For Authors - Ethical charter

Preamble

The JFT serves as a scientific showcase for the French-speaking tribology community. As such, the journal is committed to ensuring the integrity, transparency, and rigor of the work it publishes. This ethical charter expresses the values underlying our editorial policy: respect for science, for readers, and for authors.

Scientific Quality and Originality

We publish articles that provide a significant and honest contribution to the state of the art. This implies:

• clear hypotheses, traceable methods, and transparent results;
• rejection of any form of plagiarism or self-plagiarism;
• exclusion of submissions already accepted or published elsewhere (except deposits on HAL or arXiv);
• promotion of open, reproducible, and well-documented research.

Author Ethics

• honestly cite sources, including their own previous work;
• include all genuine scientific contributors as co-authors;
• declare any conflict of interest (financial, institutional, personal) likely to influence the content of the article;
• clearly indicate the use of figures, data, or code originating from other works.

Peer Review

• This review is carried out by French-speaking experts in the broad field of tribology. Reviewers may be members of the scientific committee, but are not limited to it: external experts outside the committee and, where relevant, outside the International French-speaking Tribology Days may also be invited;
• the review process is anonymous (single-blind);
• reports must be reasoned, precise, and aimed at improving the quality of the work;
• reviewers undertake to declare any conflict of interest or lack of thematic competence. They must be independent from the supervision of the research work, from the authors’ laboratories, and have no family ties with the authors;
• a rejection must never be a sentence, but an opportunity for clarification or scientific strengthening;
• the review reports will not be public (i.e., not published alongside the article after acceptance);
• each article requires at least two positive reviews before acceptance for publication;
• in the event of contradictory reviews, the opinion of a third expert will be requested;
• the final publication decision rests with the editorial committee.

Editorial Responsibility

The scientific editors of JFT ensure fair and transparent handling of manuscripts:

• decisions are reasoned, documented, and based on the reviews received;
• any reported ethical breach will be examined by the editorial team, with the possibility of external consultation;
• authors have a right of appeal addressed to the editorial coordination.

Openness and Access

Faithful to the Diamond Open Access model supported by the Episciences.org platform, the journal is free of charge for both authors and readers. Articles are published under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY by default), ensuring free dissemination, sharing, and adaptation with attribution.

Revisions, Corrections, Retractions

If a major error or scientific misconduct is identified after publication:

• the article may be subject to a correction, expression of concern, or retraction;
• these actions will be carried out publicly, with justification and traceability, while respecting individuals.

Plagiarism Screening

Before being sent to reviewers, each manuscript undergoes systematic screening using a similarity-detection tool (such as Compilatio, iThenticate, Turnitin, or equivalent). In the event of well-founded suspicion of plagiarism or self-plagiarism, the editorial committee contacts the authors for explanations, may request substantial corrections, reject the article, or, where appropriate, alert the relevant institutions.

Conflicts of Interest

A conflict of interest is any situation in which an author, reviewer, or editor could gain personal, professional, or financial advantage from an editorial decision. Authors, reviewers, and editors undertake to declare any potential conflict of interest. The editorial committee ensures that conflicts are avoided and records the decisions taken in such cases.

Language and Scientific Culture

The journal JFT promotes the dissemination of scientific knowledge in the French language. However, submissions in English are possible, particularly when they facilitate the international visibility of the work. High editorial standards are expected in both cases. Regardless of the language used for the manuscript, the title and abstract must be provided in both French and English.