1. Authors contributing to the Journal Izvestiya Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk. Seriya Literatury i Yazyka [Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Language and Literature] are required to adhere to pubpcation ethics. See Editorial and Pubpcation Popcy.
2. All manuscripts of articles should be submitted electronically at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. (The editors might request a paper copy.) The non-standard fonts, if used, should be included.
3. The contributors will be requested to sign the License Agreement after their articles are accepted for pubpcation.
4. A cover letter should contain the following information about the author: full name (last name, first name, and patronymic, if available); postal address; affipation and job title; scholarly degree and rank; telephone number; e-mail address. Since starting in year 2010 “Nauka” Pubpshing House has stopped distributing tear sheets, the Journal’s Editors send out copies of pubpshed articles to the contributors electronically.
5. Manuscripts not accepted for pubpcation are not returned to contributors.
6. Previously pubpshed materials and materials being considered for pubpcation by editors of other journals (redundant and duppcate pubpcations) are not considered acceptable.
7. The authors of book reviews are requested to provide a copy of the reviewed book. (After the editorial process is over, the books are returned to the reviewers at their request.)

1​ The Editorial Board of the journal The Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Literature and Language (Izvestiya RAN. Seriya literatury i yazyka, further abbreviated as B_RAS.LL) considers original essays and publications in Russian or main European languages that are relevant to the journal’s subject matter and have not been previously published as well as archive materials with an introductory essay.

2​ Essays shall be submitted via email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

3​ The submitted materials are originally considered on the subject of

- compliance of the submitted documents with the journal’s requirements

- their compliance with the journal’s formal requirements

Manuscripts that do not meet the requirements will not be accepted for publication; the author will be informed about refusal and its reasons.

4 Manuscripts that meet formal requirements but are not relevant to the journal’s subject scope may be rejected or returned to the author for revision based on the decision of the Editorial Board.

5​ Manuscripts that are relevant to the journal's subject scope and meet the journal’s formal requirements will be sent to two independent reviewers in the field (cf. Reviewing Process).

6​ It takes the maximum of three months to have the manuscript reviewed. At the end of this period or earlier, the author will receive a letter with the following recommendations:

- accept for publication;

- accept with minor revisions;

- revise and resubmit (if substantial revisions are required);

- reject.

7​ The review is sent to the author on his or her request without indicating the reviewer’s name, job title, and place of work. If the reviewer recommends that the author revises/makes minor revisions and resubmits the manuscript, he or she will be sent a partial review with suggestions without indicating the reviewer’s name, job title, and place of work. In case of rejection, the author will receive a motivated refusal.

8​ The essay rejected by reviewers shall not be resubmitted or considered at the Editorial Board meeting.

9​ Manuscripts that received positive reviews will be considered at the Editorial Board meeting and included in the plan for publication. The author will receive a letter indicating the possible date of publication.

10​ The order of the publication of manuscripts is determined by the registration date of the manuscript submission. The Editorial Board reserves the right to publish manuscripts of particular significance and novelty out of turn.

11​ The Editorial Board reserves the right to edit the materials’ content and style, to abridge them if necessary in agreement with the author or if the essay’s subject matter is of interest to the journal, ask the author to revise it.

12 The author will receive an electronic version of the issue and one free of charge paper issue containing the published essay.

Steps in the Review Process

1. All manuscripts submitted to B_RAS.LL should be registered by the assistant editors and then sent to the Editor-In-Chief or Deputy Editor-In-Chief, who distribute the manuscripts among the editorial board members knowledgeable of the subject.

  Each member of the editorial board has a right to write the first review or to suggest an external reviewer / reviewers – experts in the field.

 3. As soon as the Editor-In-Chief officially appoints the reviewer, the assistant editors contact the reviewer and forward the manuscript accompanied by a cover letter to him/her. It’s up to the reviewer whether he/she would receive a hard copy of the manuscript or its electronic version (an email attachment).

 4. After the reviewers (the referees) have received a paper from the editor, they are required to provide individual critiques within a month.

5. The reviewers give feedback using either free form or closely following the guidelines suggested by the editorial board. The review should be printed out and signed by the referee and sent to the Editor-In-Chief or Deputy Editor-In-Chief. Also, the electronic version of the review should be emailed to the editors.

 6. The editorial board discusses the review and pronounces one of the following decisions:

• accept without change or with minor revision;
• assign additional reviews;
• request for revisions and resubmission (revisions should be made by the author according to the suggestions, objections, and comments of the reviewers);
• reject the manuscript and inform the author of the reasons.

 7. The authors of the submitted manuscripts are kept informed of the referees’ feedback. The assistant editor sends the unsigned versions of all the reviews to the contributor (via mail or by e-mail) with a cover letter. The marked-up text of the manuscript might be attached as well.

8. All reviews are either single-blind or double-blind, meaning that the identities of the reviewers are not disclosed to the authors.

 9. The review can be ordered by the author from the assistant editors in print form or via e-mail. The authors are required to acknowledge in writing, or by e-mail, the receipt of the reviews and of the editorial board’s decision. By acknowledging the arrival of the review, the author is considered to acknowledge the fact that he/she made himself/herself familiar with its content.

 10. If the author is willing to revise the manuscript, the editor usually agrees to reconsider the paper in its revised version and to send it to the referees.  The review process goes on. It is recommended that in the new cover letter the author lists his/her revisions and explains the relevance of each change. After the revised version of the manuscript is received by the editors, the new date of submission is registered.

 11. When the referee and the editors request minor revisions, the manuscript can be accepted for publication, providing that the author agrees to collaborate during the editing process.

 12. If the author is unwilling to revise his work and submits a rebuttal letter, the editorial board has the right to decide whether the materials are to be published in B_RAS.LL or rejected.

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Guidelines for Reviewing and Publishing Articles

Submitted for Publication in the

Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences: Studies in Literature and Language [Izvestiya RAN. Seriya literatury i yazyka]

(further abbreviated as B_RAS.LL)

General information

1. The review process in B_RAS.LL is designed to ensure standards of quality required of the journal publications.

2. All materials offered for publication in B_RAS.LL and answering the journal’s thematic requirements undergo the review process in order to get expert feedback. The reviewer has to provide an unbiased, holistic evaluation of the received text and to weight its strengths and weaknesses.

3. All materials received by the journal editors should be sent for a review to the members of editorial board or to external reviewers holding an academic degree (Doctor of Sciences, Candidate of Sciences, PhD, etc.), familiar with submission guidelines, and versed in the subject. Each reviewer has to be an acknowledged expert on assigned subject and has to have several academic publications in the field within last 3 years. 

4. Materials offered by scholars holding or pursuing a doctorate-level degree are reviewed by Doctors of Sciences. Materials offered by Candidates of Sciences and by post-graduate students are reviewed by Doctors and Candidates of Sciences.

5. It is preferable if the reviewer and the reviewed are employed by different organizations. The editorial board strives to avoid the so-called ‘conflict of interest’ between the contributors and the reviewers.

6. The length of a review is up to the reviewer, but it’s recommended to keep commentaries to 1-2 typed pages (font size 12, line spacing 1).

7. When the manuscript is received by the editors and is sent for review, the contributor is notified. The identities and institutional affiliations of the reviewers are not revealed to the authors.

8. It is up to the editorial board to decide how many reviews each manuscript will require. The editorial board may accept a manuscript for publication, if the first review is unreservedly positive. If the first review is negative or suggests substantial revision, the editorial board would assign other reviewers. As far as writing across disciplines is concerned, the manuscript should be sent to several referees.

9. The final decision whether the manuscript is to be accepted for publication in B_RAS.LL or rejected, rests with the editorial board and depends on the referees’ recommendations, as well as on the authors’ informed responses to peer-critique.

10. A copy of a positive review is forwarded by the editors to the author along with the publication schedule. The letter of rejection should state the reasons for not accepting the manuscript.

11. The original reviews are archived and kept by the editorial board for at least 5 years, starting from the date the article is published.

12.  The Editorial board provides the copies of all available reviews to the official officers of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, upon certain request.

Reviewers can use a free form for their responses; however, a review should address the following questions:

• whether the problems raised in the manuscript are up-to-date and of current scholarly interest;
• whether the solutions offered by the author correspond to the raised problems;
• whether the account of the problem is accurate and the sources are reliable;
• whether the author’s findings are original, important, and significant; how much they advance the field;
• whether the proposed solutions are justified and workable;
• whether the article’s headings and organization are appropriate; whether the scholarly approach and methodology employed by the author make sense;
• whether the terminology, as well as the tone and style of the paper are suitable.

It is recommended that the referees indicate notable strengths and weaknesses of the paper and group the latter together into patterns. The evaluation should result in a recommendation:

• recommend that the paper be published – with no changes;
• recommend that the paper be revised (minor or substantial revisions);
• recommend that the paper be rejected.

According to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), potential conflicts of interest exist when there are financial, personal, or professional interests that might influence on the opinion of the reviewer or publisher and, as a result, affect the decision of the Editorial Board as regards the publication of the article.

The journal Studies in Literature and Language implies that by submitting a paper the author states that:

all forms of financial support are acknowledged in the contribution;

there are no commercial, financial, personal, and professional involvements that might present an appearance of a conflict of interests related to the submitted article.

If there is a conflict of interests, upon submission of a manuscript, authors may suggest excluding any specific reviewer from the peer review of their article.

The same obligations equally apply to editors or reviewers that will handle the pape: they should declare whether they have any conflicts of interests that may influence the editorial decision on its publication. 

If there is a conflict of interests of the editor and the reviewer with the author of the article, the manuscript should be transferred, in obligatory order, to an other editor or reviewer accordingly.

Articles should be evaluated fairly. The conflict of interests declared by any participant of the editing and reviewing process will not necessarily lead to rejection. The prime criterion in the manuscript’s evaluation is its research quality.

The policy of the journal Studies in Literature and Language regarding the withdrawal (retraction) of publications is based on the recommendation of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) https://publicationethics.org/files/retraction%20guidelines.pdf.

The grounds for retraction the article are gross violations of scholarly and publishing ethics, which include significant plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of data, etc.

The purpose of retraction

The retraction is a mechanism of correction of published information and notification of readers about articles containing such serious flaws or erroneous data that cannot be trusted. Invalidity of data can be the result of honest mistake or conscious violations.

The retraction is also used as a warning of readers about the instances of duplicate publications (when the author(s) present(s) the same research in several publications), plagiarism, and concealment of serious conflicts of interest that can affect the interpretation of the results or recommendations on their use.

The purpose of the retraction is to correct the literature data and ensure their reliability, and not to punish authors who “behave badly”.

The result of the retraction is the confirmation by the editors of the journal of the fact that the article contains violations. Authors may disagree with the position of editors, but this does not negate the right of editors to conduct the procedure.

An article can be retracted by the author(s), publisher or editor of the journal.

In the event that the author or authors refuse to retract the article, the publisher has the right to retract the article without their consent, since publisher bears the responsibility for the contents of the journal.

The results of the retraction are reflected in the publication, indicating in the title of the publication that the article is being withdrawn, listing the reasons for the recall under the annotation, and indicating the persons or organizations that initiated it.

Retraction does not mean deletion of the article from the journal, publisher’s website (the journal’s website) or the bibliography database. The article remains in all aforementioned resources with a clear notice of retraction, while retaining its DOI number and published URL. This is necessary, as other researchers may have already referenced this article and need to be notified of its retraction.

Publication fee is not charged.

The Editorial Board of the journal Studies in Literature and Language is not paying royalties.

The author is not expected to pay reviewers, editors, translators, proofreaders, and layout designers.

The voluntary agreement to publish an essay free of charge is guaranteed by the signed Agreement between the author and the Editorial Board.