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About the Journal

Witness: The Canadian Journal of Critical Nursing Discourse  is a Canadian Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Nursing Journal.

We currently publish twice a year

We are a collective of registered nurses whose practice, research, teaching and way of being is rooted in social justice.

We embrace the open access movement and seek to further dismantle multiple systemic barriers to knowledge dissemination.

We invite critical nursing discourse rooted in Social Justice, Advocacy, Power, Justice, Intersectionality, and Critical Social Theory.

We welcome & embrace plurality in criticality.

The Editorial Collective welcomes submissions that are language-based and/or arts-informed.

And we welcome undergraduate nursing students to consider submitting works they are engaged in concerning social justice and advocacy and to do so working with a faculty member who will serve as co-author.

Announcements

Current Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2025): Nursing: A Discipline for Social Change
                                            NURSING:                                                             A DISCIPLINE FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Witness readers, editors, reviewers, supporters and contributors form a collective of critical nurses in Canada and beyond who strive to ameliorate inequities in the health and quality of life of all. By virtue of nursing’s privileged societal position, we witness a wide array of inequities that require us to take action. Our tag line represents the ethos of the journal: “See* it .... Speak it .... Write it .... Change it ....”

Periodically we issue an OPEN Call for Papers that reflects the ethos and intent of the journal - For 2023 we open with an Open Call we are naming " Nursing as a Discipline for Social Change."

Submission examples may include but are not limited to:

  • Nursing and Social Justice
  • Nursing AS Social Justice
  • Nurse Activism- examples, barriers, facilitators
  • Whistle Blowing in Nursing and health care
  • Rebel Nurses then and now
  • Critical Research Methodologies
  • Examples of/Calls for Resistance in Nursing
    • Anti-Oppression Nursing Efforts: Past or Present
  • Policy Advocacy by Nursing
  • Disruptive Innovations in Nursing Research, Practice or Education
  • Critical Pedagogy/Education for Social Change
  • Intersectional Analyses of Health or Quality of Life
  • Critical Analyses of Power in the context of Health, Quality of Life, or Nursing
  • Health (In)Equity
  • Social Justice Nursing
  • Decolonizing Nursing
  • Linguistic Hegemony and Resistance
  • Critical Community Health Nursing
  • Critical Disability lenses and practices in nursing
  • other? - Feel free to contact the editor in advance of the deadline to discuss a potential piece, and include a proposed abstract - we'd love to hear your ideas!

Submissions are to be nurse-authored or if submitted by a team, the lead/first author must be a nurse. Submission formats may include arts-based knowledge translation, practice-based research-based, or review manuscripts.  First-person narrative is welcomed and encouraged. For author guidelines, please see www.yorku.ca/witness. For any questions including to discuss a proposed submission, don’t hesitate to contact us at witness@yorku.ca. 

 Deadline for Submission through our online portal: January 6th , 2025

Note: Prospective authors must register with the journal in order to submit their work. Please be sure to submit, upload and populate all required elements at the time of submission. 

          
Published: 2025-06-30

Editorial

Articles

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