This book examines the nature and quality of publication output across the field of rural development globally over time. The aim is to determine the extent to which rural development, as an academic and practice discipline, is developing in such a way as to potentially facilitate evidence-based decision-making regarding local, national, and global challenges of our times. The book is an expanded version of the 2013 Sustainability Collection International Award for Excellence in New Research and Thinking winning paper (see Evans et al. 2013 in The International Journal of Environmental, Cultural, Economic, and Social Sustainability: Annual Review 2013). We acknowledge that relevant sections of that paper are reproduced in this book. Achieving healthy and viable rural communities in the face of rapidly changing social, ecological, and economic conditions is a stated global priority (United Nations 2010; World Bank 2010). Rapid urbanisation, inequalities in income and service levels within and between communities, and population and economic decline are challenging the viability of rural communities worldwide (ARUP 2008; Australia Futures Task Force 2007; Daley and Lancy 2011; Thomas 2008). Persistent global scale (re)occurrence of these and related issues has led governments to prioritise policies aimed at enhancing the livelihoods of people living in rural regions (Daley and Lancy 2011; Giarchi 2006; Shortall and Warner 2010).