The journal Savings and Development with its supplement, the African Review of Money, Finance, and Banking, was founded in 1977 by Finafrica Foundation, now Fondazione Giordano Dell’Amore (www.fgda.org), based in Milan. The journal has been voicing researchers from Countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America for many years. In 2007, it was handed over to the Research Center on International Co-operation (Finance and Development Group) of the University of Bergamo.

The University of Bergamo welcomed this opportunity, as the journal is among the oldest in its field and has gained increasing international appreciation over time. In doing so, while trying not to lose continuity with the past, the University declared the intention to widen the range of topics the journal covers, still adhering, however, to the theme of “finance and development”. Themes of interest are: the link between finance and development in general, microfinance, informal finance, rural finance, performance, processes and management issues in financial intermediaries and markets in poor countries, monetary policy issues.

Another innovation was the establishment, in 2009, of standardized peer-review procedures. This is meant to make the journal meet international quality standards. Submitted articles are, therefore, required to follow a rigorous scientific approach within a theoretical and/or empirical perspective. However, the journal also welcomes articles that have implications for practice, as the journal should be a useful tool for academics as well as practitioners.

The review process and the related advising activity, although time consuming and costly, are considered very important. In fact, the journal pursues the double aim of promoting and disseminating research in the relevant topic of “finance for development”, and giving voice to young researchers coming from countries or institutions which have weak connections with international journals.

The most recent and innovative step in the history of the Journal is the open-access online-only publication. This decision to publish online was made with the main aim of making the journal more accessible to persons who are located in remote areas where Internet access is more reliable than postal services; the open access choice is meant to benefit those researchers and professionals, especially the youngest ones, to participate in the debate without incurring specific costs. This deliberate choice implies of course a reduction in the journal publication costs but also giving up income from subscriptions. In the transition phase, therefore, a temporary reduction in the number of articles accepted for publication became unavoidable. In 2011-2012, in fact, a single issue is published and the specific focus on Africa which characterized the supplement is included in the regular issues of Savings and Development.

For the future, a single issue is foreseen each year comprising a variable number of articles. Each article, however, will be uploaded and published on the journal web page as soon as it is ready and will be immediately indexed.

The Editorial team hopes that these changes will contribute to further disseminating high quality knowledge on issues related to savings, rural finance, development, microfinance.

Given the current revision phase, we invite readers to send their comments and suggestions to further improve our journal (savings.development@unibg.it).