Call for Papers: Canadian Public Policy / Analyse de politiques, Special Issue on 'Foreign Qualification Recognition at Twenty' [Scopus Indexed]

Canadian Public Policy / Analyse de politiques (CPP/Adp) has been published since 1975 and is a quarterly peer-reviewed journal examining economic and social public policy issues in Canada. It is published by the University of Toronto Press and carries ISSN 0317-0861 (print) and eISSN 1911-9917 (online). The journal was founded as a separate charitable organisation by the Canadian Economics Association, with sponsoring organisations including the Canadian Political Science Association, the Canadian Association of Law Teachers, the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, the Canadian Association of Geographers, the Canadian Association of Schools of Social Work, the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada and the Canadian Association for Business Economics. It was intended from the beginning to be multidisciplinary. The journal reports a Clarivate two-year impact factor of 1.4 for 2024, and SCImago (Scopus data as of March 2026) places it in Q2 with an h-index of 45.

The special issue is titled 'Foreign Qualification Recognition at Twenty: Legislative Evolution, Regulatory Change, and Pathways Forward'. Canada is nearing the twentieth anniversary of the introduction of provincial fair access legislation. The call notes that since Ontario introduced its Fair Access to Regulated Professions and Compulsory Trades Act in 2006, followed by related reforms across other provinces and territories, Canadian jurisdictions have experimented with new approaches to oversight, transparency and equitable access, and that recent legislative changes in several provinces have further reshaped the regulatory environment.

The special issue invites researchers to assess two decades of policy development and institutional innovation in foreign qualification recognition (FQR). The editors encourage contributions that examine the achievements of regulatory interventions as well as persistent challenges, and future directions for strengthening fairness, efficiency and equity in FQR systems. Anticipated publication is 2027.

The call lists six areas of interest, and states that submissions are not limited to them; manuscripts offering novel perspectives on any aspect of foreign qualification recognition are welcome.

• Evolution of Fair Access Legislation Across Canada - research tracing how provincial and territorial fair access frameworks have developed over time and the impacts of and correlates with those changes; similarity and difference across jurisdictions; analyses of oversight models, appeals processes and fairness auditing practices are especially welcome.
• Regulating in the Public Interest - studies exploring how the meaning of the public interest has changed, including the growing emphasis on equitable access to care, labour mobility, workforce sufficiency, and the continued importance of public health and safety, and how these expanded expectations influence regulators and policy actors.
• Impacts of Ministerial Directives and Legislative Reform - empirical analyses of recent policy interventions such as ministerial directives to health regulators, the prohibition of Canadian experience requirements, the acceptance of test results used for immigration purposes, or new requirements on processing timelines, and how these affect applicant outcomes, regulatory practices or registration timelines.
• Trends in Registration, Employment Match, and Labour Market Conditions - papers tracking patterns in licensing, supervised practice, provisional registration and employment match, connected to immigration policy changes, labour market shortages and broader economic conditions. Research that disentangles the effects of regulation, labour markets and immigration selection is of particular interest.
• The Foreign Qualification Recognition Ecosystem - analyses describing and evaluating the broader ecosystem of regulators, fairness offices, credential assessment bodies, settlement agencies, employers, postsecondary institutions and governments, identifying where coordination is strong or weak and proposing ways to build a more aligned system.
• Equity, Differential Impacts, and Systemic Barriers - studies examining how gender, race, region of training, migration pathways and other forms of inequality shape the experiences of internationally educated professionals, and how regulation can become more equitable.

The editors welcome submissions from economics, industrial relations, public policy, sociology, law, political science, education, health policy and related fields. In addition to submissions from academics, research contributions from non-academic community organisations are welcome. Comparative work involving other countries is encouraged if it offers clear relevance for Canada, which is the route through which an author outside Canada would ordinarily contribute.

One journal-wide condition applies to every submission, and it is not specific to this special issue. CPP/Adp welcomes submissions when at least one author either is affiliated with an institution that holds a subscription, either directly or through an intermediary such as Project MUSE, or holds a personal subscription, or is a member of the Canadian Economics Association, which purchases a group subscription. Personal subscriptions may be purchased from the University of Toronto Press. Prospective authors should confirm they meet this condition before preparing a manuscript.

• New submissions must be in PDF format, files not locked, and must be submitted through Manuscript Manager.
• In the 'Select special project/issue' area of the submission form, select 'Foreign Qualification Recognition at Twenty: Legislative Evolution, Regulatory Change, and Pathways Forward'.
• Manuscripts may be in either English or French and should not normally exceed 7,000 words, although exceptions may be discussed; initial submissions can be modestly longer and can be in a variety of styles.
• Authors must supply a cover letter disclosing all sources of financial support and any potential conflicts of interest, and stating if the authors will not be able to make the data available for replication requests.
• A title page carrying the title, author names and affiliations and acknowledgements is submitted separately from a single manuscript file whose first page is an anonymised title page and whose second page carries the abstract.
• The journal follows the author-date system of the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition. Final versions of accepted papers must be supplied in both PDF and MS Word; LaTeX and WordPerfect files are not accepted.
• Work must be original, unpublished in any language, and not under simultaneous consideration by another journal. The journal reserves the right to use plagiarism detection software.

No submission fee is stated. The special issue call states that accepted articles will be published open access. Separately, the journal's open access policy provides that under the Gold Open Access option the final published version of an article becomes freely available on the University of Toronto Press platform on payment of an article processing charge (APC) of $1,000 by the author or a funding body, and adds that most authors do not pay an APC and that it makes no difference to any editorial decision regarding an article. Queries about the APC go to journals@utpress.utoronto.ca.

Authors who do not have institutional access should note that meeting the submission condition may require purchasing a personal subscription from the University of Toronto Press or joining the Canadian Economics Association.

Submissions to the special issue will be reviewed through the journal's regular peer review process. All manuscripts are first reviewed by the Editor or a Co-Editor, who may consult one or more referees, and papers are appraised from the point of view of their public policy relevance. Papers should be of a high intellectual standard yet comprehensible to readers outside the author's own discipline. Data used by authors should be accessible to others upon request. Anticipated publication of the special issue is 2027.

The call notes that the Ontario Office of the Fairness Commissioner (OFC) may hold administrative data of interest to prospective authors. For information about OFC data availability, the editors direct enquiries to Samar Naqvi at Samar.Naqvi@ontario.ca.