illustration General rules

General rules

As interdisciplinary Open Access journal for all social sciences, EspacesTemps.net relies widely on spontaneous article suggestions from authors outside the Editorial Board (see current listing of all authors for EspacesTemps.net). Well-referenced on the Internet, the articles published on EspacesTemps.net, which can be consulted free of charge, offer optimal visibility to their authors.

The Editorial office receives an important number of articles, which forces them to take care of the editing in « continuous flow » in order to meet their commitments.

The following guidelines are meant to streamline the « assembly line » of the journal. They are given in the interest of the authors, who are invited to stick to them as scrupulously as possible.

EspacesTemps.net does not charge any publication fees to authors and does not impose any minimum pages commitment. The journal is Open Access and readers are free to read, copy, distribute, download, print, search or link the full text of articles.

Working languages and third languages.

EspacesTemps.net has chosen English and French as its working languages. Articles written in other languages (third languages) are welcome provided that a translation into one of these two languages is also available for publication.

Submission conditions.

The article must comply with the following requirements:

  • clear indication of the type of article being proposed (article for peer review, essay, work in progress, book review; see below);
  • text having a coherence between the format and the content and respecting imperatively the typographical charter;
  • clearly laid-out title (in English and French) and subtitles;
  • complete bibliography of sources quoted;
  • short abstract (700–1000 characters, except for book reviews) in English and French.
  • five keywords in English and French;
  • author biography for every author (700 characters each approximately) in English and French; and
  • at least one copyright-free picture (except for book reviews, for which the Editorial office normally provides a reproduction of the book cover).

The Editorial office can help with English and French translation of titles, abstracts, keywords and author biographies.

Types of evaluation.

Section “Works”.

Three types of evaluations are possible for the theoretical or methodological research articles that contribute to the epistemological reflection in the social sciences submitted to the « Works » section of EspacesTemps.net: evaluation by external experts, evaluation by internal experts and interactive follow-up.

 

Peer reviewAll types of evaluation are peer review and appear with a distinctive sign (porcupine pictogram). The author may choose between these three types of evaluation.

Evaluation by external experts: this evaluation is made by by two external reviewers who write down their evaluation according to a grid of criterions provided by the Editorial office. Every article is then sent to a member of the Board, who forwards to its author a compilation of the reviewers’ comments, including quotations from their evaluation reports. Articles oriented toward external peer-review evaluation must also include a longer abstract of 2500–3000 characters in the other working language.

Evaluation by internal experts: this evaluation is carried out by a single expert (a member of the Editorial Board or Scientific Committee) who writes his/her assessment according to the grid of criterions of the journal.

Interactive follow-up: This type of evaluation is close to the evaluation by internal experts but has a pre-acceptance step that the article is evaluated in the form of a summary. First, the authors are invited to send us a summary of the article detailing the statement of the content and the methodology as well as the results and the discussions of their studies in an explicit and satisfactory way.

This summary must satisfy the following conditions:

  • A title of 80 maximum signs referring to the subject treated in French or in English;
  • A text of 3000 – 4000 signs maximum respecting imperatively the typographical charter.
  • Five keywords in French or English.

The main bibliographic references must be integrated to the summary.

The summary is the subject of an initial evaluation by the editorial office. If this evaluation is positive, the editorial office solicits an internal expert for the « interactive follow-up ». The expert provides support for the drafting of the article in its final version by interacting with the authors. The deadlines of interactions are defined by the expert. This process and the final version of the article are subject to the expert’s assessment. As a reminder, a positive evaluation of the summary does not mean acceptance of the article in its final form.

Other sections.

Evaluation by internal experts is mandatory for articles submitted to other sections of the journal (laboratory, books, objets).

Each author undertakes ipso facto to respect the exclusivity of submission and publication, whatever the type of evaluation.

Work-in-progress essays and articles.

In accordance with its editorial project, EspacesTemps.net offers a privileged publishing space for « non-standard » or « alter-academic » forms of scientific papers. Generally free of any footnote apparatus, free-form essays and work-in-progress articles (revealing ongoing research) are particularly welcome.

Book reviews.

The Editorial Board provides listings of books selected for reviewing but remains open to any spontaneous suggestion unrelated to the listings.

Procedure.

Prospective authors should make their interest for reviewing a book, taken or not from the listing, known to the Editorial Office. If the suggestion is accepted, the author is sent a copy of the book to be reviewed (through press services), fixes a deadline for the submission of the review in agreement with the Editorial office and chooses to write:

  • a full-fledged, detailed, and analytical review of a single book : 4000 to 20,000 characters;
  • a joint review of two or more thematically related books : 6000 to 30,000 characters; or
  • an article about a classic work : 4000 to 20,000 characters.

Reviews of a single book by multiple authors, especially from different fields, are also welcome, by means of either a single multi-author text or through the dialogue of several texts.

The completed article is to be sent to the Editorial office within the fixed deadline; it will then be evaluated by the Editorial Board.

Conditions.

Book reviews must comply with the following requirements:

  • They are not limited to mere reading notes but consist in full-fledged articles, involving in-depth analysis, structured argumentation, and critical views about the book.
  • The interdisciplinary orientation must be an essential component of the article; it must notably make clear what the book can bring to readers outside of its given field. Implicit allusions are to be avoided; one should always keep in mind the eventuality of readers unfamiliar to the field.
  • The link with social sciences must be explicit in the review, even and especially when it is not so in the book itself.
  • The article must include a title, suggested by the author, different from the title of the book itself, as well as complete references (author, title, place of publication, publisher, and year).

Consult the listing of recently published books.

Traversals.

Each Traversal submitted to EspacesTemps.net is an open file where new contributions can enrich the set of initial articles. It consists of editorial and at least 5 articles.

Items submitted as part of a crossing are assessed in the same way as independent articles. Authors can choose between external expert evaluation and internal expert evaluation.

Open peer review.

According to our editorial line, the articles are not treated anonymously during the evaluation procedure, but according to a procedure of double transparency. Both authors and evaluators are brought to the attention of those concerned. However, the author may request an anonymous evaluation.

Copyright.

Upon publication of an article in EspacesTemps.net, all copyrights are automatically granted to the journal. The author has the right to distribute, reproduce his article on another platform without asking for the agreement of the journal provided that the credit is given to EspacesTemps.net as initial publication with the complete listing of the article. EspacesTemps.net may require the author’s authorization for subsequent publication in another journal.

As per open-archive funds, the author has the right to file the full version of the article, but must include the URL of the article referring to the original publication on EspacesTemps.net.