Ethical norms

These ethical standards are intended to establish good practices and ethical relationships among authors, editors, and reviewers, and to recognize the responsibility to the journal's readers and the scientific community.

The ethical rules for the publication of the Journal of Special Pedagogy and Speech-Language Pathology are based on the norms of the Code of Ethics of the Academic Community of Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" https://www.uni-sofia.bg/index.php/eng/content/download/155466/1421618/version/3/file/Et. , as well as the basic practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics COPE https://publicationethics.org/core-practices .

 

Responsibilities and Duties of the Editor-in-Chief

The Editor-in-Chief represents the journal to all external and interrelated institutions and individuals. He/she is responsible for the journal's image, its development, and the coordination between editorial board members, authors, reviewers, and external parties.

The Editor-in-Chief ensures that the ethical rules of the journal are observed. "Special Pedagogy and Speech Therapy and informs all concerned about them.  He is responsible for ensuring that authors, reviewers and editors are informed of their responsibilities.

The Editor-in-Chief designates the responsible editors for each issue, selecting them on a rotating basis from the Board of Editors. By controlling the process of this selection, the manuscripts submitted and the choice of reviewers, the Editor-in-Chief avoids situations of conflict of interest.

The Editor-in-Chief, together with the Editors-in-Chief, is responsible for the review and acceptance/rejection process, the content and technical layout of each issue, and its distribution. He/she is committed to maintaining the confidentiality of manuscripts and reviews received, not commenting on them to third parties and respecting copyright laws.

In cases of alleged or proven scientific controversy, fraud or plagiarism, the Editor-in-Chief, in close collaboration with the Editors-in-Chief and, if necessary, members of the Board of Editors, shall take the necessary measures to clarify the situation. If necessary, a clarifying communication shall be published or, in the case of serious misconduct, the manuscript concerned shall be withdrawn.

The Editor-in-Chief has the right to publish in the journal only in the non-scientific peer-reviewed sections.

 

Responsibilities and Duties of the of Editorial Board

The Board of Editors includes specialists in the field of special education and speech therapy from various scientific units in Bulgaria and other countries. The members of the Board shall be at least 7 persons and at least 50% + 1 of them shall be from outside the University of Sofia. Cl. 5. Their participation contributes to the specialized scientific image of the journal, to its dissemination, to its development and to its promotion in accordance with all the rules of ethics in scientific journalism.

It is the responsibility of the members to oversee and share their position on the development of the journal with the Editor-in-Chief and the other members of the Board of Editors.

For each issue of the journal, the Editor-in-Chief designates two members of the Board of Editors as the responsible editors of the issue.

In the event that a member of the Board of Editors is not the Editor-in-Chief for an issue of the journal, he or she may join the journal as an author or as a reviewer. In these cases, the Editor-in-Chief and the Editors-in-Chief do not involve him/her in discussions on the content, organization, and review of the issue, and maintain the anonymity of authors and reviewers.

In the event that a member of the Board of Editors is an author in an issue, his or her manuscript is published in the "Editor's Pages" section. At the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief and the Editors-in-Chief, such a scholarly publication may undergo a double-blind peer-review process and be published in the Specialized Scientific Sections. In order to ensure the anonymity of the peer review, the reviewers must be specialists outside the editorial board and at least one of them must be external to the scientific unit in which the author works.

 

Duties of the editors responsible

The editors-in-chief are elected by the members of the journal's editorial board on a rotating basis. Two editors-in-chief are appointed for each issue.

The editors-in-chief shall treat all authors, referees and colleagues with respect, with objectivity to manuscripts submitted and with the awareness that the publication of the relevant work is a legal act of great importance to scholars and their readers. They undertake not to comment to third parties on submitted/rejected manuscripts, review scores, their authors and situations arising in the process of working on the issue.

Together with the Editor-in-Chief, they are responsible for selecting reviewers, avoiding conflict of interest situations, the relationship between authors and reviewers, and approving submitted articles for publication. They must ensure that the submitted material is not proposed for publication or published in another journal, that it does not contain elements of plagiarism. They are obliged to preserve the anonymity of authors and reviewers in the review process, and to respect copyright laws for submitted manuscripts.

Acceptance of scientific articles submitted for publication is based on the reviewers' assessment, compliance with the publishing policy, the ethical rules of the journal and the laws.

The editors in charge, together with the editor-in-chief, shape the content of the issue and take care of its promotion and dissemination.

The editors-in-chief of the issue are only allowed to publish in the journal in non-peer-reviewed sections such as "Editor's Pages", "New Books", etc. They may not serve as reviewers of scholarly articles in that issue.

 

Duties of reviewers

Scientists - specialists in the respective scientific subject - may be invited as reviewers of submitted manuscripts. They may be selected by the members of the editorial board only if they are not the responsible editors of the issue. Two independent reviewers are appointed for each scientific article. In the event of a discrepancy in the assessments of the two reviewers (one is positive and the other is negative), the opinion of a reviewer-arbitrator is sought, whose opinion is final.

The reviewers undertake to treat the manuscripts as confidential documents which must not be shown or discussed with others. They may not use them for research purposes without the authors' consent. This also applies in the case of rejection of an invitation to review.

Reviewers accept the invitation to review by declaring no conflict of interest with their proposed manuscript and agreeing to the proposed terms. In the opposite circumstances or perceived unqualified to review the manuscript, reviewers need to notify the Editor-in-Chief and/or Editors-in-Charge to allow for the selection of another reviewer. 

Double-blind peer review enables reviewers to make objective decisions. In their work, reviewers use their competence in the topic of the manuscript, apply objectivity, monitor adherence to the journal's requirements, and are guided by a desire for high quality and a possible opportunity to improve submitted manuscripts. Conclusions need to be clearly stated with specificity and arguments to help authors improve their texts. Personal criticism of the authors is not allowed.

 

Responsibilities and Duties of authors

Authors must ensure that they are real participants in the process of conducting the research and drafting the manuscript, as they are publicly responsible for its content.

The content of the manuscripts must be original and original to the authors, and it is unacceptable that it is already published or simultaneously proposed for publication in other journals. Authors must ensure that they have respected the copyright of all sources used by acknowledging them correctly in the text. Plagiarism in all its forms is judged unacceptable and unethical.

Authors undertake to provide only correct research data, and to present them in their entirety or with the necessary references so that they can be reproduced by other authors. Authors must be able to answer questions from reviewers or other scholar-readers about the research with evidence. If an error or inaccuracy is discovered, the author must notify the editors immediately.

In the double-blind review process, the author is an active participant who undertakes to respond promptly to questions and clarifications that arise, and to make suggested corrections and resubmit his or her material within set deadlines.