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Editorial policy

Preamble

Ambiances Journal publishes original contributions written in French or English dealing with the sensory environment, architecture or the urban space. Its transdisciplinary scope makes it open to contributions from a wide variety of research disciplines.

Ambiances welcomes scientific articles sent at any time (“Ambiances Varia” section) or as part of recurrent calls (“Special Issues” section). Moreover, it publishes little-known or little-shared fundamental texts, translated into French or English (“Rediscovering” section). Beyond research articles, the journal also publishes reading notes and precis of written, sound or video productions on the theme of ambiances (“Reports” section).

The editorial policy of Ambiances Journal relies on a double-blind peer-review process by two referees (see “Evaluation policy”). The journal adheres to good practice of open science (see “Ethical statement and transparency”). Ambiances is indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) with articles available for free on its website under Creative Commons licence. The journal does not charge any fee to authors or research laboratories for their publications. Ambiances is funded by French public research funds.

To submit an article to the journal, please consult the “Notes for authors” section on our website.

Editorial definition

Identity

  • Title: Ambiances

  • Subtitle: International journal of sensory environment, architecture and urban space.

  • Digital ISSN 2266-839X

  • Frequency: Annual (once a year)

  • Year of creation: 2013

  • Editor: International Ambiances Network

Publication schedule

The annual special issues respect the following provisional schedule:

  • Launch of the call for articles: early January

  • Reception of articles: mid-April

  • Decision to authors: late April

  • Evaluation of articles: late June

  • Reception of revised articles: mid-September

  • Edition: late October

  • Publication on the journal website: December

The publication of one-off contribution respects the following generic schedule:

  • Reception of the article

  • Decision to author: 2 weeks

  • Evaluation of the article: 8 weeks

  • Reception of the revised article: 4 weeks

  • Edition: 4 weeks

  • Publication on the journal website

Publication statistics

In August 2020, the statistics for the publication of scientific articles for Ambiances Journal were as follows:

  • Average time between the final submission and the publication: 45 weeks

  • Number of scientific articles received (annual average): 20.3, including articles rejected during the evaluation and withdrawal from the process by the authors.

  • Number of articles published (annual average): 8.4

  • Acceptance rate (average since 2013): 41.5%

Policy per section

Special issues:

  • Description: publication of original scientific articles as part of a specific call for articles published on the website of the journal.

  • Frequency: reception of articles as part of an annual call for articles.

  • Submission format: articles between 25,000 and 50,000 characters, including spaces and footnotes according to the presentation rules. We welcome accompanying illustrations and multimedia documents provided that the person submitting them has secured the publication rights (images, audio tapes, video clips).

  • Double-blind peer-review: the articles received and accepted by the editorial committee are sent to two referees.

  • Publication referenced with a DOI.

Ambiances varia:

  • Description: publication of original scientific articles.

  • Frequency: open call throughout the year. Reception and processing of articles as they come.

  • Submission format: articles between 25,000 and 50,000 characters, including spaces and footnotes according to the presentation rules. We welcome accompanying illustrations and multimedia documents provided that the person submitting them has secured the publication rights (images, audio tapes, video clips).

  • Double-blind peer-review: the articles received and accepted by the editorial committee are sent to two referees.

  • Publication referenced with a DOI.

Rediscovering:

  • Description: publication of articles requested for the rediscovery of old articles that are important for the discipline and translated into English.

  • Frequency: open call throughout the year. Reception and processing of articles as they come.

  • Evaluation: the articles are studied by the editorial board, which formulates a common decision: rejection (for different reasons, in particular the thematic distance or insufficient quality), acceptance or request for revision.

  • Publication without DOI.

Evaluation policy

Articles should be sent to the journal’s email address (journal@ambiances.net). Ambiances Journal will notify the authors of the reception of the contributions.

The papers are first examined by the editorial board, which makes a joint decision: rejection, acceptance for the external expertise process, or request for revisions before the external expertise process. For special issues, the decision is made in collaboration with the guest editors.

Once they have been accepted for external expertise, the articles will go through a double-blind peer-review process. The articles will be anonymised and sent to two external reviewers. They will send their evaluations within two months. In certain cases, a third evaluation can be required.

It is asked of reviewers to send back a detailed report including the following criteria:

  • Clarity of the objectives, methodology and results;

  • Acceptable description of the methodological approach;

  • Coherence and logic of the argument;

  • Novelty of the approaches or concepts presented;

  • Contextualisation of the article regarding the social, architectural, urban and/or theoretical issues addressed;

  • Relevance of the references with respect to the existing literature;

  • Contribution of the article to the field of ambiances.

Once the two evaluations have been received, the editorial board decides on the final acceptant, final rejection or additional revisions of the article. In accordance with the opinion of the external reviewers, the required revision can be light or more substantial. The decision of the editorial board is sent to the authors, along with the anonymised comments from the external reviewers.

Authors will usually have a month to revise their article and send it back, along with a text explaining the revisions done and their potential answers to comments and questions from the reviewers. The editorial board will study the elements and make a new decision regarding the acceptance of the article. In some cases, the opinion of the initial reviewers is sought.

Dissemination policy

Open access publication

Since its creation in 2013, Ambiances has proposed a free and immediate access to all its content on the basis that the free availability of research encourages the sharing of knowledge. Therefore, Ambiances is a journal indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

The articles of Ambiances Journal are published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Publication fees

  • Publication fees: none

  • Submission fees: none

Self-archiving policy

Ambiances journal encourages posting of research manuscripts, avoiding the journal formatting style, on public servers (institutional or disciplinary).

The self-archiving policy of manuscripts is summarized below:

  • Authors can share all their version s of the manuscript in institutional or disciplinary public servers (preprint, accepted manuscript, version for the archives).

  • Posting of preprints is not considered prior publication and will not jeopardize consideration at Ambiances journal.

  • If accepted for publication, we encourage authors to link from the published version to the formal publication in Ambiances website via its Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and the URL.

  • Authors can update their preprints with their accepted manuscript without the Ambiances journal layout.

Ethical statement and transparency

Statement of editorial Best Practices

The Ambiances editors-in-chief endorse the points 6 to 10 of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (https://sfdora.org/read/):

  • “6. Greatly reduce emphasis on the journal impact factor as a promotional tool, ideally by ceasing to promote the impact factor or by presenting the metric in the context of a variety of journal-based metrics (e.g., 5-year impact factor, EigenFactor [8], SCImago [9], h-index, editorial and publication times, etc.) that provide a richer view of journal performance.

  • 7. Make available a range of article-level metrics to encourage a shift toward assessment based on the scientific content of an article rather than publication metrics of the journal in which it was published.

  • 8. Encourage responsible authorship practices and the provision of information about the specific contributions of each author.

  • 9. Whether a journal is open-access or subscription-based, remove all reuse limitations on reference lists in research articles and make them available under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication [10].

  • 10. Remove or reduce the constraints on the number of references in research articles, and, where appropriate, mandate the citation of primary literature in favor of reviews in order to give credit to the group(s) who first reported a finding.”

Responsibilities of authors and originality of manuscripts

Ambiances should only take into consideration articles that have not been previously published or submitted for publication, regardless of the format.

The authors of the articles must have contributed actively to the research. In case of conflict in the authorship of an article, the Ambiances editors should contact the author who claims authorship to establish the truth of the matter. If the editors think it is relevant, access to the article might be temporarily closed until a decision is made.

Copyrights and intellectual property

The authors are allowed to protect the intellectual property of their manuscripts, and it is recognised by the editors. The journal publishes content with a Creative Commons Attribution BY NC (Non Commercial) ND (No Derivatives) licence.

The editorial board, guest editors and external reviewers working with the original manuscript before its publication pledge not to use its content without explicit authorisation by the authorisation, considering that the content is confidential until its publication.

Freedom of participants to do research

The editorial board guarantees the implementation of ethical and responsible research practices. They have the right to request assurance that the studies were approved by competent organisations. If the research involves personal data, the resulting work must be accompanied by a declaration of consent. The editorial board retains the right to reject a work in case of doubt regarding the respect of appropriate procedures.

Conflicts of interest

The editors, authors and reviewers are responsible for communicating any conflict of interest regarding a publication when it could affect their ability to assess the work objectively. Ambiances requires of its reviews a declaration of conflicts of interest that they may have during the examination of the articles attributed.

Monitoring scientific integrity

The editors and reviewers have the right to expect the manuscript to be original and respectful of intellectual property, to not plagiarise nor infringe copyrights of images and texts. The authors must declare that the work submitted is original and that they have moral rights upon it.

To assist the work of reviewers and check for potential plagiarism, every article should be analysed with Compilatio. If the editorial board has concrete evidence of plagiarism, they should contact the authors to clarify the situation.

If the expertise of the articles notices evidence of bad scientific practices (examples: fabrication of data, plagiarism, manipulation of results, etc.), the reviewers should express their suspicions. If they are confirmed, Ambiances will take the necessary measures and reject the article. However, in all cases, the authors will have a right of reply to the complaints in order to prove that the research was carried out diligently.

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