Not a journal about people with learning disabilities without people with learning disabilities
This is the chief editor's first editorial as chief editor and the journal needs to hear the voices of people with learning disabilities like never before and challenge the prejudice in who gets medical help.
Abstract
Accessible summaryThis is my first editorial as chief editor It is an honour to be editor The journal supports the rights of people with learning disabilities It works to improve their lives Editors before me helped to make the journal special They encouraged people with learning disabilities to get involved in writing papers One special issue of the journal was edited by researchers with learning disabilities in an inclusive research group Self‐advocates have said “if it's about us we should be able to write in it, otherwise what's the point?” Thanks to them we now have easy read guidance on how to write a paper and how to submit it to the journal I will make sure we have good guidance on how to review or quality check papers We want papers that are good at involving and respecting people with learning disabilities We want papers to be good research that says something new too I will also introduce In Response papers, where people with learning disabilities respond to the issues in other papers This will help us to see where the papers are relevant to people's lives You can now write up to 7,000 words in papers for the journal Before it was just 5,000 words There are new editors: Alex Kaley, Edurne Garcia Iriate, Elisabeth Olin, Lucy Series, Tim Stainton, Vasilis Strogilos, Iva Strnadova, Liz Tilley, Ben Simmons and Simo Vehmas I end with a word about COVID‐19 It means we need to hear the voices of people with learning disabilities like never before We need to challenge the prejudice in who gets medical help We should be proud of the great easy read information that people are sharing And the creative ways people are finding to stay connected, and to stay safe and calm