Editorial standards

The Cefa Brief publishes signed commentary and analysis by CEFA's approved authors, and Explainers written by its editors. Each signed piece is its author's view, not a CEFA position. The Cefa Brief does not publish policy briefs, sponsored content, advertising or aggregated news, and it has no reader comments.

• Kommentare

  Ein Argument: ein namentlich genannter Autor bezieht klar und gezeichnet Position zu einer aktuellen Entwicklung.

  800–1.200 Wörter · Verlinkte Quellen · Von seinem Autor gezeichnet

• Befunde

  Ein Befund: ein kurzer Beitrag, der zeigt, was die Belege zu einer offenen Frage sagen — gestützt auf Daten und mindestens eine eigene Grafik.

  600–1.500 Wörter · Eigene Grafiken mit Quellen, eine Methodennotiz, Anmerkungen · Von seinem Autor gezeichnet

• Perspektiven

  Eine abgewogene Sicht: ein langer Beitrag, in dem eine erfahrene Praktikerin oder ein erfahrener Wissenschaftler eine strukturierte Sicht auf eine strukturelle Frage darlegt und sagt, von wo aus geschrieben wird.

  1.500–3.000 Wörter · Verlinkte Quellen und Anmerkungen; eine Standortbestimmung · Von seinem Autor gezeichnet

• Erklärstücke

  Hintergrund: die schlichte Erklärung eines Konzepts, Programms oder Instruments, erstellt von der Redaktion von The Cefa Brief und aktuell gehalten.

  Keine Ziellänge · Verlinkte Quellen; ein Datum der letzten Prüfung · Erstellt von den CEFA Brief Editors

Charts in Insights

1800 px wide on white, Archivo throughout, labels no smaller than 32 px. Never in the image: title, subtitle, source, logo — the page supplies them. One accent, 3 categorical marks at most, each direct-labelled and told apart by lightness and fill as well as by hue. The last tick equals the axis maximum, so the final numeral sits at the end of the scale.

An editor reviews every piece before it runs. On a signed piece, every author sees and approves the exact final text — the headline, the sub-headline, the body, the notes, the byline, the disclosure line and the lead image — and none of those changes after they approve without their approval again. One thing is outside that, and we say so rather than leave it to be discovered: we may stop publishing a photograph at any time, including after the author has approved the piece, where its rights, the law or a serious risk of harm require it. We tell the author when we do, and the rest of the piece is unchanged. An Explainer is approved by an editor other than the one who wrote it.

The Cefa Brief is edited by CEFA's editors and by no one else. Every editorial decision is made in the product, by a named person, and recorded. A piece is the view of the people whose names are on it. It is not a position of the Center for Economics & Foreign Affairs, and it is not a position of Applied America, CEFA's development division. No funder, sponsor, partner or counterparty decides what The Cefa Brief publishes, and none of them sees a piece before it is published. Where a piece makes a serious allegation about a person or an organisation, we put the substance of it to them before we publish, and the piece says we did. Putting a claim to someone is not the same as showing them the piece: we do not send a draft, a headline or an image to anyone outside CEFA, and nobody outside CEFA approves a piece. Applied America works with governments, sponsors, developers and capital partners. When a piece is about one of them, we say so on the piece. We publish pieces we disagree with. We do not publish pieces because someone paid for them. The Cefa Brief carries no sponsored content and no advertising. When we get something wrong we correct it in public, and we date the correction.

Every author tells us about their interests for each piece they submit, and declares their outside interests once a year. A piece states what its authors told us, or that they told us there was nothing. Where CEFA itself has an interest in the subject of a piece, the piece says so.

Typographical fixes — a misspelling, a mangled character, a link pointing at the wrong page — are made without a note. Our system holds them to very small edits, and it refuses one outright where it would touch the headline, the sub-headline, a quotation set out from the text and the credit beneath it, a chart, a picture or the words around it, the byline, the disclosure line or the list of sources, or where a note is added, removed or reordered. Inside the running text the system can only measure how much has changed. That a fix made without a note never alters a fact, a figure or a name is a rule our editors keep, not one the machine can check for them. Anything beyond such a fix is published as a correction or an update, with a dated note readers can see and, on a signed piece, the authors' approval — or, where an author cannot be reached, a record by the Editor-in-chief of why it ran without theirs.

A piece we can no longer stand behind is retracted. It keeps its address and stays readable, with a notice at the top saying it has been retracted and why. It leaves the front page, the section and topic pages and our sitemap, and we ask search engines not to index it. It stays listed in the archive, marked Retracted, because what we published is part of the record.

We take a piece's text down only where the law requires it, or where leaving it up would put someone at serious risk. Its address then shows a dated notice and nothing else: no headline, no byline, no image, no text. Our own pages stop serving it immediately. Copies held by search engines, social networks and other people's caches can take longer, and copies other people have made are beyond our reach.

To report an error, or to ask anything about these standards, write to applied@thecefa.org.

Authors may use AI tools to search, to check their own facts and to tidy their own prose. They do not use them to produce the argument or the text. Every submission declares whether AI tools were used and how. Where the use went beyond tidying, the piece carries a note to readers saying what was done. Any image or chart generated or substantially altered with AI is labelled where it appears.

Republishing a piece from The Cefa Brief. Write to applied@thecefa.org with the piece and where you want to republish it. We normally say yes to republication in full, with the author's byline, a line saying it first appeared in The Cefa Brief, and a link back. We do not agree to edited or shortened versions. We cannot give you rights to the photographs and charts: those are credited on the piece and are not ours to give, so you will need to clear or replace them yourself.

You do not need our permission to quote a piece, to write about it, or to link to it.

If a piece has been retracted or removed, we will not agree to it being republished.

Some pieces in The Cefa Brief first appeared elsewhere. Those pieces say so, name the outlet and the date, and link to the original. The terms above do not apply to them: rights stay with the author or the original outlet, and anyone wanting to republish should ask them.

The Cefa Brief does not assign DOIs and does not publish PDF editions.

We do not send advance copies and we do not accept embargoes. A piece becomes readable at the moment it publishes and not before; there is no pre-publication link we can give anyone. To hear when something is coming, write to applied@thecefa.org.

Questions about these standards go to applied@thecefa.org.