This editorial policy sets out the scientific, ethical, technical and documentary principles governing the publication of articles in Aleph. Langues, Médias et Sociétés. It specifies the journal’s scope, the general conditions for submission, the peer-review process, the open access policy, copyright, licensing, archiving, publication charges and the transparency requirements applicable to optional editorial services.
Detailed author guidelines, the stylesheet, article templates and the updated composition of the editorial, scientific and international boards are published separately on the journal website. The present page is the reference document for the journal’s general editorial policy.
1. Mission, editorial line and scientific scope
Aleph. Langues, Médias et Sociétés is an international peer-reviewed scholarly journal published in full and immediate open access. It welcomes original research mainly in language sciences, textual studies, discourse analysis, literary, cultural and media studies, and information and communication sciences.
The journal publishes theoretical, methodological, empirical and epistemological research on language uses and practices, texts and discourses, media, literatures, cultures, documentary practices, the circulation of knowledge, information access systems, transformations of the document, and the social, symbolic or institutional issues of communication.
Aleph primarily publishes original research articles. Depending on its editorial programme, it may also publish thematic issues, Varia articles, research notes, scholarly interviews, book reviews, annotated bibliographies and methodological contributions, provided that these texts meet the journal’s scientific standards.
2. General principles of editorial governance
The journal is managed by a the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial board, assisted by an editorial board, a scientific board and, where appropriate, issue-specific committees appointed according to the themes published. The institutional affiliations of the members of the journal’s scientific and editorial bodies are made public on a dedicated page of the journal website.
Editorial decisions are based exclusively on scientific, methodological, ethical and editorial criteria. They may not be influenced by the authors’ geographical or institutional origin, nationality, language, gender, beliefs, academic status, or by any commercial, political or personal consideration unrelated to the quality of the manuscript.
The journal promotes disciplinary, institutional, geographical and linguistic diversity among its authors, reviewers and editorial officers, in accordance with its scientific profile and international orientation.
3. Submission and admissibility of manuscripts
Authors may submit an article in response to a call for papers or to the Varia section, in accordance with the orientations published by the journal. All submissions must comply with the author guidelines and the current stylesheet, which are available on dedicated pages.
A manuscript submitted to Aleph must be original, unpublished, not previously published in a substantially identical form, and must not be under simultaneous consideration by another journal, collective volume or any other peer-reviewed editorial outlet.
The list of authors must accurately reflect the substantial scientific contributions made to the conception, production, analysis, writing or validation of the manuscript. Any change to the list of authors after submission must be justified in writing and approved by all persons concerned.
4. Multilingual metadata and international visibility
In order to strengthen the visibility, accessibility, indexing and interoperability of published content, every accepted article must include complete and carefully revised metadata. Titles, abstracts, keywords, affiliations, author identifiers and bibliographical references are scientific and documentary elements in their own right.
Whatever the main language of the article, metadata must be provided in the language of the article, in French, in English and in Arabic, unless these languages overlap. Abstracts must clearly state the research object, the problem addressed, the theoretical or methodological framework, the corpus or fieldwork, the main findings and the scientific contribution of the article.
Authors are encouraged to provide an ORCID identifier, a complete institutional affiliation, country of affiliation, an academic email address where possible, and any information that improves the identification, citability and scientific traceability of the publication.
5. Detailed peer-review process
All scholarly contributions submitted to Aleph undergo a structured evaluation process combining preliminary editorial screening, compliance checking, research integrity assessment and double-blind peer review when the manuscript is deemed admissible.
5.1. Preliminary editorial screening
Upon receipt, each manuscript is subject to a preliminary screening by the Editor-in-Chief, the editorial board or a mandated editorial officer. This step concerns the fit with the journal’s scientific scope, minimal compliance with submission requirements, the presence of required metadata, general readability, apparent originality and the absence of manifest breaches of research integrity.
A manuscript may be rejected without external review when it is manifestly out of scope, insufficiently scholarly, closer to a teaching handout than to a problematised research article, contrary to publication ethics, seriously non-compliant with the guidelines or lacking the fundamental elements expected of a research article.
5.2. Integrity and similarity checking
Manuscripts may be subject to similarity checking and editorial verification in order to identify plagiarism, concealed self-plagiarism, unattributed borrowing, data manipulation, fabrication of results, falsification of references or any other form of research misconduct.
Similarity checking is not reduced to a mechanical threshold. It is assessed qualitatively by considering the nature of the matches, the presence or absence of quotation marks, references, block quotations, properly attributed paraphrases and legitimate scholarly uses of the corpus.
5.3. Double-blind peer review
Admissible manuscripts are anonymised and sent to at least two external, independent reviewers with expertise in the relevant field. The process is conducted as a double-blind review: reviewers do not know the identity of the authors, and authors do not know the identity of the reviewers.
Reviewers are selected on the basis of their expertise, availability, independence and absence of conflict of interest. Except where scientifically justified, they should not belong to the same institution as the authors and must recuse themselves whenever they consider that they cannot evaluate the manuscript impartially.
5.4. Evaluation criteria
The evaluation addresses, in particular, the originality of the contribution, the relevance of the research problem, the strength of the theoretical framework, methodological rigour, the quality of the corpus or fieldwork, argumentative coherence, the currency and relevance of the bibliography, linguistic and typographical quality, ethical compliance and the contribution of the article to the relevant field.
5.5. Editorial decisions
At the end of the evaluation process, the editorial decision may take one of the following forms: acceptance without modification; acceptance subject to minor revisions; request for major revision with a new review or editorial re-examination; or reasoned rejection. In the event of contradictory reviews, the journal may seek a third review or consult a member of the scientific board.
Authors receive a reasoned notification accompanied, where applicable, by the anonymised comments of the reviewers. The final decision rests with the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial board, taking into account the expert reports, the journal’s editorial line, the integrity of the file and the quality of the revised version.
5.6. Revisions, response to reviewers and final validation
When revisions are requested, authors submit a revised version accompanied, if requested by the journal, by a detailed response to the reviewers’ comments. This response must clearly indicate the changes made, the points discussed and the scientific choices maintained by the authors.
A major revision may be sent for a further external review. A minor revision may be subject to internal editorial verification. Final acceptance is granted only after validation of the final version by the journal.
5.7. Appeals and second review
In the event of rejection, authors may request a reasoned editorial reconsideration within a reasonable time. Such a request does not create an automatic right to a new evaluation. The editorial board assesses its admissibility in light of the arguments presented and the reports already established.
5.8. Confidentiality of the process
Submitted manuscripts, review reports, editorial exchanges and internal decisions are treated confidentially. Reviewers and editors may not use, disseminate or exploit the data, arguments, results or interpretations of an unpublished manuscript without the prior consent of the authors.
6. Open access policy
Summary of the open access policy
Aleph. Langues, Médias et Sociétés applies a policy of immediate open access: published articles are freely accessible as soon as they are made available online, without embargo, without subscription and without prior registration requirement. Access to content is free of charge. The journal does not charge any mandatory submission, peer-review, acceptance, publication or online hosting fee. Authors retain full copyright, and articles are disseminated under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence — CC BY 4.0.
Aleph applies a policy of immediate open access. All published articles are freely accessible without embargo, subscription, paywall or mandatory registration. Readers may consult, download, read, cite, share and reuse articles under the conditions defined by the applicable licence.
The journal supports an open circulation of knowledge compatible with the principles of open science, the international visibility of research in the humanities and social sciences, and equitable access to scholarly publications.
7. Copyright and Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 licence
Authors retain full copyright over the texts they publish in Aleph. Langues, Médias et Sociétés. The journal does not require any exclusive transfer of economic rights and does not replace authors as holders of their moral and economic rights.
By submitting an article and, where applicable, by having it published in the journal, authors grant Aleph. Langues, Médias et Sociétés a non-exclusive right of first publication, reproduction, dissemination, public communication, indexing, archiving and making available of the published version through the journal’s scholarly media, platforms, archives and dissemination channels.
After final acceptance of the article, authors sign a non-exclusive publication, dissemination and archiving authorisation. This document confirms that authors retain full copyright and grant Aleph. Langues, Médias et Sociétés a non-exclusive right of first publication, dissemination, indexing and archiving of the published version. This authorisation is consistent with the dissemination of articles under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence — CC BY 4.0.
Unless expressly stated otherwise for third-party content, illustrations, archival documents, images, tables, corpora or any other material requiring specific permission, articles published in Aleph. Langues, Médias et Sociétés are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence — CC BY 4.0.
This licence permits sharing, copying, redistribution, adaptation, translation, reproduction and reuse of articles, in any medium or format, including for commercial purposes, provided that the author is properly credited, the title of the article, the journal, the year of publication, and the URL or DOI of the article are mentioned, that a link to the licence is provided, and that any changes are clearly indicated.
Distribution under CC BY 4.0 does not deprive authors of their copyright. It establishes the conditions for public reuse of the published article while preserving scholarly and editorial attribution, the integrity of the bibliographic reference and the traceability of the published version.
8. Archiving, preservation and redistribution policy
Aleph implements an archiving policy designed to ensure the preservation, availability, documentary stability and citability of published content. This policy is based on a dual editorial presence: archiving on the official journal website and deposit or availability of content on the ASJP platform when it is used for the dissemination of issues and articles.
8.1. Archiving on the official journal website
The official journal website is the reference space for the presentation of the journal, the publication of editorial policies, access to issues, consultation of articles, display of metadata, dissemination of PDF or facsimile files and provision of the information required for scholarly citation.
Each published article is preserved with its essential metadata: title, authors, affiliations, abstracts, keywords, publication date, issue, pagination or location identifier, permanent URL where available, DOI where applicable, licence, citation information and reference file.
The journal endeavours to maintain access to its published archives and to correct, where necessary, broken links, metadata errors or documentary inconsistencies that may affect the identification of articles.
8.2. Archiving and dissemination on ASJP
When issues or articles are disseminated on the ASJP platform, this presence constitutes a complementary space for preservation, discovery, consultation and institutional visibility. Versions deposited on ASJP must be consistent with the information published on the official journal website, particularly with regard to article titles, authors, metadata, licence, editorial dates, abstracts and keywords.
The journal seeks to ensure consistency between the content published on its website and the content available on ASJP. In the event of divergence between several versions, the journal indicates, where necessary, the reference version to be cited.
8.3. Backup, formats and continuity of access
The journal preserves reference editorial files, including final validated versions, published PDF files, metadata, cover materials, tables of contents and the documents required for publication traceability. Content is backed up so as to reduce the risk of loss, alteration or prolonged unavailability.
Authors are authorised to deposit the published version of their article in an institutional or subject-based open archive, including HAL, a university repository or a recognised scientific repository, provided that the first publication in Aleph is cited and the URL or DOI of the published version is indicated where available.
Corrections, errata, retraction notices or editorial statements published after the fact are linked, as far as possible, to the record of the article concerned in order to preserve the integrity of the scientific file and the transparency of the publication history.
9. Charges policy and optional editorial services
Aleph is an open access scholarly journal. Submission, peer review, editorial acceptance and publication of articles do not give rise to any mandatory charges.
Aleph. Langues, Médias et Sociétés does not charge any mandatory submission fee, peer-review fee, acceptance fee, publication fee or online publication fee. Any external editorial services — in-depth linguistic correction, typographical preparation, bibliographic standardisation or layout — are optional, separate from the scientific evaluation process and do not condition acceptance or publication of an article.
|
Type of charge |
Mandatory amount charged to authors |
|
Submission fee |
0.00 — no mandatory charge |
|
Peer-review fee |
0.00 — no mandatory charge |
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Mandatory editorial processing fee |
0.00 — no mandatory charge |
|
Article Processing Charge — APC |
0.00 — no mandatory charge |
|
Page charge |
0.00 — no mandatory charge |
|
Colour charge |
0.00 — no mandatory charge |
|
Online publication fee |
0.00 — no mandatory charge |
When a manuscript is deemed scientifically admissible but does not meet the journal’s linguistic, typographical, bibliographic or formal requirements, authors are invited to submit a revised version complying with the applicable editorial standards. They may carry out this revision themselves or freely choose a professional of their choice.
The journal does not impose any service provider. When an author voluntarily chooses to entrust the manuscript to ÉDILES — Édition et Diffusion de l’Écrit scientifique — or to a provider recommended for information purposes by the journal, such intervention is subject to a separate mandate, quotation, approval form or written consent signed before any service is performed. This agreement specifies the nature of the service, its cost, deadlines and the responsibilities of each party.
Any billing related to an optional editorial service is separate from the scientific evaluation process and from the publication decision. It is neither a submission fee, nor a publication fee, nor a condition of acceptance, nor a condition for putting an article online.
10. Publication ethics, research integrity and conflicts of interest
The journal applies a research integrity policy based on transparency, responsibility, confidentiality of the editorial process, prevention of conflicts of interest, fight against plagiarism, prevention of redundant publication and the possibility, where necessary, of publishing corrections, errata, expressions of concern or retractions.
Authors, reviewers, editors and members of the scientific bodies must declare any conflict of interest likely to influence submission, evaluation, editorial decision, interpretation of results or scientific reception of the article.
Detailed rules concerning publication ethics and the respective responsibilities of the journal, authors and reviewers are set out on the dedicated Ethics and Responsibilities page.
11. Use of generative artificial intelligence tools
The use of generative artificial intelligence or writing-assistance tools is permitted only as a technical or linguistic aid, subject to transparency and under the sole responsibility of the authors. These tools cannot replace the authors’ scientific, argumentative, documentary and ethical responsibility.
Any substantial use of a generative AI tool in the preparation of the manuscript must be declared at submission, specifying the tool used, the nature of the assistance and the extent of human verification. AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.
12. Corrections, errata, expressions of concern and retractions
When a substantial error is identified after publication, the journal may publish a correction, an erratum or an editorial note. When the scientific integrity of an article is seriously compromised, it may publish an expression of concern or proceed with a reasoned retraction, in accordance with the principles of transparency and traceability.
Authors are required to inform the journal promptly of any important error or inaccuracy discovered after publication and to cooperate with the editorial team in order to correct or clarify the scientific record.
13. Contact
For any information concerning editorial policy, submission, review, open access, copyright, archiving, licensing, charges or publication standards, authors may write to:
Requests are handled by the editorial team within a timeframe compatible with the scholarly functioning of the journal.