Instructions to authors

ARCS publishes original papers in French or English under the three following headings:

  1. Research papers ("articles"): papers presenting an original research project in Human and Social Sciences, either using network analysis methods or delivering a theoretical and methodological study of network analysis in Human and Social Sciences;

  2. Data papers: papers presenting the building and thematic interest of a dataset describing ties between entities (edge list, matrix...);

  3. Software papers: presentation of a tool, software, package of network analysis

  4. Review: feedback on seminars and conferences, review of books, phd thesis but also available databases, software, website, journals, algorithms, research projects, etc. related to network analysis

The papers’ length varies depending on the section: 80,000 characters or under for research articles (including spaces, footnotes and references), or shorter for the other sections.

No simultaneous submission to other publication outlets is allowed.

How to submit a paper

To submit a paper, the Author must upload its proposition on the HAL platform. Once the submission goes online, he/she has to submit the article (click "submit an article") on the ARCS platform (accessible with its HAL credentials). If the Author wants to submit a new version of its article (second wave of the evaluation), he/she needs to update the initial HAL record instead of creating a new HAL record.

If you have any issue with this process, please contact us using the following email address: arcs@episciences.org

Peer review

Upon receipt of the submission, an electronic confirmation of receipt is sent to the Author.

The papers are assessed by three reviewers, including at least one member of the ARCS Editorial Committee and one external expert nominated by the members of the Editorial Committee. The evaluation process is anonymous – the list of external experts who took part in our peer review process on each given year is published in the journal on the following year.

The paper is reviewed on the basis of: relevance to the journal’s themes and objectives, and to the section is has been submitted for; originality of the topic it addresses; overall quality of the demonstration; quality of the data analysis; relevance of the references; text’s readability; attention given to annexes; overall reproducibility of the research presented.

The journal will get back to the Author within a maximum of 3 months with some feedback on the evaluation of their paper.

The journal’s Editorial Committee makes their decision on whether or not to publish the article based on the peer review. There are four types of response:

  • the paper is refused.

  • the paper is refused with an invitation to resubmit a new version: the Editorial Committee informs the Author of the improvements required, and the Author has two weeks to inform the Committee of how they wish to respond. If the Author wishes to proceed with the improvements recommended, he/she then has a two-to-six-months period to submit a new version of the paper. The second version of the paper is then evaluated by the same experts who had reviewed the first version.

  • the paper is accepted subject to corrections or modifications: the Editorial Committee informs the Author of the improvements required. The Author has between two weeks and two months to implement these modifications, depending on their size.

  • the paper is accepted.

When some modifications are required, provided that the Author(s) and peer reviewer(s) agree to do so, their anonymity may be lifted in order to enable them to develop a constructive dialogue, as per the model promoted by the journal Nouvelles perspectives en sciences sociales.