Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope

Esurio is a collaborative, online student-led and peer-reviewed academic journal. Graduate and undergraduate editors and reviewers solicit, review and publish, twice annually, student-authored publications for a national audience.

Esurio brings students together with a community of influential academic and community advisors before a broad cross-sectoral audience. In this way, Esurio represents a nexus and platform for discussion between the academy, the community, and students interested in issues related to hunger and poverty.

More than a unique student research publication, Esurio is an educational programme through which emerging scholars are given the opportunity to express and explore their voices on topical multi-disciplinary issues in various fields of research, study, and applied learning. 

Aims
We are interested in helping students interested in hunger and poverty become the next generation of leading thinkers and actors. Their success will be shaped by the opportunities they have within their local institutions and local communities. However, we know that poverty and hunger extend beyond any one place. We need ways of connecting our local experiences in order to gain insight into some of the more system-wide dynamics that shape why and how poverty and hunger exist.  Esurio is an open space for on-going conversations that builds community and networks across geography.

The scholarship and research undertaken by graduate and undergraduate students is typically limited to papers submitted to professors for fulfilling course requirements. Students are limited in terms of the venues available for developing, publishing and disseminating their work and the impetus behind Esurio is to give students a chance to showcase their best work in a peer-reviewed publication. The goal is not compete with professional journals, but to provide students with an experience in developing and communicating their ideas within a community of scholars.

Scope
Articles published through Esurio will examine issues of hunger and poverty through a youth lens. We value research and scholarship that bridges disconnects between theory and practice, communities and academic institutions, and academic disciplines. We accept empirical and quantitative submissions, however, our preference is for all submissions to be written in the manner and style of critical inquiry, reflection, exposition, interpretation, debate, and argumentation. Of specific content interest are articles that demonstrate how youth are, or can be, actively involved in addressing poverty and hunger in communities around the province. Within the above context, we welcome submissions that help us advance in one or more of the following interdisciplinary research nodes:

  • Food Security: analyzing issues related to access to food, nutrition, and food banks;
  • Energy Poverty: analyzing low-income energy burden, access, efficiency, and assistance;
  • Poverty and Place: analyzing the geography of poverty, or the relationship between poverty and place;
  • Social Enterprise: analyzing the use of social enterprise as a means of reducing poverty;
  • Financial Exclusion: analyzing debt, assets, and low-income access to financial products and services;
  • Poverty and Education: analyzing the connection between poverty and education;
  • What is Poverty?: analyzing definition, comprehension, and conceptions of poverty;
  • Poverty and Health: analyzing the connection between poverty and health;
  • Poverty and Public Policy: analyzing how governments handle poverty as an issue of public policy; and
  • Comparative Poverty Research: analyzing other provincial, national, and global conditions and responses that can offer perspective on poverty in Ontario.

Journal Sections
The journal has the following sections that offer different perspectives on the research nodes:

Invited Contributions. Short articles from community members working and/or living at the front line of hunger and poverty will help put theory and policy into the context of an individual’s life experience.

Featured Article. Members of our editorial board will interview high-profile academics and leaders from community organizations to write articles that draw broader public interest to the journal. An innovative feature of these articles will place the perspectives of those interviewed in a dialogue with students and experts who deal with hunger and poverty through their own personal experience, their community involvement or their research. regions and nations do business and transform their economies.

Peer Reviewed Articles. Between four and eight articles will be published in each issue, featuring the work of emerging researchers.

 

Section Policies

Student Articles

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Invited Contributions

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Unchecked Peer Reviewed
 

Peer Review Process

All articles, both solicited and unsolicited, are subject to a double-blind review process by the editorial board.  The review process is anonymous  and, based on the comments of the referees, the principal editor makes the final decision as to whether a paper will be published, returned to the author for revision and resubmission, or declined.  Contributors should note that the review process for a peer-reviewed article can be lengthy and that first reviews may take up to eight weeks or longer.

All material will be submitted to the author for final approval before publication.  Articles accepted for publication will be published on a ";;;first-come, first-served";;;basis.

 

 

 

 

Publication Frequency

Esurio will be published twice annually.

 

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

 

Student Reviewer Development

The reviewer development programme is central to the aim of the journal as an educational platform. Building on-going personal relationships as well as related hard and soft skills is critical to the process and outcomes of the journal. A reviewer development programme will be run by the editors, experienced senior reviewers, and project advisors with a focus skill development through local workshops at participating institutions and the summer Esurio conference.

SOFT SKILL DEVELOPMENT

This programme will assist reviewers in developing soft skills and knowledge as ‘critical thinkers’ and ‘connected knowers.’ Critical thinking involves objective observation, defending ideas, debates, abstract and impersonal analysis, conceptualization and other elements we tend to view as central to academic study and traditional education. Less emphasized in education is the connected knower, one who understands deeply the value of expressing feelings, subjective responses, personal reflection, understanding another person’s viewpoint and relating ideas and theories to our experience. We would like to integrate critical thinking and connected knowing as a central feature in how we engage with each other and the articles we respond to and student reviewers will attend workshops before participating in the review process. These workshops will have students:

Discussing our knowledge of and experience with hunger and poverty;

Examining an article from a critical thinking and connected knower perspective; and

Identifying and breaking through myths and assumptions about hunger and poverty.

The workshops will serve as a starting point for reviewers to form small working groups (3-4 people) facilitated by an editor that will engage in an on-going in-person and online dialogue. The group's conversation will be framed by the four points listed above and, by working directly with content from current submissions to the journal, the reviewers would work with an editor to engage with the submission and each other.

HARD SKILL DEVELOPMENT

Beyond these important soft skills, the programme will also focus on the development of hard skills including editing, research methods in the social sciences, and academic coaching. The workshops that reviewers attend will have students acquire these hard skills by:· learning through practice how to effectively engage in collaborative editing, ensure accurate citation, and identify major stylistic and grammatical errors;· learning the basics of research methods in the social sciences in order to critically review the journal submissions; and· learning how to coach students through the process of developing their journal submission.These workshops will provide reviewers with hard, transferable skills that will be applied to their work with the journal, as well as their own academic careers.

 

Audience

There is currently no regular publication that focuses specifically on issues of hunger and poverty either in Ontario or across Canada. Esurio fills this gap. The audience for the journal will extend beyond the ivory tower through the affordability of online distribution and the connections of the Ontario Association of Food Banks, Meal Exchange, an influential body of Editors and Advisors and our contributors. The publication will seek to reach out to:

• Youth: University students.

University students represent our key target demographic. This target audience will include upper level undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in programs related to the interdisciplinary research nodes, as well as students with a general interest in issues of hunger and poverty.

• Thinkers: Researchers, think tanks, policy makers and academics.

The featured article will capture the attention of researchers, policy makers, and academics who take interest in the perspectives of high profile academics, politicians, and public figures. The dialogue and commentary that supplement these perspectives will help this audience to learn how those who live and experience poverty and hunger interpret the issues.

• Educators: Professors, supervisors, and teachers.

Educators that teach courses, supervise students projects on issues of hunger and poverty, or design educational programs that help students developing critical thinking and connected knowing skills will be interested in learning about the process of our reviewer development programme and the dialogue and interactive features that place the articles in a dynamic learning framework.

• Leaders: Community, political and business leaders.

Organizations working on issues of hunger and poverty will be interested in the journal as it will feature articles on best practices and programs taking place in communities across Ontario and beyond. Invited contributions by community members and articles written by students and co-authored with community organizations will profile evidence of successful programs and lessons learned in tackling hunger and poverty. Political leaders, food banks, housing advocates, social service agencies, and OAFB food industry contacts and donors, such as agriculture and producer group leaders, grocery industry leaders, as well as processors, manufacturers and distributors will benefit from this journal.

 

Distribution and Media Relations

Esurio will be connected through a number of high-profile websites and listservs. Esurio, its publication updates and calls for submissions are made available through the following websites and online communities or networks:

• Ontario Association of Food Banks - The OAFB home page receives over 4000 visitors per month with a devoted portion of the site developed for Esurio.

• Tamarack Vibrant Communities - Vibrant Communities is a community-driven effort to reduce poverty in Canada by creating partnerships between people, organizations, businesses and governments.

• Campaign 2000 – Focuses on increasing public awareness of the levels and consequences of child/family poverty by publishing research on the indicators of child poverty and developing public education resources.

• Canadian Social Research Links - A popular virtual resource centre for Canadian social program information.

• Povnet.org – A Canadian-based internet research database on poverty and related topics with links to Esurio.

• Food Secure Canada and the Canadian Association for Food Studies – National organizations support to members in strategic planning, training, tools, programme design advice, services, information, fundraising support to increase the capacity of civil society to be a strong and coherent voice for food security in Canada.

• Meal Exchange – A nation-wide organization supporting campus-based programmes that engage students in projects that address local hunger

• Directory of Open Access Journals - Esurio is registered with this service covering over 3500 free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals in the directory.

• McMaster University’s Library Commons – A repository of electronic scholarly and research journals that will host a direct link to the journal on the main page of the digital commons.

Within the next two years, our goal is to have the journal listed as a resource on:

• all Canadian university library research databases
• municipal library databases
• social policy and research think tanks
• social planning and research councils across the province
• community-based social service organizations
• community newspapers
• non-governmental organizations that support youth development or focus on issues of community-based research, hunger, poverty or food security

In addition to email listservs of the above organizations and the OAFB’s network food industry contacts and donors, the listservs in various departments will be used by our contacts in regional hubs at McMaster University, University of Guelph, University of Waterloo, University of Toronto, York University, Ryerson University, Queen’s University, University of Ottawa, and Lakehead University.

Engagement

Partnerships have already been established with Ryerson University, McMaster University and the University of Toronto, School of Public Policy and Governance through individuals and departments that have a particular interest in submissions related to applied research. By collaborating with Meal Exchange, the OAFB has access to promoting Esurio through fifty campus groups each year, which organize student-led food security programs.

 

About Us: Ontario Association of Food Banks

The Ontario Association of Food Banks (OAFB) is a network of over 100 food banks in communities across the province, from Windsor to Ottawa and Niagara Falls to Thunder Bay. The OAFB moves millions of pounds of food every year, coordinates the provincial food bank distribution network, encourages safety and quality, provides funding and training support to member food banks, and works to reduce hunger through policy, programs, and projects. Our member organizations distribute food through thousands of large and small programs to relieve hunger. Community agencies receiving food through OAFB member food banks include soup kitchens, shelters, community kitchens, food pantries, drop-in centres, and breakfast programs.

Public education and research is an important part of the OAFB’s mandate. Over the past two years, we have prepared and released four major government submissions, and six major research papers. Our research has been featured in major media outlets across the country, including editorial and news coverage in The Toronto Star, the Globe & Mail, the Hamilton Spectator, the Ottawa Citizen, CBC Radio and Television, GlobalTV, CTV Newsnet, and elsewhere. We have also had an impact on public policy at a provincial level, with policy changes and investments in child benefits, low-income savings programs, and poverty reduction initiatives resulting from our recommendations to the provincial government.

 

Managing Editor

Vass Bednar, HBaSc, Managing Editor. Vass is currently engaged with her Masters in Public Policy at the University of Toronto's School of Public Policy & Governance. She has previously worked as a Research Fellow with the OAFB, contributing to the Cost of Poverty Project and the OAFB's response to the Cabinet Committee on Poverty Reduction (Our Choice for a Better Ontario). Prior to that, she was the Coordinator of the McMaster Food Bank and Meal Exchange Chapter, where she graduated her Honours Bachelor of Arts & Science with the President's Medal for Excellence in Student Leadership. Vass continues to contribute as a research assistant to a project on AIDS media activism and is also a student on Meal Exchange's Board of Directors.

 

Editorial Board

Japji Anna Bas, MA. Japji is currently on maternity leave from a PhD in Environmental Studies at York University. As part of her doctoral work, she is exploring how the new field of happiness studies can contribute to a more humane politic of food security. Professionally, Japji works as a researcher on Canadian food policy both in Ontario and Nova Scotia. Prior to this, Japji worked as Urban Garden Mentors Project Coordinator at the Ecology Action Centre and as Food Security Coordinator for Oxfam Canada in Halifax. She holds a Master’s in International Development on Cuban Food Policy and has worked extensively in Cuba’s organic agriculture—in both rural and urban settings. Her career in the area of food issues got off to a flying start when, at age 22, she owned and operated a local, organic, macrobiotic restaurant, the Big Life Whole Foods Café, for two years. Her passion for a sustainable and socially just food system has been, and continues to be, a driving force in her life.

Susan Eckerle Curwood, MA. Susan is a PhD student in Community Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University. Prior to her return to academia, she coordinated Tamarack's Vibrant Communities, a pan-Canadian poverty reduction initiative. Her other experiences include two years in the Peace Corps in Bulgaria and three as training manager for the Missouri Association for Community Action, where she was instrumental in developing the Community Action Poverty Simulation and the Step Up to Leadership program. Susan is active in her community, serving on the Board of Directors of the Kitchener-Waterloo Volunteer Action Centre and the United Way's GenNext committee and volunteering with Saint John Ambulance and Grand River Animal Rescue. She lives with her husband Cam and an escape-artist dog named Bear ben Houdini.

Fiona Knight, MA. Fiona has worked as Program Director of FoodShare (Metro) Toronto and Program Director for the Ontario Child Nutrition Project, which matched school and community based child food programs with resources. She was part of the Canadian Working Group on Food Security until 2000, and assisted in preparing Canada’s Action Plan on Food Security, which provided a vision for Food Security work in Canada. In 2006, she coordinated Food Secure Canada, the only national interest group aligning zero hunger, a sustainable food system and local safe and healthy food supply in Canada. She has recently graduated with a Masters in Policy and Public Administration from Ryerson University in Toronto.

Sean Park, MA, Public Education Projects Co-ordinator, Ontario Association of Food Banks. Sean is an experienced student development facilitator with a background in inquiry and experiential education. He teaches a course on education and complexity science at McMaster University and examines the role of contemplative practice and lived experience in his research. His work with the OAFB has enabled him to build partnerships with faculty and community organizations around a vision and plan of action for engaging students in service learning and opportunities to think, reflect, communicate and act on addressing hunger and poverty.

Joanne Johnston, MA(c). Joanne is currently pursuing a collaborative Master’s of Arts Degree in Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her thesis topic focuses on investigating how poverty is represented in the research literature. Prior to attending graduate school, she spent almost 10 years servicing a diverse range of individuals impacted by poverty both in Canada and abroad. Through these experiences, she has been exposed to the hard realities and barriers of drug abuse, mental illness, disabilities, and criminal status. She is currently serving Metis youth facing barriers to employment.

Ajoy Bista, MA. Ajoy, a native of Nepal, and permanent resident in Ontario, received a Masters Degree in Economics in 1993 from Tribhuvan University, Nepal and received a second Masters Degree in Regional Development Planning in 1997 at the Dortmund University, Germany and the University of the Philippines. He completed a research in Development Economics at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan in 2004. Mr. Bista did a Graduate Diploma in International Rural Development Planning from University of Guelph, Ontario in 2005. He has worked as a Planner, Economist, and Evaluation Officer for the Government of Nepal for seven years where he was involved in planning and evaluating agricultural and rural development projects. In recognition of his works in Nepal with women farmer groups he won the International Prize for the Promotion of Youth in Agriculture from the German Agricultural Society in 1998. He is currently doing a Ph.D. in the Rural Studies Program at the University of Guelph where his research focuses on household consumption inequality and rural poverty.

 

Advisors

Dr. Mustafa Koc, PhD., Associate Professor of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, Ryerson University. Mustafa's research and teaching interests involve sociology of food and agriculture, food security and food policy, sociology of development, sociology of immigration. He is a co-founder of the Centre for Studies in Food Security, Food Secure Canada, and the Canadian Association for Food Studies and has been involved in various national and global debates on globalization, social change and development, food security, and peace.

Judith Maxwell, C.M., O.C.
Research Fellow, Canadian Policy Research Networks Inc. Judith is founder and past President of Canadian Policy Research Networks Inc. from 1995 to January 2006, is a former associate director of the School of Political Studies at Queen’s University and a former Chair, Economic Council of Canada. She was appointed Member of the Order of Canada in 1996. Judith is a member of the Board of the Ontario Association of Food Banks (OAFB).

Dr. Mark Stabile, PhD., Director, School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto. Professor Stabile received his PhD and MA from the Columbia University. In addition to teaching economics at the Rotman School of Management and the Department of Economics, he has served as Senior Policy Advisor to the Minister of Finance for the Government of Ontario from 2003 to 2005. He was awarded the 2002 Visiting Research Scholar to the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and the 2005 Visiting Research Scholar to the Centre for Health and the Social Sciences, University of Chicago. His academic honours include the John C. Polanyi Prize in Economics in 2003 and the 2002 Harry Johnson Prize from the Canadian Economics Association.

Adam Spence, B.A. Executive Director, Ontario Association of Food Banks. Adam is responsible for setting the direction of the organization with feedback from the membership, maintaining and building relationships with government and major partners, acting as the organization's spokesperson, and ensuring that the OAFB's vision, mission and goals are met. During Adam’s tenure with the organization since 2005, the OAFB has doubled the amount of food distributed, tripled its media coverage, doubled the size of its operating budget, and successfully lobbied for investments including the new Ontario Child Benefit for low income families. Adam’s work has been featured in the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, the Hamilton Spectator, and other major newspapers.

 


Esurio is published by the Ontario Association of Food Banks (OAFB).