The publication process of Transformations is backed up by open repositories such as HAL or Zenodo. In practice, an author deposits their proposed article in an open archive before connecting to the Transformations website and proposing it for review. The deposit of a pre-publication in an open archive allows the author to make their research available immediately and prevent from possible plagiarism (institutional open archives time-stamp the deposit, which is then indexed in scientific databases and research engines).
Detailed information on the article submission procedure is available in the Episciences documentation. The editorial workflow can be summarized as follows:
1. The author deposits their preprint in the open archive of their choice (ie. HAL or Zenodo);
2. The author then submits this preprint to Transformations by logging on to the journal’s website (the author has to create an account on the Episciences platform if not already done). The author can choose an associated editor in the proposed list with respect to their research topics;
3. The editorial board of Transformations examines the submission and entrusts its expertise to at least two reviewers;
4. The expertise received is transmitted to the author: at this stage, the article can be rejected, accepted subject to modifications, or accepted as is. The revised article, based on the evaluations, gives rise to a new version that is deposited in the same open archive;
5. This new version will be reviewed once more by the reviewers, in accordance with a classic review process, before being accepted or leaving for a new round of evaluation;
6. Once the article has been definitively validated by Transformations' editorial board, it is copy-edited and aligned to the journal format by the production team and sent back to the author for validation;
7. The author deposits this final version in the open archive and it is published on the journal’s website.