Commenting on the Comptes Rendus journals' articles
Since its creation, the French Academy of Sciences has supported the production of knowledge and the dynamism of national and international cultural and scientific life. It also contributes to making scientific research and its products freely accessible to all, in line with the FAIR principles of open science.
As a supporter of fair science and ethical research, we encourage open and transparent exchanges on any scientific subject, and in particular on the articles published in diamond open access in our Comptes Rendus journals. Any researcher can enrich a published article by commenting on it, or by replying to a previous comment.
Who can post a comment?
All articles in Comptes Rendus can be freely consulted by any interested party.
To ensure total transparency, post-publication comments must mention the author's full name and ORCID. Contributors who do not already have an ORCID can create one at https://orcid.org. The contributor's ORCID file must contain sufficient information (affiliation, in particular) to enable us to assess his or her scientific expertise.
What can my comment contain?
Comments must focus on the scientific content of the articles to which they relate, and provide significant enrichment, such as additional information, clarification, the identification of a relevant source or dataset, or a substantiated discussion of the purpose of an article, its conclusions and its impact on knowledge, on the subject concerned by the article and/or in related or cross-disciplinary fields.
Contributors are invited to make the same high standards in their comments as they would when writing their own scientific article: clarity of purpose, precise articulation of thought, provision of as many methodological details as possible, etc. Any competing interests (hierarchical subordination, funding by a competing organization, etc.) must be specified in the comment.
Any bibliographical references (including references to as yet unpublished articles) should be quoted with precision, if possible providing the DOI of the source concerned.
Comments should be limited to the demonstrable content of the articles, and avoid any speculation on the motivations or state of mind of the authors.
Questions about experimental data are permitted, but must be formulated courteously and without assuming any breach of scientific integrity on the part of the authors of the article. Any suspicion of scientific fraud should be reported directly to the journal's editors.
The authors of an article are systematically informed of the publication of a new comment concerning their text. They are encouraged to respond (possibly collectively) if they consider it necessary.
Any reader can reply to a comment by submitting a new one.
The editorial team of the magazine reserves the right to publish its own comments, possibly in a collective manner.
Examples of comments that may be rejected (moderation reserves the right to publish such comments if it considers that the ensuing scientific debate is worthy of interest):
- Comments that are off-topic or do not add significantly to the content of the article;
- Comments submitted too long after publication of the article to be relevant;
- Comments that are false or insufficiently supported scientifically;
- Comments calling for citation of the commentator's work without solid justification;
- Comments consisting of simple Internet links and/or unexplained bibliographical references;
- Comments whose author has not declared an obvious conflict of interest;
- Comments written in an unintelligible manner.
Examples of comments systematically refused:
- Comments that are offensive, abusive, defamatory, discriminatory or in any way contravene current legislation;
- Comments whose authors have indicated a false identity or affiliation;
- Comments disclosing personal or sensitive information;
- Comments written in a language other than French or English.
Who moderates my comment?
All comments are systematically reviewed by the journal's editorial team before publication. The authors of comments will be kept informed by e-mail of the processing of their submission. Refusal to publish will not be justified.
Any behavior that violates scientific integrity or basic courtesy will result in the suspension of the contributor's account, as well as the deletion of all previous comments.