About

Recherches qualitatives is a scholarly journal of methodology created in 1989 by the Association pour la recherche qualitative (ARQ). It is a transdisciplinary international Francophone journal. Texts published in the journal come from the varied sectors included in the huge disciplinary field of human and social sciences, health, education, management sciences, arts, etc. Since 1999, it has been fully available online for free. Print copies of prior issues (1989-1999) are available in the libraries of Québec universities.

Since it was created, Recherches qualitativeshas promoted and supported the development and comprehension of qualitative research and its methodologies. Its different collections support the production of critical analysis and synthesis texts that highlight the requirements, contributions and limits of methodological approaches, as well as improved, innovative or different ways of doing qualitative research.

Recherches qualitatives welcomes texts of various subjects:

· Analysis, comments, and critical reflections debating theoretical, methodological, ethical, epistemological or ideological questions related to qualitative research;

· Critical methodological analyses based on empirical studies or methodological experiments;

· Articles that present a synthesis of a methodological question, explain the state of current knowledge or outline the history of the development of a school of thought, paradigm, or approach in qualitative research;

· Reviews of works or textbooks on qualitative methodology.

Although a certain number of scientific journals around the world deal specifically with the methodological aspects of research, few of them constitute such an important vehicle for ideas, debates and reflections and are available in French. Recherches qualitativesis seen to be a unique resource for researchers, professors and graduate students interested in qualitative methods.

The Recherches qualitatives Collections

Recherches qualitativesincludes four collections. The two main ones are the Édition régulaire(regular edition) and the special edition collection Hors-Série “Les Actes” (special edition Acts)

Édition régulière

The Édition régulièreis published twice a year and consists of themed issues, most of which are helmed by guest editors who suggest areas for reflection and analysis in their call for texts. Texts submitted for this collection are subject to double-blind peer evaluation. The Édition régulièrecollection also publishes “off-topic” articles submitted to the journal apart from the planned themes (to submit an article, see the Directions for Authors). As well, every year since 2004 this collection has had the honour of publishing the winning text for the annual Jean-Marie-Van-der-Maren award of excellence.

This collection has been available on Érudit since June 2018. Previous issues published in electronic format since 1999 are freely available on the journal’s website.

Hors-série “Les Actes”

This collection publishes, on an irregular schedule, texts based on papers presented at congresses or conferences on qualitative methods, in particular those organized twice a year by the Association pour la recherche qualitative (ARQ). In distributing the texts of communications and papers, Recherches qualitatives wants to stimulate an exchange of ideas, debate and reflection around particular questions of interest to qualitative researchers. Texts in this collection are submitted to a single-blind evaluation by a reading committee. The collection was created in 2005 and has published 22 issues. It is available on the journal’s website.

Editorial policy and ethics

Directions for Authors

Authors wishing to submit a text to the Édition régulière may answer a call for texts, in which case they are invited to contact the editors for the issue in question directly. They are listed in the call for contributions.

As well, authors who want to submit a text to the Édition régulièrethat does not fit the suggested themes may do so at any time by sending their text to the journal’s secretary at Journal.RQ@uqtr.ca.

All texts submitted to the Édition régulièreare subject to an editorial evaluation, and then are either submitted for a peer evaluation or returned to the author (rejection or request for corrections). A double-blind evaluation process is used.

Text Format

Texts may be of varying lengths, but for reasons of conciseness, articles submitted to the Édition régulièreare not to exceed 60,000 characters (including spaces). This includes the summary, tables and figures, notes, references and appendices.

Any submission shall include the following in order:

· title page;

· summary;

· text;

· endnotes;

· references;

· appendices.

Figures and tables have to be integrated into the text. We ask authors to make sure that figures are of excellent quality and to note that we apply 4-cm right and left margins to the final texts.

The title page contains the following information about the authors:

· title of the article;

· name, title and institutional affiliation of the author(s);

· biographical note;

· email address.

Any “author’s note’or “authors’ note” has to go on this page. This section includes acknowledgements (funding sources and thanks) and special circumstances (data used in previous publications and potential conflicts of interest). At the end of the editorial process, this note will appear at the bottom of the first page of the article.

The summary consists of one paragraph of no more than 150 words. It cannot be the same as the first paragraph in the article. It has to state the objective of the author(s) in preparing the text and the themes developed. We ask authors to include three to five keywords after the summary.

The biographical note about each author is written as an approximately five-line paragraph (including the institution to which the author belongs or with which he or she is affiliated, the last diploma obtained, current position, areas of research or fields of professional interest and preferred methodology).

With respect to feminization, Recherches qualitatives follows the standards for publication suggested by the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF). Thus “truncated forms, that is, those modified by the use of different graphical marks (parentheses, hyphen, slash, period, comma) or by the use of a capital letter, are not [used]” (TRANSLATION) (Banque de dépannage linguistique, OQLF). Authors must follow the general principles of gender-neutral writing and the feminization procedures recommended by the OQLF. To learn more, we invite authors to consult the OQLF’s Banque de dépannage linguistique (http://bdl.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/bdl/gabarit_bdl.asp?id=3334).

For the presentation of references, Recherches qualitatives uses the standards of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2010 [6thed.]). For adaptations into French, authors may refer to Normes de présentations d’un travail de recherche by Provost, Alain, Leroux and Lussier (2016 [5thed.]).

All references mentioned in the text and the endnotes must be included. To make the author’s task easier, a few examples are given on the journal’s website.

Submit a text

Texts must be submitted electronically in Word (extensions .doc or .docx) or RTF (extension .rtf) format. Texts must be unpublished and not submitted to, accepted by or published in another publication, in whole or in part. If the content of the text has already been presented as part of a paper or communication, it must be clearly indicated. Authors shall provide this information when submitting their text.

Authors shall send their text to journal.rq@uqtr.ca with a copy to each coauthor. Receipt will be acknowledged.

After an editorial evaluation, the text will be submitted to at least two readers for a double-blind evaluation. An evaluation report will be sent to the authors in the following months.

No fees for publication are charged to authors. To support the journal and its development, we encourage them to join the ARQ.

Conditions of Use

Access to the journal is entirely free and without cost. The use of the texts for educational purposes is authorized. However, we ask users to link to the journal instead of publishing the articles on their sites. This practice gives RQ better measurements of the number of visits and articles consulted.

Persons wishing to reproduce, translate or adapt articles published in Recherches qualitativesmust present a request to the journal’s editors.

The reproduction of extracts is authorized as long as the complete reference is indicated.

The journal owns all rights.

Editorial board

Comité de rédaction

Direction

Frédéric Deschenaux, Université du Québec à Rimouski

Chantal Royer, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières

Membres du comité

Marta Anadón, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Pierre-Yves Barbier, Université de Moncton

Colette Baribeau, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières

Mélanie Gagnon, Université du Québec à Rimouski

Stéphanie Gaudet, Université d'Ottawa

Stéphane Martineau, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières

Amélie Maugère, Université de Montréal

Alex Mucchielli, Université de Montpellier 3 – Paul Valéry

Pierre Paillé, Université de Sherbrooke

Matthias Pepin, Université Laval

Jean-Pierre Pourtois, Université Mons-Hainault

Marc-Henry Soulet, Université de Fribourg

Soutien technique
Adjointe à la direction : Marie-Josée Berthiaume
Réviseure linguistique : Caroline Laflamme

Professionnelle : Julie Courcy

Traduction: Pierre Drolet