journal of the Institute for Bulgarian Language
pISSN 0005-4283, eISSN 2603-3372

General rules

“Balgarski ezik” (Bulgarian Language Journal) accepts unpublished articles, science communications, and reviews of scientific books (published within the last three years) that have not been submitted for consideration to other publications and that fall within the thematic scope of the journal, as well as materials for the sections "Language Culture," "Chronicle," and " Anniversaries and Jubilees".
The manuscripts should be written in Bulgarian in a style that is clear and understandable to the specialized scientific audience. Submissions are to be deposited at the editorial office both in electronic form and accompanied by a printout or sent via email to balgarskiezik@mail.bg.
The authors retain copyright to their work without restrictions. Publications can be reused and redistributed as long as the original author is correctly attributed.
Privacy Statement. The names and email addresses of the authors as well as submitted items will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party, except in the cases provided for in the legal provisions.
“Balgarski ezik” (Bulgarian Language Journal) is an open access journal. No fee is required from authors for publishing their articles.
The responsibilities of the authors are presented in the Ethical Code section.
Reviewing. The submissions are subject to double-blind peer review. The final approval for publication is made by the Editorial board based on the reviewers' conclusions.
Plagiarism check. Articles undergo a plagiarism check using special software StrikePlagiarism in accordance with ethical principles.

Procedure for reviewing and accepting manuscripts

Manuscripts submitted to the “Balgarski ezik” (Bulgarian Language Journal) are subjected to double-blind peer-review with the editorial team being responsible for the final acceptance of the manuscript for publication. The procedure goes through a number of stages, as described below.

Submission of the manuscript

By submitting a manuscript, the author(s) agree that: (a) the manuscript will be subjected to the procedure for reviewing and accepting manuscripts as described hereafter; (b) in addition to the printed edition, the final version of the article will also be published on the online edition of the Journal free-of-charge (for both author(s) and readers) and under open access license Creative Commons Attribution (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International – CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0. Author(s) must inform the publisher of any potential conflict of interest regarding the submitted manuscript. By submitting a manuscript, the author(s) agree that:

• there are no financial, personal or professional factors that may cause a conflict of interest;
• (sources of funding of the research reflected in the manuscript are to be disclosed.

In case of a potential conflict of interest, the author(s) shall send a cover letter with a statement of a possible conflict of interest arising from competitive, collaborative, or similar relationship, between any member of the editorial board and any of the authors or institutions that are associated with the text for publication and may request that specific editor(s) and/or potential reviewer(s) be excluded from reviewing the manuscript. The editorial team contacts the author(s) to confirm the acceptance of the statement and the manuscript.

Compliance check

In 14 days after the submission of the manuscript, the editor-in-chief or a member of the editorial team conducts a preliminary review for assessing its compliance with the goals and thematic scope of the journal and formatting standards and style applicable to academic writing.
At this stage, the manuscript may be rejected for the following reasons:

• The manuscript does not correspond to the topic of the journal.
• The manuscript does not cover the basic standards of academic writing and style.
• There is evidence that the text has been published in another publication.
• Plagiarism has been identified in the manuscript (incl. with plagiarism detection software).
• The manuscript contains serious linguistic and stylistic errors.

Double-blind peer-review
Actions after anonymous peer-review

Within 7 days of receiving the review, the author(s) / corresponding author are notified of the decision (incl. corrections that need to be made in order for the manuscript to be accepted for publication). If the reviewer recommends the manuscript to be accepted with corrections without re-review, within two weeks the author(s) shall make the corrections and indicate them in the text before finally formatting the manuscript according to the requirements of the journal (линк For Authors). If the author(s) do not agree with the reviewers' or editors' recommended corrections, they shall submit a written statement with arguments for their decision. In this case, the author(s) have the right to withdraw their manuscript and Editorial Board have the right to give the article to a third reviewer. Editorial Board takes the final decision in accordance with his/her evaluation for which it informs the author in writing.
If the corrected text significantly differs from the original one, it shall be subjected to a procedure of re-reviewing.
If one or both reviewers recommend major revision of the text and re-review, the manuscript is returned to the author(s) for revision within two weeks, if they agree. The revised text is sent to the reviewer for re-review. If the author(s) do not agree with the reviewers' recommendations, they shall submit a written statement with arguments for their decision, and the manuscript shall be subjected to further reviewing.
If one of the reviewers recommends rejection, a third reviewer is invited after being informed that there is a negative review. Further steps depend on the third review.
If the manuscript is rejected by both reviewers, the author(s) are notified for the rejection with arguments for it.
The period from receipt of a manuscript to its publication ranges between 3 and 5 months depending on the organisation of the publication of the thematic issues.

Editing

Articles approved by the reviewers and corrected by the author(s) are subjected to scientific and linguistic editing by an editor-in-charge – a member of the editorial team which checks for completeness and correctness of the information and makes final corrections to the text. If necessary, the editor may return the text to the author(s) for corrections or revisions. If more significant changes are needed, the editors or the editor-in-chief shall notify the author(s) of the changes made, and the author(s) shall confirm by email their consent to the publication of the revised manuscript. Otherwise, the author(s) shall submit a written, motivated explanation for not agreeing with the corrections and revisions, and the final decision shall be made by the editorial team. The members of the editorial team observe strict confidentiality. The author(s) shall receive a proof of the article, which they must return within one week.

Decision of the Editorial Team

The final decision to publish (or reject) a submitted manuscript is made by the editorial team, which is responsible for the quality of the published content. The decision is made impartially and objectively, with strict adherence to publication ethics, and is based on the recommendations of the reviewers, the opinion of the editor-in-chief and the actions of the author(s). The main criterion is the scientific qualities of the article. The editorial team informs the author(s) / corresponding author of the decision. If the manuscript is accepted, the author(s) finally format the text according to the requirements of the journal and sign a Publishing Agreement. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the article has been approved by all the other authors. It is the responsibility of the author to obtain all necessary copyright release permissions for the use of any copyrighted materials in the manuscript prior to the submission.If the manuscript is not accepted for publication, the author(s) have the right to publish it elsewhere.