Peer Review
The quality of the peer review is an important aspect of the editorial process. The manuscripts are first examined by members of the editorial board of the journal. If the manuscript meets the author’s guidelines and is within the scope of the journal, the Editor-in- Chief appoints appropriate reviewers who cannot belong to the academic institution of the authors. To ensure best practices are followed, Philologia journal conducts double-blind peer review, where both the reviewer and the author remain anonymous throughout the process.
Experts with a PhD degree may be invited to serve as reviewers.
Peer reviews are completed within a given deadline and in compliance with the reviewer requirements. The procedure is considered rightfully completed when within the given deadline at least two properly prepared reviews are submitted to the editorial board.
Reviewers must complete the Reviewer Card and send it via e-mail to the editorial board at philologia@uni-sofia.bg.
The reviewers give their assessment of the manuscripts in terms of the following criteria: scope of the research, novelty of the examined issues, originality, accuracy and clarity of the abstract describing the main text, logical structure and consistency of the presentation, appropriateness of the methodology, validity of the results, proof of thesis, applicability of the results, validity of findings and conclusions, propriety and relevance of citations, accuracy and clarity of language.
The Journal follows the recommendations of COPE on Peer review processes. For more information you could refer to the Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.
It is recommended that reviewers should complete the WoS course on peer reviewing at: https://clarivate.com/academia-government/web-of-science-academy/.
Reviewers should indicate themselves in the Reviewer's Card (incl. their ORCID and Web of Science ResearcherID), as well as the institutions they work for. After receiving a letter of acknowledgment from the relevant editor at the Philologia journal, they should follow the established procedure to verify their peer review in their personal Web of Science profile.
In the case that reviewers discover who the author of the manuscript is, they should announce it to the editorial board and officially resign from the peer review. Upon receiving the article, reviewers are to complete the review by a given due date and provide detailed comments should there be recommendations for alterations. Reviewers are to remain fair and objective throughout the whole process.
If the reviewers reasonably advise that one or another part of the manuscript should be revised or supplemented in order to improve its argumentation, the editorial board is to send the author the relevant extract from the reviews, while maintaining the anonymity of the reviewer.
The reviewers do not copyedit the manuscript they have been given, nor do they have the right to give it to other people.
If the evaluations of the reviewers are contradictory, the editorial board can appoint additional reviewers.
The final decision on the publication of article is made by the editorial board based on the evaluations of the reviews. The decision could be: to publish the manuscript without further modifications, to publish the manuscript after addressing the recommendations put forth in the reviews; to reject publication.
The reviewers do not receive compensation for peer reviewing. In the case that the review is properly prepared, substantiated and sent within the given deadline, then the reviewer shall receive a letter of acknowledgment from the editorial board, which can be used to verify the review on WoS. If the decision is to publish after modifications, the authors are to rework the manuscripts and present them to the editorial board within a given deadline, on the basis of which the editorial board decides whether to publish, request another peer review process, or reject publication.
