Acta Medica Bulgarica

ISSN (Print): 0324-1750, eISSN: 2719-5384

MAIN CONTACT PERSON
Mrs Diana Garlichkova, Executive secretary
Central Medical Library, Medical University - Sofia, Bulgaria
e-mail: d.garlichkova@cml.mu-sofia.bg | amb@cml.mu-sofia.bg

The Journal Acta Medica Bulgarica (AMB), published continuously since 1973, is the leading scientific medical journal of the Medical University - Sofia. It is peer-reviewed general medical journal, circulated entirely in English. Its publisher is the Central Medical Library which is part of the University.

The Medical University - Sofia is the oldest higher medical school in Bulgaria. For over 100 years it has been a leader in medical education in the country, and a provider of high quality education to Bulgarian and international students.

PUBLICATION TIMEFRAME AND ACCESS

This journal is published quarterly with 4 issues annually, with an average of 11 to 16 articles per issue. It provides immediate open access to its content so as to make research freely available to the public in support of a greater global exchange of knowledge.

An average of 15 articles are submitted each month, of which 70-80% are original research articles, and the remaining are case reports and review articles.

Each issue is also available in print, and is distributed to libraries and medical organizations etc. If you'd like to receive a print or digital copy, please contact the Executive secretary: d.garlichkova@cml.mu-sofia.bg.

TYPES OF MANUSCRIPTS ACCEPTED

We accept original research articles, scientific reviews and case reports in all areas of Medicine. Some but not all of the areas covered by the journal are: Health policy, Oncology, Public health, General and Internal Medicine, Diabetes and Endocrinology, Cardiology, Neurology, Surgery, Infectious Diseases, Emergency Medicine, Obesity and Nutrition, Pharmacology etc.

FEES

There are currently no article processing costs to authors.

Interested in submitting an article to journal Acta Medica Bulgarica? Click here to submit your manuscript online!

RESEARCH INTEGRITY
The editors expect research published by the journal to meet the following criteria:

• honesty in all aspects of research;
• scrupulous care, thoroughness and excellence in research practice;
• transparency and open communication;
• care and respect for all participants in and subjects of research.

HUMAN AND ANIMAL RIGHTS

Research involving humans or animals should be approved by relevant ethics committee(s) and should conform to local and international ethical and legal standards for research.

Authors should respect human participants' right to privacy, do their best to anonymize personal details, especially in reporting case studies, and gain any necessary consent to publish before submitting to the journal. Statements regarding informed consent from participants and patients must be provided with the manuscript, where relevant.

All medical research involving human participants, including identifiable human material or data, should be conducted in accordance with the principles of the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki.

Animal experiments require full compliance with local, national, ethical, and regulatory principles, and local licensing arrangements. Respective statements of compliance (or approvals of institutional ethical committees) should be included in the article text.

PEER-REVIEW POLICY AND PROCESS

The peer-review of this journal is single blinded. If approved by the editor, submissions will be considered by peer reviewers, whose identities will remain anonymous to the authors. We may sometimes ask additional reviewer(s) in papers requiring specific expertise.

Following receipt of a new manuscript, the manuscript will be assigned to an Editorial board member who will be responsible for managing the peer review process. Each manuscript will be reviewed by one reviewer who is highly competent and recognized in the particular field of the submitted manuscript. Typically, a 2-week deadline is given to complete the review. After receipt of the reviews, a decision is made to either accept, give the authors an opportunity to revise or to reject the manuscript. Revised manuscripts are typically re-evaluated by the same reviewers. Depending upon this evaluation, the manuscript may be accepted or rejected.

The reviewers should adhere to the following rules:

• Judgments should be objective.
• Reviewers may point out relevant published work which is not yet cited.
• Reviewed articles should be treated confidentially.
• Reviewers should have no conflicts of interest.

Reviewers should strive to provide accurate, detailed, and constructive criticism, and the review should be supported by appropriate references, especially if unfavorable. The reviewer should also note whether the work of others is properly cited.

Editors and reviewers should decline to be involved with a submission when they are in a conflict of interest (see more in the Conflicts of interest section).

The time from acceptance to publication is approx. 4 weeks to 4 months. The current acceptance rate is approx. 40 %. About 10-20 % of the articles are rejected upon submission and do not reach peer-review, due to lack of compliance with the Journal’s Instructions to Authors or English language issues. The total rejection rate is approx. 60%.

Interested in reviewing articles for this journal? Find out more about the online reviewing process here.

PLAGIARISM
Authors must not use words, figures, or ideas of others without attribution. All sources must be cited at the point they are used, and reuse of wording must be limited and be attributed or quoted in the text. The editorial board will use specific tools (e.g. "Similarity Check") to detect submissions that overlap with published and submitted manuscripts. Manuscripts that are found to have been plagiarized from a manuscript by other authors, whether published or unpublished, will be rejected. Any published articles may need to be corrected or retracted.

USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)

Authors must be transparent about the use of traditional and generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT and other large language models when used to create, review, revise, or edit any of the content in their manuscript. Any such use must be disclosed within the "Materials and Methods" section and a confirmation that the author(s) take responsibility for the integrity of the content generated should be reported.

Reviewers must not upload confidential manuscripts, abstracts, or other text into a chatbot, language model, or similar AI tools. 

DUPLICATE SUBMISSION AND REDUNDANT PUBLICATION
Only original content will be considered, i.e. articles that have not been previously published. Articles based on content previously reported on conferences or in a thesis will be considered for review. Manuscripts submitted to the journal must not be submitted elsewhere while under consideration and must be withdrawn before being submitted elsewhere. If authors have used their own previously published work, or work that is currently under review, as the basis for a submitted manuscript, they must cite the previous articles and indicate how their submitted manuscript differs from their previous work.

FABRICATION AND FALSIFICATION
Submitted manuscripts whose authors are found to have fabricated or falsified the results, including the manipulation of images, will be rejected, or already published articles may be retracted.

AUTHORSHIP AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
All listed authors must have made a significant contribution to the research in the manuscript, approved its claims, and agreed to be an author. We refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines. Anyone who contributed to the research or manuscript preparation, but is not an author, should be acknowledged with their permission.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
Conflicts of interest (COIs) occur when issues outside research can be reasonably perceived to affect the neutrality or objectivity of the work or its assessment. This can happen at any stage in the research, while the manuscript is being written, or during its review assessment. If unsure, it is better to declare a potential interest or discuss with the editorial office. Submissions with undeclared conflicts that are later revealed may be rejected. For more information on COIs, see the guidance from ICMJE. Possible conflicts of interest do not always stop work from being published, however they must be declared thus allowing others to make informed decisions about the work and its review process. If conflicts of interest are found after publication, it may be necessary to publish a corrigendum.

Conflicts include (and are not limited to) the following:

• Financial: funding or other payments, goods and services received or expected by the authors relating to the subject of the work or from an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work.
• Affiliations: being employed by, on the advisory board for, or a member of an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work.
• Intellectual property: patents or trademarks owned by someone or their organization
• Personal: friends, family, relationships, and other close personal connections
• Academic: competitors or someone whose work is critiqued.

If there are no conflicts of interest, the authors should clearly state this also. All funding, whether a conflict or not, must be declared in a funding statement. Editors and reviewers should decline to be involved with a submission when they: have a close collaboration or personal connection to any author; have a financial interest in the subject of the work; or, feel unable to be objective.

FUNDING
The journal is managed and published with funds from the Medical University – Sofia, with the financial support of the Scientific Research Fund of the Ministry of Education and Science under the procedure "Bulgarian Scientific Periodicals" 2025, with contract КП-06-НП6/52 from 04.12.2024.

ERRORS
Errors by authors may be corrected by a corrigendum and errors by the publisher by an erratum.

ADVERTISEMENT
The journal allows for limited, appropriate and sometimes targeted advertising. Ads must:

• be independent from editorial decisions on what is published, and
• be clearly distinct from content.

The editors reserve the right to reject or remove any advertising where they have concerns it contravenes scholarly research publishing best practice or our ethical principles.
Find our more.