development, including analytical frameworks, typologies of partnerships, benchmarking practices and mapping of the intellectual assets of the private sector. This Special Issue focuses on the for-profit private sector, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs), multinational companies, financial institutions, foundations and others.

The Guest Editors welcome submissions on the following topics although this list is not exhaustive and we also welcome cross-fertilization between topics, as well as novel perspectives: diversity of private sector actors and partnerships; operational challenges in generating and co-constructing knowledge; perspectives from the private sector; social inclusion; critical perspectives; policies; knowledge integration and brokering; benchmarking and measurement exercises; inclusive modalities and business models; and scaling and the private sector. We particularly encourage submissions from researchers, practitioners, policymakers and activists from the Global South as well as from agricultural innovation networks, such as the CGIAR and its partners. We also encourage submissions from all disciplines, as long as they focus on knowledge or knowledge processes. Submissions are welcome in English, French and Spanish. We can offer ‘peer support’ to authors who are inexperienced writers.

The Guest Editor team is looking for different types of contribution: ranging from academic articles to less formal types of submissions (case studies, thought pieces, reviews etc). We are also calling for these less formal types of contributions because we would like to tap into on-going experiences of working with the private sector. The academic articles will be subject to double-blind peer review while the other types of contributions will be reviewed by the editorial team. If necessary, the journal will cluster accepted papers into two issues of the journal with a maximum of 10 papers each.