About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies (IJCYFS) is a peer-reviewed, open access, interdisciplinary, cross-national journal that is committed to scholarly excellence in the field of research about and services for children, youth, their families, and communities.

Peer Review Process

All original research and feature articles are reviewed by two members of the Editorial Advisory Team using a double-blind reviewing process. Authors are asked to ensure any personal identifiers are included on a separate cover page only so articles can be sent out for blind review.

Each submitted manuscript is evaluated on the following basis:

  • The originality of its contribution to the field of research about and services for children, youth, families and their communities.
  • The soundness of its theory and methodology given the topic
  • The coherence of its analysis
  • Its ability to communicate to readers (grammar and style)

Ethics Approval and Informed Consent

The researcher(s) confirm that they have followed ethical standards for research involving human participants such as the statement on Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans for Canadian researchers. All papers reporting human studies must state in the methods section that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee contact, in addition to the approval number. For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal. Examples of Ethics Approval statements:

  • Ethical approval for this research was obtained from [Name of the Ethics Committee OR Institutional review Board (APPROVAL NUMBER/ID)].
    OR
  • Ethical approval is not applicable for this article because [provide Reasons].

Examples of Statement of Informed Consent:

  • Written informed consent was obtained from the study participant(s) for their anonymized information to be published in this article.
    OR
  • Verbal informed consent was obtained from the study participant(s) for their anonymized information to be published in this article.
    OR
  • Verbal informed consent was obtained from a legally authorized representative(s) for anonymized study participant(s) information to be published in this article.
    OR
  • Informed consent for study participant(s) information to be published in this article was not obtained because [REASON].
    OR
  • There were no human subjects in the study and informed consent is not applicable.

Conflict of Interest

The journal requires all authors to declare any conflict of interest that may arise from the publication. A conflict of interest is any relationships or spheres of interest that may directly or indirectly influence or bias the work. if a conflict exists, authors must insert a statement at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references.

  • Example of Conflict-of-Interest statement: Author XXX owns shares of one of the schools in which the study was conducted. Author YYY is a member of the Board of directors of the same school.
  • Example of a statement of no conflict: There is no conflict of interest

Sources of Financial Support

The International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies requires all authors to acknowledge their funding source(s) under a separate heading or state that the research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or non-profit sectors. Example: The study was supported by XXX Foundation/Institution under the YYY research program.

Open Access Policy

The International Journal of Child, Youth, and Family Studies provides immediate open access to its content to support the public good. We pursue open access for expanding equity, impact, reach, and knowledge advancement. The journal is published under the Open Access model (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International license) and is, therefore, free for anybody to read and download, and to copy and disseminate for educational purposes. Articles will be posted online immediately as they are ready for publication.

Publication Frequency

The International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies journal is published 2 times a year (Spring and Fall). We operate under a continuous publication or “publish-as-you-go” model, which means that we no longer wait to accumulate several articles into an issue before publication. Publishing articles on the go will reduce publication lag for our authors and make the newest research available to our readers more quickly.

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

To ensure equitable access to publising opportunities, the journal does not require any APC or submission charges for authors.

Copyright Notice

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license and is, therefore, free for anybody to read and download, and to copy and disseminate for educational purposes. Articles will be posted online immediately as they are ready for publication. An example of attribution to use is as follows:

The article, {insert article title}, by {insert author name(s)} has been reproduced from the International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Please link to the article title directly to the article location on the website.

Author Self-Archiving

Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the Journal's published version of their work (e.g., post on personal website or to an institutional repository) with acknowledgement of its initial publication in the International Journal of Child, Youth & Family Studies.

The journal utilizes the PKP Preservation Network (LOCKSS system) to create a distributed archiving system to create a permanent archive of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.