DIIS Submission Guidelines: Publishing with the Danish Institute for International Studies

Key takeaways

• DIIS publishes reports, working papers, policy briefs, short commentary and an annual review of Danish foreign policy. None of these works like a journal with an open call for papers.
• Most outside authors arrive through a DIIS researcher, a commissioned project, a public tender or an invited chapter. The working paper series is the most realistic entry point.
• Editors assess the policy question, the evidence and the specificity of recommendations before they look at prose quality.
• Length, reference style and language requirements differ by series and have changed over the years, so confirm the current specification with the editor handling your topic before drafting.
• If DIIS is not the right home, several comparable institutes accept unsolicited work, and choosing by audience matters more than choosing by reputation.

1. Introduction

Foreign policy research has a publication problem that differs from academia's. A journal article can take eighteen months to appear and reaches a few hundred specialists. A four-page policy brief can be quoted in a ministry meeting the week it is published. That gap pushes researchers, PhD candidates and analysts toward think tank publishing, and the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) sits high on their list.

DIIS, formed in 2002 and based in Copenhagen, is one of the larger Nordic institutes working on foreign policy, security, development, migration and regional studies. Its publications are free to download, it publishes in English as well as Danish, and its authors appear regularly in Danish and EU policy debates.

The difficulty starts with the submission process. DIIS is a research institute that publishes its own work rather than a journal with a rolling call for papers. There is no editor-in-chief receiving manuscripts and no public portal where you upload a PDF and wait. The guidance that exists sits inside individual series and is written mainly for authors who have already been commissioned. Newcomers send a finished draft to a general inbox, hear nothing, and conclude that the institute does not take outside work. It does, through a small number of routes.

This article maps those routes: what DIIS publishes, how the review and editorial process runs, how to prepare a draft that fits the house format, and how DIIS compares with other policy outlets where the same piece might find a home.

2. What DIIS publishes, and where external authors fit

The openness of a DIIS series depends on how close it sits to the institute's research programme. Commissioned and staff-written formats dominate the catalogue.

Lengths above are the ranges most authors work to, not fixed rules. Series names and their scope have shifted over the years, and the editor assigned to a project sets the target length at commissioning.

What this means for an outside author is fairly narrow. Commissioned reports and briefs happen when a ministry, a foundation or an international organisation pays DIIS to produce a study, and the project team decides who writes. If your expertise matches a running project, you can be invited in. Cold submissions to those series rarely succeed on their own.

The working paper series is the most accessible research format. It exists to circulate work in progress, carries a lighter review load than a formal report, and absorbs fieldwork findings, methodological notes and conference papers that do not need a full publication cycle. External authors publish there when a DIIS researcher agrees to sponsor and review the paper. That sponsorship is the gate, so the practical task is finding the right researcher rather than the right inbox.

The annual Danish foreign policy review works on an editorial calendar. Chapters are usually commissioned from Danish and Nordic scholars, and a proposal that arrives months before the production cycle opens stands a better chance than one that arrives during it. A third route runs through public procurement: Danish ministries and EU agencies publish calls for research services, and winning one of those contracts makes you a DIIS author for the duration of the project.

3. How the review and editorial process works

DIIS review is editorial and reputational rather than anonymous peer review in the journal sense. The decision that matters most happens before anyone writes a full draft: a research unit takes ownership of the topic.

The sequence usually runs like this. An author or a research unit identifies a policy question with a funder or an internal programme behind it. A concept note circulates inside the institute. Once a senior researcher backs it, the author drafts to an agreed length and deadline. For reports and working papers, one or two internal readers comment, and a report may go to an external assessor with subject expertise. Language editing and layout follow, the author checks proofs, and the finished file is posted on diis.dk with an ISBN and a stable URL.

Timelines vary by format. A policy brief can move from accepted draft to published PDF in a few weeks. Working papers and reports typically take several months once review, copy-editing and design are complete, and you should add proposal and revision time on top of that. If your evidence has a short shelf life, plan for the fastest format that fits it.

Three things cause trouble in review. The first is a draft that reads as advocacy for a funder's position, which sits badly with an institute that presents itself as independent research. The second is a recommendation section that names no actor, no action and no timeframe, leaving officials with nothing to decide. The third is undeclared funding. External authors should be ready to state who paid for the research, in the paper itself if the editor asks.

Language matters here too. DIIS publishes in English and Danish, and research outputs aimed at international audiences appear in English. Where a publication is written in Danish, it often carries a short English summary so that non-Danish readers can still cite it.

4. Writing to the DIIS format

A DIIS brief or report is judged on whether a busy official can act on it, so structure the draft around a decision rather than a literature review.

Open with two or three sentences that state the policy problem, then give the main finding and what follows from it. Keep section headings as claims a reader can skim; "Sanctions enforcement gaps widen in the Baltic" tells an official more than "Background". Build the evidence around one table or figure that carries the central argument, and let the text explain it. In the recommendations, name the actor, the action and the timeframe: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should do X within twelve months, the EU should do Y at the next council meeting.

Reference handling differs by series. Briefs usually carry a small number of notes, while reports use a fuller apparatus. Ask the editor which style sheet applies before you format anything. Spell out acronyms at first use, since briefs circulate outside the author's specialty. Non-native English readers make up a large part of the audience, so short sentences and plain verbs carry further than dense academic prose.

Three author profiles come up often. A PhD candidate with a strong chapter should convert it into a working paper first and use the feedback to test whether the argument holds outside academia. A ministry analyst with inside knowledge of a negotiation should write a brief, because the value lies in the timing and the recommendation. A consultant with project findings should check whether the funder allows publication before approaching DIIS at all, since contract terms sometimes block it.

Respect the length you were given. An overlong draft gets cut by someone who understands your argument less well than you do.

5. How DIIS compares with other policy outlets

Choosing between DIIS, a London institute and a Brussels think tank is mostly a question of matching outlet to audience, timeline and career stage.

A few smaller outlets fill gaps the institutes leave. Danish journals such as Udenrigs and Økonomi & Politik accept contributions from outside their editorial circles and reach a domestic readership that DIIS briefs also serve, which helps authors who need a byline in Danish. For technology policy specifically, Global Tech Observatory (globaltechobs.com) publishes commentary and takes outside contributions; its editorial capacity and policy reach are smaller than those of the institutes above, which in practice means faster decisions and lighter editing, with less chance of your piece being read inside a ministry.

Pick by where the decision you want to influence actually happens. A brief that must land in the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs before a negotiation belongs with DIIS or a Danish journal. A piece aimed at EU trade officials fits Bruegel or EUISS better. A defence procurement argument that needs practitioner readers fits RUSI. Submitting the same text everywhere without adjusting the framing wastes the one asset you have, which is the fit between your evidence and that outlet's audience.

6. FAQ

Q1. Can I send an unsolicited article or report to DIIS?

For reports and policy briefs, there is normally no direct route. Those are commissioned or written in-house. The realistic openings are a working paper with a DIIS researcher as sponsor, a response to a project call or tender, or a chapter pitch for the annual foreign policy review sent well ahead of the production cycle. An email with a full draft attached to a general address usually gets no substantive reply, because no one inside the institute owns the topic yet.

Q2. Does DIIS pay external authors?

DIIS is a publicly funded research institute rather than a commercial publisher, and it does not run a fee-per-article freelance model like a newspaper. When an external author is hired as part of a funded project, payment is set in that project contract. Working papers and review chapters are often written by affiliated researchers or invited scholars. Ask about terms before you commit weeks of writing.

Q3. Should I write in English or Danish?

English extends reach to EU institutions, international organisations and citation systems, and most DIIS research output appears in English. Danish keeps you inside the domestic debate, where briefs and comments shape media coverage and parliamentary questions. Some series ask for a short summary in the other language. If your topic is a Danish policy decision, Danish may reach the relevant officials faster even though it travels less far.

Q4. How long does it take from proposal to publication?

A policy brief can move from accepted draft to published PDF in a few weeks. Working papers and reports typically take several months once review, language editing and layout are finished, and proposal and revision time sits on top of that. If your evidence has a short shelf life, choose the fastest format that carries it rather than the most prestigious one.

7. Conclusion

DIIS suits research that speaks to a Danish, Nordic or EU policy decision, and it suits authors who can attach themselves to a research unit's agenda. It suits a finished manuscript looking for a publisher far less. The institute's weight in policy debate comes from its review process, which signals to officials and journalists that a publication has been checked before it circulates.

The practical sequence for an outside author runs in one direction: define the decision your work informs, identify the DIIS researcher or unit already working on that question, open a conversation with a two-page concept note covering the policy question, the method, what is new and who should act on the findings, then agree on the series and length before writing a full draft. Where that conversation is not possible, outlets with explicit open submissions do the job instead: RUSI for defence and security, the Chatham House magazine for global commentary, Bruegel's fellowship route for economics, or a Danish journal for domestic debate. The format follows the audience, and the audience decides whether the piece has any effect at all.