Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The manuscript is original, has not been formally published in any other peer-reviewed journal or in a book or edited collection, either in whole or in part, in its present, or substantially present form, and is currently not under consideration for any such publication elsewhere. This includes publications in other languages.
  • The manuscript has not been previously submitted for consideration with Refuge. If it has been previously submitted, please explain what changes have been made and when it was first submitted (include your article ID if possible) in a separate file to the editors.
  • The submission conforms with standard academic honesty practices and has been checked for plagiarism by the authors. This includes any potential instances of self-plagiarism or text recycling. If re-using portions of a text to which the author(s) hold the copyright (e.g. a research report or a dissertation), a reference and a comment should be included. Self-citations should be kept to a minimum, and citation of any of the authors’ published work must be done in the third person (and anonymized for review). Refuge reserves the right to refuse contributions that do not comply with academic honesty and standard citation practices.
  • The submission has been fully anonymized. There is no biographical information about the author(s) in the file that contains the main text. Any references to the author(s) work(s) in the bibliography (the list of references) or in the body of the article have been anonymized. Any identifying information in the main text has also been removed (i.e. in Word under "file," "properties," and "summary," the author's field is blank).
  • All authors listed meet the minimum requirements for authorship according to COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics). They are 1) substantial contribution to the work and 2) accountability for the work that was done and its presentation in a publication.

    No authors that have made a substantial contribution are omitted. Acknowledgements should be used to denote contributions to the work that do not meet the criteria of authorship such as, supporting the study, general mentoring, collecting data, acting as study coordinator, and other related activities.
  • The main text does not exceed 7, 500 words (plus references and abstract) and is double-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses). A headings system is used to separate and classify paper sections. Headings are hierarchical and were created using styles.
  • Submission contain a brief abstract (100 w. max.), keywords, bibliographic statement (for all authors - in a separate file) and ORCID iD, if available.
  • Recommended article structure: Introduction (includes overview over topic, method, structure, findings/arguments); literature review & theoretical framework; detailed methods & ethics; findings & significance; conclusion.
  • All empirical papers which contain work involving human subjects or secondary data about them have been approved by either a university research ethics board (REB) or the institutional equivalent in the case of an NGO or international organization. An explanatory note must be included in the submission.
  • Placement of all illustrations, figures, graphs and tables follows APA recommendations. Authors have ensured that all of these elements, including any use of colour, can be read by users who may read Refuge using a variety of modalities, such as screen readers and other assistive technologies (e.g., if using colours, make sure there is plenty of contrast - use a free contrast checker ). All of these elements are also mentioned in the text.
  • Any figures submitted as image files (e.g., JPEG, GIF, PNG) are at least 72 dpi (low end; web-only resolution) but preferrably 300 dpi (suitable for printing).
  • All references in the submission (in-text, in the reference list) are in keeping with the accessible APA Style Guide with bibliography and minimal use of footnotes (or, where applicable, the Canadian Guide to Legal Citation). This includes case law, legislation and international treaties.
  • All electronically available references (e.g. digital journal articles or government websites) include valid links (URLs) or permanent digital identifiers (DOIs). Formatting follows accessible APA style.
  • The submission file is in Microsoft Word or equivalent editable file format (no PDF).

Author Guidelines

Thank you for your interest in submitting your manuscript to Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees. Refuge accepts original articles that are not under consideration by another publication at the time of submission.

Refuge follows COPE's (the Committee on Publication Ethics) publication standards and authorship guidelines.

Refuge will not publish plagiarized material. We reserve the right to verify, refuse and retract materials that are found to contain plagiarism. We use iThenticate to help us with that.

Peer Review Process

Refuge publishes high-quality, original, empirical, and theoretical research. Refuge takes care to publish only those manuscripts deemed acceptable through double-anonymous peer review.  Submission of a manuscript to Refuge does not mean that it will be published.

All submissions are first subject to an initial review for quality and thematic fit, undertaken by the journal’s editorial team, in consultation with individual editorial board members, where necessary. If found suitable for further consideration, the editorial team then identifies at least three experts in the field to undertake a double-anonymous peer review of the manuscript. 

Double-anonymous means that neither the authors nor the peer reviewers know each other’s identities.

The average length of time for the initial review by the editorial team is one to two months from the date of submission. The average length of time for peer review is six weeks per reviewer in addition to the time needed to secure peer reviewers.  In cases where one peer reviewer rejects a manuscript, Refuge may consult an additional peer reviewer, extending the process. The average peer review process takes between four to eight months. Delays may occur in the process depending on the volume of new articles that are being received, the order in which they are received, the ease of finding a willing peer reviewer and our publication schedule.  

Reference Style

  • It is the authors' responsibility to carefully check and keep to the reference style of Refuge. For social science papers, Refuge adheres to the American Psychological Association (APA 7th edition), with minimal use of footnotes and a separate reference list.
  • Papers citing case law, legislation, international law etc. are also asked to conform to the APA in-text citation style (which references the American Blue Book) or the Canadian Guide to Legal Citation as much as possible.
  • For all questions relating to APA formatting please refer to Purdue Owl guide for instructions and examples.
  • Authors are responsible for ensuring the accuracy of all citations.

Copyright Notice

Refuge authors retain the copyright over their work, and license it to the general public under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial License International (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license allows for non-commercial use, reproduction and adaption of the material in any medium or format, with proper attribution (see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode - human readable summary at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in the Refuge website shall be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.