About

Aequitas Journal of Human Development, Disability and Social Change is a bilingual journal that focuses on the development and spreading knowledge on the personal and environmental determinants of the social participation of people with disabilities.

It values “interdisciplinary”, “transincapacité” (cross-disability) and “transgenerational” perspectives, with all disciplines, types of disabilities and age groups represented.

Aequitas Journal of Human Development, Disability and Social Change opens its columns to experienced researchers, graduate students, clinicians and advocacy organizations interested in sharing their research findings and knowledge transfer articles.

Editorial policy and ethics

Editorial guidelines

The Editorial Charter presents the nature of the obligations that authors and managers of the journal must respect in order to ensure the quality of AEQUITAS, Revue de Développement Humain, Handicap et Changement Social/ Journal of Human Development, Disability and Social Change.

• Authors's Obligations

1. Copyright

Any article submitted to the journal must respect the rules on copyright.

• Respect the conventions surrounding the right to quote by referring readers to all the sources used in writing the article.
• Obtain written permission to integrate any material that is not the work of the authors (photography, table, image, graphic, etc.)
• Mention the names of the co-authors or research assistants involved in the production or writing of the submitted article.

2. Rules of ethics and respect of difference

The authors will, if necessary, report to the Editorial Board on the investigative methods chosen and the techniques used to meet the official and customary ethical standards governing research practices in the chosen field. The Editorial Board also reserves the right to refuse any article if it contains sexual, racial, religious or difference-related prejudice.

• Journal's obligation

1. conflict of interests

The journal commits to use all possible means to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest.

• Any expert asked to evaluate an article is required to declare to the editor if there is a possible conflict of interest.
• If a member of the Editorial Board submits an article to the journal, he or she will not participate in the evaluation process of that article.
• If an expert,for whatever reason, does not feel able to impartially judge the proposed article, he will have to inform the editor. He-she will be relieved of the responsibility of evaluating the article in question.
• Any use of personal influence in the evaluation process of submitted articles is formally prohibited

In the event that the editor finds that a member of the Editorial committee is using his position to modify the content of an issue to his advantage, he will be asked to cease immediately his activities for the journal. A temporary or permanent exclusion procedure may be initiated by the journal director and voted on by the editorial committee.

2. Respect for the anonymity of contributors

Members of the Editorial Board are required to respect the anonymity of articles, in order to ensure equal contributions and to promote a neutral evaluation process. Any reference or allusion to the author’s identity in the text will be removed for the evaluation.

Only members of the Editorial committee will know who the contributors are. They must not, at any time, provide information on the provenance of an article being evaluated.

Articles evalutation

Original articles submitted to AEQUITAS may be either a response to a call for a thematic issue or spontaneous proposals for publication in a varia issue. The journal’s will acknowledge receipt of the manuscripts to the authors. All article proposals are first examined by the editorial committee. The anonymised texts are then evaluated by at least two anonymous experts. The author will be informed of the results of the evaluation of his article by email from a member of the editorial committee responsible for monitoring the evaluation.

It is also possible that changes may be required by the editorial committee in order for the material submitted to appear in the journal. If these changes are not made within a reasonable time, we may not be able to publish the article for the issue chosen by the author.

3. Availability of evaluation results

After receiving the results of the evaluation (evaluation grid, comments from the evaluators and decision of the acceptance or refusal review), the author will be accompanied by the editor in the modification or improvement of his text, if necessary. At his request, he will be able to consult the entire anonymous evaluation grid completed by the evaluators.

4. Arbitration process

The journal AEQUITAS reserves the right at any time to accept or refuse an article submitted for publication.

However, if, an article is rejected after beeing evaluated without any modification requested by the two evaluators and the author considers that the article has been evaluated unfairly, he is invited to inform the editor. If the latter considers it appropriate, he may have two new experts re-evaluate the article in question. At the end of this second evaluation, it is up to the editor of the journal to decide in the last instance whether or not to publish the article in question

5. Advertising

The journal may agree to publish paid advertising under certain conditions :

• Come from other scholarly publications if benefits are expected in return for our publication.
• Announce conferences, symposia or other scientific events of interest to the journal and its readers.
• Ensure that the advertisements offered by companies or other organizations meet the principles of this editorial charter. No product, service or promotion may be advertised on the pages of the publication. Any insert will be considered paid advertising.

Editorial guideline

AEQUITAS is published by the International Network on the Disability Production Process (RIPPH). Therefore, it is important that its editorial guideline be consistent with the mission, objectives and values of RIPPH.

The mission :

The International Network on the Disability Production Process (RIPPH) is an international organization, based in Quebec (Canada), aimed at the exercise of the right to equality of persons with disabilities through the development and dissemination of knowledge, contributing to an inclusive society.

Its mission is to foster a more adequate response to the needs of people with all kind of disabilities through the promotion, application and development of the conceptual framework of the Human Development Model - Disability production process (MDH-PPH).

Goals :

• Supporting knowledge development
• Spreading knowledge
• Promoting human rights
• Networking at the international level.

Values :

• Respect, in all circumstances, for human dignitty, for individual autonomy, including the freedom to make one’s own choices.
• The full social participation of people of all ages with disabilities and the development of inclusive societies as fundamental principles.
• Recognition of the importance of environmental factors in creating disability situations.
• Non-discrimination and inclusive access as fundamental conditions for any society or habitat.
• Recognition of the transversality of disability and the relevance of approaches differentiated by gender, sexual orientation, age and linguistic, ethnic and cultural affiliation.
• The empowerment of all social actors in their fields of competence in the implementation of the right to equality and inclusive societies.

If an article is contrary to an objective or a value of RIPPH, this is a reason for refusing the section.

Themes and Directions

The journal focuses on the development and knowledge sharing on the social participation of people with disabilities, as well as on conceptual developments in the field of disability, advocacy, social representations and the prospects for social change. In short, the journal is open to all contributions that contribute to the achievement of RIPPH’s mission and objectives.

The review values the “interdisciplinary°”, cross-disability, “intersectional°” and “generational°” perspectives in all human and social sciences disciplines. whatever the forms of impairment and disability and whatever the causes, including aging. These principles include chronic diseases and persistent or episodic mental health problems.

Since the journal publishes scientific texts, it also wishes to open its columns to professionals working in the field from an intersectoral perspective. It also wants to give people living with disabilities or situations of disability an opportunity to speak out. Consequently, the journal publishes various categories of texts based on academic, experiential and professional knowledge, the descriptions of which can be found in the document “Instructions to authors”.

Terms definition

RIPPH is involved in promoting the Human Development Model – Disability Production Process. In this sense, it adheres to the conceptual definitions of this model and aims at their international dissemination. In order to avoid confusion due to the polysemy of terms or their translation, authors are asked to use these definitions.

However, it is necessary to clarify that this is required in order to increase the quality of the review and to facilitate readers' understanding. Under no circumstances is this intended to prevent the publication of texts that refer to other definitions of these terms.  On the contrary, the review is open to articles that wish to discuss explicitly definitions of terms by questioning them, confronting them, criticizing them or proposing improvements.

The concepts that most often may be confusing and that we wish to avoid are the following:

1. Ability: An ability is the ability of a person to perform a physical or mental activity. Ability can vary from total ability to perform an activity to complete inability to perform that activity. As a result, a person who is unable to perform motor, visual, auditory, intellectual, cognitive or behavioural activity experiences a disability.
2. Lifestyle: A lifestyle habit is a common activity or a social role valued by the person or his socio-cultural context according to its characteristics (age, sex, socio-cultural identity, etc.). It ensures the survival and development of a person in his society throughout his life.
3. Situation of social participation: A situation of social participation corresponds to the realization of habits of life, resulting from the interaction between personal factors and environmental factors.
4. Disability situation: A disability situation corresponds to the reduction in the achievement of lifestyle habits, resulting from the interaction between personal and environmental factors.

Thus, the disability situation is always related to the interaction between personal and environmental factors. This implies that being disabled is never solely a matter of personal factors. A person can live with many disabilities and not be disabled, as soon as he carried out his life habits.

Nor can a person be “physically, mentally, intellectually, psychically, visually handicapped”… A disability situation is not a functional characteristic of the person, but rather the consequence of the encounter between the person with disabilities with physical and social environmental barriers.

Therefore, statements such as “handicap persons” or “persons living with an handicap” should be avoided as they create a common confusion between the designation of persons with disabilities and that of persons in handicap situation.

The use of terminologies derived from historically, culturally, and common works articles or other uses can be quoted, or better yet, explained in footnote.

Anti-plagiarism policy

The magazine defends an anti-plagiat policy aimed at protecting copyright and ensuring the original character of the texts it publishes.

The Aequitas journal does not accept plagiarism, even that of an author by himself.

In order to avoid any difficulties, authors must follow the redaction instructions.

Plagiarism is also part of the evaluation and control criteria in the evaluation process.

In case of plagiarism, the article is immediately removed from the publication process. The editorial committee will hear from the author before deciding what to do next. The committee may decide to go so far as to prohibit any further submission by the author.

Editorial board

Editorial committee : 

Loïc ANDRIEN, Université de Lorraine, France (Co-rédacteur en chef)
Maria ARENTSEN, Université de Saint-Boniface, Canada/Manitoba
Catherine BARRAL, Paris, France
Normand BOUCHER, Université Laval, Canada/Québec
Patrick FOUGEYROLLAS, Université Laval, Canada/Québec (Co-rédacteur en chef)
Anne MARCELLINI, Université de Lausanne, Suisse

Elena Pont, Université de Genève, Suisse

Redaction committee :

Jonas-Sebastien BEAUDRY,
Nicolas BIARD,
Emeline BRULE,
Pierre CASTELEIN,
Francis CHARRIER,
Catherine DORISON,
Hugo DUPONT,
Sylvain FEREZ,
Eve GARDIEN,
Yan GRENIER,
Sebastien KESSLER,
René KNUSSEL,
Mélanie LEVASSEUR,
Saba Ayon HADI,
Didier SEGUILLON,
William SHERLAW,
Pierre SCHMITT,
Myreille ST-ONGE,
Hannah THOMPSON