{
  "schema": "bsmt_journal_strategy_full_master",
  "schema_version": "3.5.0",
  "generated_on": "2026-10-06",
  "language": "en",
  "edition": "full_unabridged_master_with_v2_5_appendices",
  "title": "Strategy for the BSMT Scholarly Journal",
  "official_journal_title": "Music Theory: Structures and Systems",
  "descriptor": "An International Journal of Music Theory and Analysis",
  "descriptor_is_part_of_official_title": false,
  "authorship": {
    "prepared_by": "Ivan Yanakiev",
    "generative_ai_assistance": true,
    "institutional_context": "Bulgarian Society for Music Theory",
    "note": "AI is an assisting tool, not an author. Staffing decisions and formal adoption belong to the competent BSMT bodies."
  },
  "status": {
    "master_plan": "63/63 complete",
    "gate_0": "0A-0F PASS",
    "strategy": "full and consolidated",
    "operational_launch": "not complete",
    "appointments": "none made by this document",
    "outreach": "none authorized or sent by this document"
  },
  "archival_full_strategy_2026_10_02": [
    {
      "type": "chapter",
      "title": "Chapter 1 — Stage One: why should this journal exist at all?",
      "text": ""
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "1.1 The question before the Society",
      "text": "A society for music theory does not automatically need a journal. A scholarly journal is not an institutional ornament. It is justified only when a community can articulate a sufficiently clear intellectual reason to create a place that scholars outside the founding circle will eventually want to enter voluntarily. BSMT has a plausible reason. Bulgarian music theory has a distinctive pedagogical and terminological inheritance, established analytical habits, and a strong historical concern with mode, harmony, form, meter, and theoretical systems. At the same time, international music-theoretical work is increasingly distributed across music theory, historical theory, computational musicology, cognition, mathematics, tuning, and digital methods. The journal can become a meeting point for these domains while preserving a clear center: music theory and analysis. (BSMT 2026a)\n\nFrom the beginning we should refuse two temptations. The first is to make the journal simply “our place” where Society members publish because they belong to the Society. The second is to make the journal appear international merely through an English website and prestigious foreign names on an Editorial Board. Internationality is demonstrated by actual authors, reviewers, institutions, readers, and eventually independent citations and unsolicited submissions. (BSMT 2026b)"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "1.2 A journal is not a website and not a sequence of PDFs",
      "text": "A decisive conceptual shift is to stop imagining the journal as the periodic upload of six PDF1 files. A journal is a trust system: who may make scholarly decisions; how conflicts are managed; how peer review is evidenced; how the scholarly record remains stable after ten years; and how authors, institutions, funders, references, corrections, and related research objects remain identifiable.\n\nPortable Document Format - a fixed-layout electronic document format.. Why it matters: PDF is necessary for reading\n\nand citation, but by itself does not provide structured metadata, semantic HTML, or robust discoverability.. Source: https: //www.iso.org/standard/82278.html. The platform OJS2 matters, but it is not the journal itself. Likewise, a DOI3 is not a prestige badge. It is part of a long-term obligation to maintain metadata and resolution. (Crossref 2026a)\n\nThe sequence therefore is: scholarly institution first, infrastructure second, indexing third, metrics last. Reversing this order creates perverse incentives. If the first strategic question is “how fast can we reach Scopus?”, the journal begins optimizing for a sign of recognition rather than the substance that recognition is supposed to reward. (BSMT 2026c)"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "1.3 A distinctive intellectual place",
      "text": "The scope must be broad enough not to become the organ of one school, yet narrow enough not to become a generic “journal about music.” Its center is theory: harmony, form, mode, rhythm and meter, post-tonal systems, transformational/set-theoretical approaches, mathematical and computational models, historical theory, comparative systems, tuning and timbre, and cognitive/technological work when the actual contribution remains theoretical or analytical. A useful desk question is: if the specific musical material is removed, does a new theoretical or analytical contribution remain? If not, the manuscript may be valuable, but it probably belongs elsewhere.\n\nThe boundary is not exclusion for its own sake. It is what makes an emerging journal intellectually legible. (BSMT 2026d)"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "1.4 International without abandoning Bulgarian scholarship",
      "text": "Internationality does not require abandoning Hadjiev, Bulgarian terminology, or Bulgarian theoretical history. On the contrary, a strong journal can make those traditions more visible. But internationality requires that an external scholar not feel like a guest entering a pre-closed local club. The central failure is the “Bulgarian trap”: an international title and English website above a structurally local network of editors, reviewers, authors, citations, special issues, and conference papers. If that identity hardens for several years, reversing it is difficult. Issue 1 should therefore, where the quality pipeline permits, show multiple institutional and national contexts. This is a sanity check, never an acceptance quota. (BSMT 2026b)\n\n2Open Journal Systems - open-source software for scholarly journal management and publishing.. Why it matters: It organizes submissions, review, decisions, production, and public presentation; Google Scholar explicitly recommends OJS as an\n\nestablished option for journal publishers.. Source: https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/inclusi on.html.\n\n3Digital Object Identifier - a persistent identifier for a digital scholarly object.. Why it matters: It allows an article to remain\n\nconsistently identifiable even if its underlying web location changes.. Source: https://www.crossref.org/documen tation/register-maintain-records/verify-your-registration/."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "1.5 Diamond Open Access as an academic position",
      "text": "The journal is OA4 in a Diamond model: the reader pays nothing and the author pays nothing. The APC5 is EUR 0. Authors retain copyright, and the Version of Record is published under CC BY 4.06 . (DOAJ 2026) Diamond does not mean costless. It means the cost is borne institutionally and through in-kind labor rather than transferred to authors. In Year 1 the technically realistic model is donated personal hosting and volunteer technical labor, while BSMT pays the domain, Crossref membership, and DOI-related external costs. (BSMT 2026d)"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "1.6 The Year-3 test of success",
      "text": "The easiest answer is “Scopus.” The better question is: do strong, relevant scholars at institutions outside Bulgaria begin submitting without personal invitation? If they do, the journal has acquired scholarly gravity. If they do not, an index logo may conceal continuing dependence on the founder’s personal network. (BSMT 2026e)\n\nThe measure is not author celebrity. It is the recurring flow of qualified unsolicited manuscripts that survive real desk screening. Years 1-2 establish the baseline; Year 3 turns this into a calibrated strategic health target without ever becoming a geographic acceptance quota.\n\n4Open Access - scholarly content available online without a subscription barrier.. Why it matters: For an emerging society\n\njournal, OA increases access and visibility and underpins DOAJ/ROAD eligibility.. Source: https://doaj.org/apply /guide/.\n\n5Article Processing Charge - a publication/processing charge paid by an author or institution.. Why it matters: An explicit\n\nAPC=0 statement is important for transparency and for systems such as DOAJ and erih+.. Source: https://doaj.org/a pply/guide/.\n\n6Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.. Why it matters: It enables broad reuse with attribution and is compatible\n\nwith a genuine open-access model.. Source: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/."
    },
    {
      "type": "chapter",
      "title": "Chapter 2 — Stage Two: the balanced contract between scholarship, people, and institution",
      "text": ""
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "2.1 Who publishes, and who decides what counts as publishable",
      "text": "scholarship? BSMT is the publisher. It carries institutional identity, domain ownership, contracts, financial obligations, continuity, and the appointment of editorial structures. But it must not be able to order the acceptance of an individual article. Scholarly decisions belong to the Editor-in-Chief and authorized Section/Associate Editors under the defined review process. (BSMT 2026d)\n\nThis division is particularly important in a small professional community where people know one another. Conflict management is not an accusation of dishonesty. It is a structural method for making trust independent of personal reputation."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "2.2 The editorial team is not an honor roll",
      "text": "The launch requires a credible Editor-in-Chief and 3-5 active Section/Associate Editors. The international Editorial Board must be a working scholarly body rather than a catalogue of names. The planning direction is approximately 50-60% or more outside Bulgaria and roughly 8-10 countries where genuine participation makes this realistic. (BSMT 2026b)\n\nA board member who never reviews, advises, recommends reviewers, helps shape strategy, or contributes to author acquisition does not make the journal meaningfully international. Decorative internationalization is itself a failure mode."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "2.3 Peer review: strict enough to matter, not ceremonial",
      "text": "Research articles use double-anonymized peer review with normally at least two independent external reviewers. Double anonymization is not a magical guarantee in a small field, but it means the system does not deliberately transmit identity as part of evaluation and does not treat reputation as evidence. Reviewers advise; editors decide. If a manuscript is written by an editor or board member, an independent handling editor controls reviewer selection and the decision. This is a trust architecture, not a statement about anyone’s character. (Clarivate 2026)"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "2.4 Issue 1 and the first thirty articles",
      "text": "Issue 1 should contain 5-7 research articles, target 6. The acquisition pipeline may include 3-4 invited anchor submissions, but invited never means accepted. They undergo normal research review. A genuine open-submission route exists in parallel. (BSMT 2026d)\n\nThe first thirty articles are the observable definition of the journal. The diagnostic intellectual portfolio is approximately 40% Theory/Analysis, 20% Formal-Mathematical-Computational, 15% Historical Theory, 15% Global/Comparative Systems, and 10% Integrative/Method. These are portfolio diagnostics, never acceptance quotas. (BSMT 2026c)"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "2.5 Frequency: two strong issues are better than four weak ones",
      "text": "The launch frequency is biannual. This is frequent enough to demonstrate regularity and cautious enough to avoid turning “fill the issue” into an acceptance criterion. Starting quarterly out of ambition is a frozen anti-pattern. Continuous publication within an issue is acceptable and operationally useful. The first genuine article can become the first controlled production object; its DOI and metadata are tested before subsequent Issue-1 articles are released. (BSMT 2026f)"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "2.6 Money, rights, and institutional honesty",
      "text": "Crossref has annual membership and content-registration fees, with rates tiered by publishing revenue or expenses and subject to change. (Crossref 2026b) The strategy is explicit: BSMT pays institutional external costs such as domain and Crossref/DOI obligations. Personal hosting and technical work may be donated in Year 1, but their replacement cost and continuity risk should still be recognized rather than described as “free.”"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "2.7 Metadata as the language by which the world understands what",
      "text": "we publish An ISSN1 says “this is the same journal.” A DOI says “this is the same article.” ORCID2 says “this is the same researcher.” ROR3 says “this is the same institution.” (Crossref 2026a)\n\nWhen these fields are correct from Article 1, the journal becomes easier to discover, verify, migrate, and analyze. Retrofitting them years later is expensive and error-prone.\n\nInternational Standard Serial Number - the persistent identifier of a serial publication.. Why it matters: It anchors journal\n\nidentity and is required or important in many downstream services; Bulgaria has a national ISSN centre at the National Library.. Source: https://www.issn.org/centre/bulgaria-bulgarie/.\n\n2Open Researcher and Contributor ID - a persistent researcher identifier.. Why it matters: It disambiguates people and\n\nsupports reliable links between researchers, publications, and affiliations.. Source: https://orcid.org/.\n\n3Research Organization Registry - an open registry of persistent identifiers for research organizations.. Why it matters: It\n\nreduces institutional-name ambiguity and improves affiliations in scholarly metadata.. Source: https://ror.org/."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "2.8 What “indexing” actually means",
      "text": "There is no formal ladder that goes Google Scholar -> DOAJ -> Scopus -> Web of Science. Google Scholar is a crawler/discovery system and requires separate article URLs and parseable bibliographic meta tags. OpenAlex usually ingests from Crossref and other major sources. RILM4 is a domain-specific bibliography. (Google Scholar 2026) (OpenAlex 2026) (RILM 2026)\n\nDOAJ5 can become realistic in Year 1 once a new journal has at least 10 OA research articles and satisfies all other requirements. erih+6 requires at least two years of active publication and other detailed criteria. (DOAJ 2026) (erih+ 2026)\n\nScopus and Web of Science are later, independent major-index applications. Scopus requires peerreviewed content, ISSN, publication history, English titles/abstracts, ethics policy, and evaluates journal policy, content, standing, regularity, and online availability. (Elsevier 2026) Web of Science currently evaluates new submissions on 24 quality criteria; successful titles enter ESCI7 . (Clarivate 2026)"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "2.9 Metrics: what they can and cannot mean",
      "text": "JIF8 , JCI9 , CiteScore, SJR10, and SNIP11 are downstream measurements. They are not tasks the editorial team can execute. The team can execute rigorous review, good selection, metadata quality, discoverability, accessibility, and integrity. A quartile is an external outcome. This is why the strategy forbids promises such as “we will be Q1” and phrases such as “Impact Factor pending.”\n\n4Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale - the principal international bibliography of music literature.. Why it matters: It is particularly important for music theory because it is a disciplinary bibliography and covers music publications worldwide and in all languages.. Source: https://www.rilm.org/abstracts/.\n\n5Directory of Open Access Journals.. Why it matters: It assesses genuine OA practice, transparency, peer review, licences,\n\nand publication history, not just free PDFs.. Source: https://doaj.org/apply/guide/.\n\n6European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences.. Why it matters: It is relevant to BSMT because it evaluates SSH journal quality, transparency, European relevance, and explicitly recognizes scholarly communication in European\n\nlanguages.. Source: https://erihplus.hkdir.no/informationarticles/criteria-for-inclusion.\n\n7Emerging Sources Citation Index - a collection within Web of Science Core Collection.. Why it matters: Under Clarivate’s\n\ncurrent process, successful new journal evaluations enter ESCI before any later internal impact re-evaluation for a flagship collection.. Source: https://clarivate.com/academia-government/scientific-and-academic-res earch/research-discovery-and-referencing/web-of-science/web-of-science-core-collect ion/editorial-selection-process/journal-evaluation-process-selection-criteria/.\n\nJournal Impact Factor - a Clarivate metric in Journal Citation Reports.. Why it matters: It is a downstream outcome after\n\nWoS Core/JCR coverage and cannot honestly be promised by a new journal.. Source: https://clarivate.com/acad emia-government/scientific-and-academic-research/research-discovery-and-referencing /web-of-science/web-of-science-core-collection/editorial-selection-process/journal -evaluation-process-selection-criteria/.\n\nJournal Citation Indicator - a field-normalized journal metric in JCR.. Why it matters: It is useful for category-relative\n\ncomparison and supports rank/percentile/quartile interpretation.. Source: https://clarivate.com/academia-gov ernment/scientific-and-academic-research/research-discovery-and-referencing/web-o f-science/web-of-science-core-collection/editorial-selection-process/journal-evalu ation-process-selection-criteria/.\n\n10SCImago Journal Rank - a prestige-weighted metric based on Scopus data.. Why it matters: It is distinct from CiteScore\n\nand may yield a different quartile, so “Scopus Q1” without naming the metric is imprecise.. Source: https://www.scim agojr.com/.\n\n11Source Normalized Impact per Paper - a field-normalized metric using Scopus source data.. Why it matters: It adjusts for\n\ndiffering citation density between fields.. Source: https://www.scopus.com/sources."
    },
    {
      "type": "chapter",
      "title": "Chapter 3 — Stage Three: the full implementation — plan",
      "text": ""
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.1 Canonical architecture",
      "text": "BSMT institutional continuity independent scholarly governance international journal identity OJS + peer review + structured production ISSN + DOI + ORCID + ROR references + funding + licence Scholar / OpenAlex / RILM DOAJ / erih+ Scopus / WoS-ESCI CiteScore / SJR / SNIP JIF / JCI The diagram is causal but not strictly serial. Domain, people, author acquisition, OJS, policy corpus, ISSN preparation, and Crossref preparation progress in parallel. (BSMT 2026a)"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.2 Roles and accountability",
      "text": "BSMT governance: institutional ownership, budget, domain, contracts, Crossref membership, appointments, continuity. Editor-in-Chief: scholarly policy, final decisions, editorial independence, integrity cases. Section/Associate Editors: desk evaluation, reviewer selection, synthesis of reviews, recommendation. Reviewers: independent expert assessment. Founding Operations/Technical Lead: Year-1 OJS, routing, website/backend, metadata, DOI/Crossref, indexing operations, production automation, backups, monitoring. Copyediting/production: functions may be combined temporarily, but must remain documented and auditable. A single Year-1 technical operator is an accepted bootstrap risk. It is not an excuse for undocumented credentials, missing off-host backups, or the absence of a restore/migration runbook."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.3 Author acquisition and reviewer network",
      "text": "The initial funnel is 40-60 qualified prospects, 8-12 first-wave priority contacts, and a target of 3-4 invited anchor submissions, alongside a genuine open-submission route. Year 2 should move toward a mixed invited/open pipeline; by Year 3, unsolicited international submissions should be a visible independent channel. (BSMT 2026e)\n\nThe reviewer pool is built before manuscripts arrive. Each reviewer record should include expertise, institution, country, conflict information, workload, and completion history. Repeated dependence on the same small circle is an operational warning."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.4 OJS production readiness",
      "text": "Before launch we verify, rather than assume: HTTPS, exact supported OJS/PHP/database versions, cron, SMTP1 , SPF2 /DKIM3 /DMARC4 , error logging, resource limits, permissions, user roles, backups, offsite copy, restore test, and staging. OJS 3.5 integrates DOI management and a Crossref Manager workflow, and supports enriched ORCID/ROR/reference metadata. (Crossref 2026a)\n\nThe editorial system is tested with a synthetic non-public submission through author account, administrative triage, anonymization, desk evaluation, two reviewers, revision, acceptance, copyediting, production, and landing-page preview. A fake production DOI is not minted merely for testing. (BSMT 2026f)"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.5 DOI, Crossref, and reference architecture",
      "text": "Crossref membership and prefix belong to BSMT, not personally to the technical operator. DOI suffixes are opaque/non-semantic. A DOI resolves to the canonical article landing page, not directly to the PDF. A deposit is not considered successful merely because OJS submitted it; the DOI must resolve and Crossref query metadata must match the authoritative record. (Crossref 2026c)\n\nCrossref distinguishes reference linking from reference registration. Linking is a membership obligation; depositing the reference list is separate. BSMT sets a 100% target for eligible research-article referencelist deposits. Books, scores, archives, and historical sources are never removed merely because they lack a DOI. (Crossref 2026d)\n\nSimple Mail Transfer Protocol.. Why it matters: The journal workflow depends on reliable author/reviewer/editor email\n\nnotifications.. Source: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321.\n\nSender Policy Framework.. Why it matters: It supports email authentication and reduces spoofing/spam risk.. Source:\n\nhttps://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7208.\n\n3DomainKeys Identified Mail.. Why it matters: It enables cryptographic verification of authorized domain-signed email..\n\nSource: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6376.\n\n4Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance.. Why it matters: It joins SPF/DKIM policy and\n\nreporting for reliable journal correspondence.. Source: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7489."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.6 Publication formats and JATS",
      "text": "JATS5 1.4 is the current target. NISO JATS 1.4 is the 2024 revision of the standard. (NISO/NLM 2024)\n\nThe canonical model is OJS metadata + copyedited scholarly source -> BSMT Semantic Article Model -> JATS XML6 , semantic HTML7 , and accessible PDF. PDF-only is explicitly rejected. JATS maturity, however, is evidence-gated through a representative corpus rather than allowed to delay launch indefinitely."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.7 Accessibility",
      "text": "The web target is WCAG8 2.2 AA. The PDF target is PDF/UA9 -2. These are targets, not marketing claims: conformance is claimed only after validator-backed and manual evidence. (W3C 2023) (ISO 2024) Music notation is the domain-specific difficulty. Significant music examples require captions, alt text, and when necessary analytical long descriptions that state the scholarly information the example carries. Mathematics should remain semantic rather than image-only."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.8 Data, code, and reproducibility",
      "text": "Every research article carries a Data Availability Statement. Where custom software or code materially supports the claims, a Code Availability Statement is also required. Computational work normally provides a repository, versioned archival release with persistent identifier, exact software/environment versions, dependencies, configurations/hyperparameters, random seeds where relevant, dataset provenance, licence, and reproduction instructions. GitHub is a development repository, not by itself a sufficient archival scholarly object. Zenodo can ingest and archive GitHub releases as DOI-bearing records. (Zenodo 2026a) (Zenodo 2026b)\n\nLegal, copyright, privacy, and cultural constraints remain valid exceptions. The policy requires transparent disclosure of what cannot be shared and why; it does not require unlawful redistribution of copyrighted musical sources."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.9 The public policy corpus",
      "text": "Before full launch, thirty-five policy topics must be publicly discoverable: About; Aims & Scope; Ownership; Publisher; Editorial Independence; Editorial Team; Peer Review; Author Guidelines; Reviewer\n\nJournal Article Tag Suite - the NISO XML standard for structured journal-article content.. Why it matters: It allows article\n\ncontent and metadata to move between publishing, archiving, and text-mining systems independently of one visual format.. Source: https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/publishing/1.4/.\n\n6Extensible Markup Language - a structured text markup standard.. Why it matters: JATS uses XML to encode the article\n\nindependently of a specific renderer.. Source: https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/.\n\n7HyperText Markup Language - the standard markup language of the Web.. Why it matters: Semantic HTML makes article\n\ncontent crawlable, accessible, linkable, and machine-processable.. Source: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/.\n\n8Web Content Accessibility Guidelines - the W3C international standard for accessible web content.. Why it matters: Level\n\nAA provides testable criteria for perceivability, operability, understandability, and robustness.. Source: https://www.w3 .org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/.\n\nPDF/Universal Accessibility - the ISO standard for accessible PDF.. Why it matters: PDF/UA-2 defines how PDF 2.0 should\n\nbe structured for reliable use with assistive technologies.. Source: https://www.iso.org/standard/82278.html. Guidelines; Publication Ethics; Authorship; Contributorship; Conflicts of Interest; Plagiarism; Duplicate Publication; Research Misconduct; Data & Reproducibility; Software/Code; AI Policy; Copyright; Licensing; Open Access; APC/Fees; Self-archiving; Preservation; Corrections; Retractions; Expressions of Concern; Complaints; Appeals; Special Issues; Advertising; Privacy; Funding; Contact. These do not have to be thirty-five separate webpages. They do have to be findable, current, mutually consistent, and actually followed."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.10 Detailed article lifecycle",
      "text": "1. Submission with metadata and declarations.\n\n2. Administrative completeness/anonymization/routing.\n\n3. Scholarly desk evaluation by authorized editor.\n\n4. Normally two independent external reviews.\n\n5. Revision with preserved version history.\n\n6. Scholarly acceptance/rejection decision.\n\n7. Copyediting and author queries.\n\n8. Production to JATS/HTML/PDF with validation.\n\n9. Canonical landing-page publication.\n\n10. DOI registration, resolution, and metadata parity check.\n\n11. Discovery surfaces and post-publication maintenance.\n\nThis lifecycle keeps scientific authority and technical operations separate while preserving an audit trail."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.11 Metadata contract for Article 1",
      "text": "Object Required state Article identity title/subtitle, article type, language, volume/issue/article identifier, canonical URL, DOI when active. Authors exact order, names, affiliations, authenticated ORCID when supplied. Organizations complete affiliation text; ROR only when reliably matched. Abstract/keywords complete English metadata; Bulgarian parallel metadata according to language model. Dates submission, acceptance, publication where supported. Rights author-retained copyright; CC BY 4.0; OA/APC=0. Funding funder and award metadata when applicable. References full VOR list, verified DOI links, non-DOI sources retained, full Crossref deposit. Data/code availability statements and persistent relations where applicable.\n\nPost-publication correction/retraction/related-object relations when applicable."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.12 Citation and reference architecture",
      "text": "The house style is Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition, Author-Date; the bibliography heading is Works Cited. Discursive and source-critical footnotes are permitted but do not create a second independent bibliography. DOI links are displayed as https://doi.org/.... Music scholarship requires explicit templates for scores/editions, archives/manuscripts, recordings, dissertations, datasets, software, preprints, and digital corpora. The same normalized reference object feeds JATS, HTML, PDF, and Crossref."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.13 Crossmark and Similarity Check",
      "text": "Crossmark is not a launch blocker. After the basic Crossref workflow is stable, BSMT can register an update-policy page with its own DOI and implement Crossmark metadata/button consistently on new content. (Crossref 2026e)\n\nSimilarity Check is also post-launch. But the direct full-text Similarity Check URL should be deposited from DOI #1 so that eligibility accumulates automatically. Crossref currently requires such URLs in at least 90% of registered journal articles; the internal BSMT target is 100%. (Crossref 2026f)\n\nA similarity percentage is never an automatic plagiarism verdict. Reports support human editorial assessment."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.14 Indexing dependency model",
      "text": "Wrong model: Scholar → DOAJ → erih+ → Scopus → WoS. Correct model: one strong journal produces multiple evidence streams consumed independently by different services. Crossref is a major feed for OpenAlex but not a hard prerequisite for RILM or Google Scholar. DOAJ and erih+ are independent. Neither is a formal prerequisite for Scopus or WoS. Scopus and WoS are independent. True downstream dependencies include Scopus -> CiteScore/SJR/SNIP and WoS Core/JCR -> JIF/JCI."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.15 Indexing matrix and realistic timing",
      "text": "Period Realistic strategic state 2026 Build/validate: title, people, policies, OJS, Crossref, production, recovery. 2027 Volume 1; DOI from Article 1; Scholar/OpenAlex technical readiness; RILM; EBSCO; possible late-Year-1 DOAJ gate. 2028 Volume 2; DOAJ realistic; stronger unsolicited international flow; citation/reuse baseline. 2029 erih+ earliest; Scopus and WoS readiness audits; apply only if gates pass. 2029-2030 First plausible major-index application zone. 2032-2033 Possible metric maturation; Q2+ is an internal aspiration, not a promise. 2034-2036+ Sustained Q1-level performance only if independent scholarly reuse supports it. DOAJ accepts OA journals in any language and allows a new journal to apply after more than one year of history or at least 10 OA research articles, provided all other criteria are met. (DOAJ 2026) erih+ requires at least two years of active publication. (erih+ 2026)"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.16 KPI dashboard",
      "text": "KPI10 classes are TARGET, GUARDRAIL, MONITOR, and DEPENDENT/N/A. There is no composite journal score. Operations: median triage, desk decision, review time, acceptance-to-publication, overdue reviews, schedule adherence. Quality: required-review compliance, corrections/retractions, integrity cases. Internationalization: author/reviewer/editor countries and institution concentration. Discoverability: DOI resolution, Crossref parity, reference deposits, Scholar/OpenAlex. Finance: actual cash, in-kind hours, continuity cover. Bibliometrics are N/A until providers create them."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.17 Risk register and stop-the-line rules",
      "text": "The highest early risks include insufficient high-quality submissions, operational workload collapse, local/internal author concentration, weak reviewer/Section-Editor capacity, dependence on the founder network, single technical operator unavailability, weak English, decorative international governance, metadata/Crossref defects, preservation failure, security/privacy incidents, and automation corrupting the scholarly record. The accepted Year-1 bus factor of one technical operator is not itself the failure. The failure is allowing the system to remain undocumented, non-portable, or unrecoverable. Publication stops if a required review is missing, a serious integrity issue is unresolved, reviewer confidentiality is breached, a critical DOI/metadata defect remains, or the article landing/full-text record is broken. Index applications stop if the readiness gate is not PASS. Public claims stop if evidence is unavailable."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.18 Twenty things not to do",
      "text": "1. Promise Q1.\n\n2. Say “Impact Factor pending.”\n\n3. Display fake impact metrics.\n\n4. Apply to Scopus immediately.\n\n5. Fill the journal with “our papers.”\n\n6. Turn the journal into conference proceedings.\n\n7. Add dozens of board names for prestige.\n\n10Key Performance Indicator - a defined measure of process or strategic health.. Why it matters: A KPI is useful only\n\nwhen its denominator/period and the action triggered by deviation are clear; otherwise it is decorative.. Source: https: //www.crossref.org/.\n\n8. Start quarterly out of ambition.\n\n9. Publish PDF-only.\n\n10. Omit reference lists from Crossref deposits.\n\n11. Encode volume/year semantics in DOI suffixes.\n\n12. Change registered DOI strings.\n\n13. Change the journal title after launch except under extreme necessity.\n\n14. Publish without preservation/recovery.\n\n15. Use vague peer-review policy.\n\n16. Allow a conflicted editor to handle their own manuscript.\n\n17. Allow materially inconsistent English quality.\n\n18. Present Google Scholar coverage as equivalent to Scopus indexing.\n\n19. Measure success by submission count.\n\n20. Measure success by number of published papers."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.19 Top twenty immediate priorities",
      "text": "# Priority 1 Final launch title clearance and freeze. 2 Appoint Editor-in-Chief. 3 Appoint 3-5 Section/Associate Editors. 4 Populate 40-60 qualified author prospects and begin 8-12 first-wave outreach. 5 Build active international Editorial Board cohort. 6 Purchase/freeze BSMT-controlled final domain. 7 Complete Phase-5 production validation. 8 Execute live OJS production-readiness checklist. 9 Publish complete public policy corpus. 10 Prove off-host backup + restore/migration. 11 Join Crossref / obtain BSMT prefix and credentials. 12 Validate live DOI/rich metadata/reference-deposit workflow. 13 Build active reviewer pool. 14 Prepare ISSN package and submit at legitimate Bulgarian gate.\n\n15 Run full first-article end-to-end test. 16 Validate Highwire/OAI/sitemap/robots/Scholar/OpenAlex surfaces. 17 Make preservation operational and verifiable. 18 Open public Call for Papers after workflow proof. 19 Publish Issue 1 with 5-7 strong research articles, target 6. 20 Execute post-Issue-1 discovery/indexing activation."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.20 The first 90 days",
      "text": "Three tracks run in parallel. Scholarly/people: Editor-in-Chief, Section Editors, Board, reviewers, authors. Institutional: final title, domain, public policies, ISSN path, Crossref. Technical: Phase 5, production OJS, backups, metadata, end-to-end validation. Days 1-30 consolidate identity, appointments, policy text, and author prospecting. Days 31-60 build/verify the production stack, domain, mail, backup, metadata, ISSN/Crossref preparation. Days 61-90 run the synthetic full workflow and Crossref test path. Public Call for Papers waits until the workflow is credible."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.21 GO / CONDITIONAL GO / NO-GO",
      "text": "GO: scientific identity, final title, credible Editor-in-Chief, active scholarly editors/board, credible Year-1 author pipeline, functional peer review, production/recovery integrity, public policies, ISSN/Crossref/DOI path. CONDITIONAL GO: only normal post-launch features are missing, such as DOAJ, erih+, Scopus, WoS, Crossmark, Similarity Check, or bibliometric metrics. NO-GO: no credible authors/pipeline, no scholarly authority, no real peer review, no recovery, no policy/ethics foundation, or no viable metadata/DOI path."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.22 Public document set before launch - explicit manifest",
      "text": "The compact policy corpus above becomes operational only when every required topic is publicly discoverable. The launch manifest therefore contains the following thirty-five areas:\n\n1. About\n\n2. Aims & Scope\n\n3. Ownership\n\n4. Publisher\n\n5. Editorial Independence\n\n6. Editorial Team\n\n7. Peer Review\n\n8. Author Guidelines\n\n9. Reviewer Guidelines\n\n10. Publication Ethics\n\n11. Authorship\n\n12. Contributorship\n\n13. Conflicts of Interest\n\n14. Plagiarism\n\n15. Duplicate Publication\n\n16. Research Misconduct\n\n17. Data & Reproducibility\n\n18. Software / Code\n\n19. AI Policy\n\n20. Copyright\n\n21. Licensing\n\n22. Open Access\n\n23. APC / Fees\n\n24. Self-archiving\n\n25. Preservation\n\n26. Corrections\n\n27. Retractions\n\n28. Expressions of Concern\n\n29. Complaints\n\n30. Appeals\n\n31. Special Issues\n\n32. Advertising\n\n33. Privacy\n\n34. Funding\n\n35. Contact\n\nThese topics need not become thirty-five separate web pages. They must, however, be findable, internally consistent, version-controlled where appropriate, and actually followed. A policy that exists only in GitHub or in this strategy is not yet a public journal policy."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.23 Indexing matrix - what BSMT does with each system",
      "text": "System When Operational logic ISSN around launch Prepare the dossier in advance; submit at the legitimate Bulgarian National Centre evidence stage. Crossref pre-launch / Article Membership/prefix before the first production DOI; rich metadata from the first record. Google Scholar Article 1 Unique article URL, abstract/full text, citation meta tags, crawlable site. (Google Scholar 2026)\n\nOpenAlex Article 1+ Clean Crossref DOI and metadata; no normal separate article submission. (OpenAlex 2026)\n\nRILM after Issue 1 Domain-specific bibliography and an early priority for a music-theory journal. (RILM 2026)\n\nDOAJ late 2027/2028 After at least 10 OA research articles or more than one year of history, plus all other criteria. (DOAJ 2026)\n\nerih+ earliest 2029 At least two active years and the current detailed eligibility criteria. (erih+ 2026)\n\nScopus audit 2029 Apply only when the technical/CSAB evidence gate is green; never because the calendar says so. (Elsevier 2026) WoS/ESCI audit 2029 New submissions face the 24 quality criteria; apply only with a mature representative corpus. (Clarivate 2026)"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.24 KPI dashboard - concrete thresholds",
      "text": "Operations: median administrative triage <=2 business days; median desk decision <=7 calendar days; normal reviewer response window 5 days; normal review period after acceptance of invitation 28 days; final decision after required reports <=7 days; acceptance-to-publication median <=30 days; schedule adherence 100%. Quality: required-review compliance 100%. Desk-rejection rate and post-review acceptance rate are monitored without target percentages. Corrections and retractions are not optimized toward zero: a transparent correction may be evidence of a functioning integrity system. Discoverability: DOI registration/resolution 100%; landing/full-text health 100%; Crossref parity 100%; eligible reference-list deposit 100%; valid supplied ORCID capture 100%; reliable ROR mapping correctness 100%; applicable funding metadata 100%.\n\nInternationalization: author/reviewer/editor geography, largest-institution share, board activity, reviewer breadth, and Year-3 qualified unsolicited outside-Bulgaria submissions. Capacity: for the Year-1 combined Operations/Technical role, green <=0.75 load, amber >0.75 to <=0.90, red >0.90. Two consecutive months of growing backlog trigger a capacity review."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.25 Risk register - the failures that matter most",
      "text": "The highest early risks are:\n\n1. insufficient high-quality submissions;\n\n2. operational workload collapse;\n\n3. excessive local/Bulgarian author concentration;\n\n4. excessive internal/endogenous authorship;\n\n5. weak reviewer and Section-Editor capacity;\n\n6. unavailability of the single technical operator;\n\n7. weak or inconsistent English/copyediting;\n\n8. a decorative international board;\n\n9. metadata/Crossref defects;\n\n10. preservation or restore failure;\n\n11. publisher/editor governance conflict;\n\n12. security/privacy incident;\n\n13. AI/automation silently corrupting the scholarly record;\n\n14. dependence on the founder’s personal network;\n\n15. premature or false indexing/metric claims.\n\nThe Year-1 technical bus factor of one is an accepted bootstrap condition. The failure mode is not that one person performs the work; the failure is that the system becomes undocumented, non-portable, or unrecoverable."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.26 Detailed first-90-days checkpoint plan",
      "text": "Days 1-7 / already largely complete at the strategic level: scientific concept, working title, publisher identity, English-first baseline, Diamond OA/no APC, biannual model, and competitor positioning. Days 8-30: final title clearance; named Editor-in-Chief; 3-5 Section Editors; active Board cohort; public Aims & Scope/governance/ethics/author/reviewer policies; 40-60 prospect registry; first-wave outreach. Days 31-60: final domain; production OJS; HTTPS; SMTP; scheduled tasks; permissions; backups; offhost copy; restore test; canonical URLs; metadata fields; Crossref membership/prefix preparation; ISSN evidence package; accessibility and production validation. Days 61-90: synthetic end-to-end submission -> review -> revision -> acceptance -> copyedit -> production -> landing-page preview -> Scholar/OAI/sitemap checks -> Crossref sandbox/XML validation. The public Call for Papers opens only when this workflow is credible."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "3.27 The ten-year roadmap as a conditional trajectory",
      "text": "Year Strategic meaning 2026 Build and validate; do not rush to public Issue 1. 2027 Volume 1; two strong issues; DOI/Scholar/OpenAlex/RILM/EBSCO; potential DOAJ gate. 2028 Volume 2; production consistency; unsolicited international growth; DOAJ maturity; erih+ evidence. 2029 erih+ if eligible; Scopus readiness audit; WoS readiness audit. 2030-2031 Major-index application/coverage window only if the evidence gates are green. 2032-2033 Provider metrics may mature; Q2+ in Music is an aspiration, not a guarantee. 2034-2036+ Sustained Q1-level performance and possible AHCI only if real scholarly reuse supports it. If the journal develops more slowly, the dates move. The quality threshold does not move downward."
    },
    {
      "type": "chapter",
      "title": "Addendum: if the Society wants Bulgarian as the publication language",
      "text": ""
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "A1. What changes - and what does not",
      "text": "If BSMT decides that full-text articles should be published in Bulgarian, the project does not collapse. DOI, Crossref, OJS, peer review, ethics, Diamond OA, copyright, metadata, preservation, accessibility, and most of the production architecture remain intact. What changes most strongly is the geometry of author acquisition: who can realistically write for the journal, who can read it without a language barrier, and how easily the journal can develop independent unsolicited international submissions. DOAJ explicitly accepts OA journals in any language. (DOAJ 2026) RILM covers music publications anywhere in the world and in any language, with bilingual representation for non-Roman scripts. (RILM 2026) erih+ explicitly recognizes the maintenance of linguistic diversity in European scholarly communication as one possible dimension of European relevance. (erih+ 2026)\n\nScopus does not require full text in English; its technical criteria require English titles and abstracts and content that is relevant/readable for an international audience. (Elsevier 2026) Web of Science likewise permits non-English content while requiring accurate English bibliographic elements and Roman-script bibliographic information under its current quality framework. (Clarivate 2026)\n\nThe issue is therefore not simply “will the indexes accept Bulgarian?” The deeper question is what kind of journal does the Society want to build?"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "A2. Four language models",
      "text": "Model Strength Strategic risk Bulgarian only Strong national mission; supports terminology and local scholarly communication. International author pool is largely restricted to scholars able to write academic Bulgarian. Bulgarian primary + English accepted Preserves Bulgarian dominance while leaving an open door to international authors. May become Bulgarian-only in practice without active English-language acquisition. Bulgarian and English equal Strong compromise between national scholarly mission and international submissions. Requires consistently high editorial/language production in both languages. English primary + justified Bulgarian exceptions Lowest barrier to international authors/readers; current baseline strategy.\n\nSome Society members may perceive the Bulgarian scholarlylanguage mission as secondary."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "A3. Bulgarian-only",
      "text": "This is a legitimate scholarly model. DOAJ, RILM, erih+, Scopus, and WoS remain possible if their criteria are met. The strategic cost is narrower international authorship: an external scholar must be able to write academic Bulgarian or invest in translation. The model is coherent if BSMT explicitly defines the mission as a national reference journal for Bulgarian music-theoretical terminology and scholarship with international metadata/discovery infrastructure. That is a different identity from an English-language international journal based in Bulgaria. Every article should still carry English title, abstract, and keywords; reliable Roman-script author/affiliation representation; and internationally interoperable metadata. The public journal-facing policy layer should be available in English."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "A4. Bulgarian-primary with English submissions accepted",
      "text": "Bulgarian can be the default interface and dominant language while the submission policy explicitly accepts both Bulgarian and English. This reduces the cultural tension without closing the journal to external authors. The risk is de facto localization if English-language manuscripts are technically permitted but not actively acquired."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "A5. Equal Bulgarian and English",
      "text": "This is the strongest compromise if the Society wants Bulgarian to remain a full scholarly publication language while retaining a realistic international author pool. A possible policy wording is: “Research articles are accepted in Bulgarian or English. All articles carry complete English metadata; Bulgarianlanguage articles additionally provide Bulgarian metadata.” The cost is operational rather than conceptual: the editorial and production system must sustain comparable quality in both languages."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "A6. English-primary with justified Bulgarian exceptions",
      "text": "This is the current frozen baseline. It provides the lowest barrier to international authorship and readership. Bulgarian can be admitted for historically/source-oriented, terminological, or otherwise justified cases with complete English metadata. The strategic concern is cultural rather than indexing-related: members may feel that the national theoretical language is being treated as a secondary object rather than a living scholarly medium."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "A7. Mandatory elements under every model",
      "text": "Regardless of full-text language:\n\nevery article has an English title, abstract, and keywords;\n\nnames and affiliations have reliable Roman-script forms;\n\nORCID/ROR are used when validly available;\n\nDOI/Crossref metadata remain complete;\n\nreferences are deposited and, where necessary, carry transliterated/English-accessible representation\n\nwithout replacing the original;\n\ncore public policies are available in English;\n\npeer-review quality does not vary by language.\n\nRILM is especially compatible with this model because it works across all languages and preserves original-language information alongside English translations/abstracts. (RILM 2026)"
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "A8. Bulgarian as a scholarly mission, not a technical concession",
      "text": "If BSMT gives Bulgarian a strong publication role, that role should be framed positively: systematic modernization and international mapping of Bulgarian music-theoretical terminology. This includes the canonical bilingual glossary, Hadjiev-derived functional-harmonic terminology, and terms for alteration, modulation, mode, function, and analytical notation. The glossary can itself become a scholarly contribution. English equivalents should not mechanically replace Bulgarian terms; they should map relationships between theoretical traditions. In this model, the Bulgarian language becomes part of the journal’s international contribution rather than evidence of isolation."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "A9. Effect on the Year-3 scholarly-gravity test",
      "text": "In a Bulgarian-only model, the same volume of unsolicited foreign submissions is not a realistic benchmark. Scholarly gravity would need additional evidence from international readership, citations, reviewers, collaborations, and Bulgarian-speaking scholars abroad. In a genuinely bilingual Bulgarian-English model, the current unsolicited-external-submission criterion can remain substantially unchanged. The metric must not be rewritten merely to conceal localization. If the ambition remains an international journal, international author flow should remain a meaningful health signal."
    },
    {
      "type": "section",
      "title": "A10. Recommended decision process",
      "text": "The Society should not frame the decision simply as “Bulgarian or English?” That conflates cultural identity with operational strategy. The four models above should be presented with their consequences for authorship, readership, production capacity, and international development. If the Society wants both Bulgarian as a genuine publication language and a realistic international author pool, the most balanced option is an equal Bulgarian/English submission policy with mandatory English metadata. If it chooses Bulgarian-only, the journal should honestly reposition itself as an internationally visible European scholarly journal in Bulgarian rather than an English-language international journal.\n\nCentral point: the language decision does not cancel the other 63 strategic decisions. It changes author acquisition, readership, and the internationalization model. It should therefore be resolved consciously before the final title/ISSN/public Call for Papers."
    }
  ],
  "archival_machine_contract_2026_10_02": {
    "schema": "bsmt_journal_strategy_machine_readable",
    "schema_version": "2.0.0",
    "generated_on": "2026-10-02",
    "language": "en",
    "edition": "machine-readable",
    "title": "Strategy for the BSMT Scholarly Journal",
    "authorship": {
      "prepared_by": "Ivan Yanakiev",
      "role": "author and compiler of the strategy document",
      "generative_ai_assistance": true,
      "statement": "This document was prepared by Ivan Yanakiev with the assistance of generative artificial intelligence. Generative AI was used for research, structuring, comparative analysis, drafting support, translation, consistency checking, and technical production. AI is not an author and does not bear scholarly, editorial, publishing, or legal responsibility."
    },
    "institutional_context": {
      "organization": "Bulgarian Society for Music Theory (BSMT)",
      "relation_to_document": "institutional context and intended future journal publisher; not the collective author of this document"
    },
    "document_status": {
      "master_plan_sections": "63/63 complete",
      "strategy_complete": true,
      "operational_launch_complete": false,
      "precedence": "latest explicitly frozen decision > current canonical domain specification > archival Master Plan recommendation"
    },
    "working_journal": {
      "title": "Music Theory: Structures and Systems",
      "descriptor": "An International Journal of Music Theory and Analysis",
      "publisher": "Bulgarian Society for Music Theory",
      "title_status": "provisional canonical working title pending final launch clearance"
    },
    "notation_legend": {
      "ID": "unique rule/decision identifier",
      "STATUS": "ACTIVE | OPEN | BLOCKED | NOT_TESTED | PASS | FAIL | NO_GO",
      "RULE": "normative rule",
      "DEPENDENCIES": "conditions required before execution",
      "EVIDENCE": "evidence proving execution",
      "ACCEPTANCE": "condition for PASS",
      "STOP": "condition that halts release/application",
      "OWNER": "functional responsibility holder"
    },
    "chapters": [
      {
        "title": "Stage I: strategic core - what journal object is being created",
        "sections": [
          {
            "id": "ROOT-01",
            "title": "ROOT-01 — Institutional root",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "ROOT-01",
              "STATUS": "ACTIVE / FROZEN",
              "RULE": "The publisher is the Bulgarian Society for Music Theory. BSMT holds institutional identity, domain continuity, the Crossref relationship, and external financial obligations.",
              "OWNER": "BSMT governance",
              "STOP": "Neither a personal hosting account nor the Operations/Technical Lead may be represented as the publisher."
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "JRN-01",
            "title": "JRN-01 — Scholarly identity",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "JRN-01",
              "STATUS": "ACTIVE; title pending final launch clearance",
              "WORKING_TITLE": "Music Theory: Structures and Systems",
              "DESCRIPTOR": "An International Journal of Music Theory and Analysis",
              "CENTER": "music theory and analysis",
              "RULE": "Formal, mathematical, computational, historical, comparative, cognitive/technological papers are in scope only when the substantive contribution remains music-theoretical or analytical.",
              "ACCEPTANCE": "Aims & Scope and the published corpus remain mutually consistent."
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "JRN-02",
            "title": "JRN-02 — Access and rights model",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "JRN-02",
              "STATUS": "ACTIVE / FROZEN",
              "RULE": "Diamond OA; APC=EUR 0; authors retain copyright; Version of Record under CC BY 4.0.",
              "EVIDENCE": "Public OA/Fees/Copyright/Licensing pages; licence metadata in article/Crossref records.",
              "STOP": "Contradictory all-rights-reserved wording or hidden submission/publication fee."
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "JRN-03",
            "title": "JRN-03 — Frequency and volume",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "JRN-03",
              "STATUS": "ACTIVE",
              "RULE": "2 issues/year; 5–7 research articles/issue; target=6; annual planning target=12; range=10–14.",
              "QUALITY_OVERRIDE": "Never lower the acceptance threshold to fill an issue.",
              "FORBIDDEN": "Quarterly launch cadence."
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "GOV-01",
            "title": "GOV-01 — Separation of powers",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "GOV-01",
              "RULE": "Publisher governance controls continuity and legal/financial infrastructure. The EIC and authorized scholarly editors control acceptance/rejection/correction/retraction.",
              "OWNER": "BSMT / EIC, by domain",
              "STOP": "Governance instruction to accept or reject an individual manuscript."
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "REV-01",
            "title": "REV-01 — Peer review",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "REV-01",
              "RULE": "Double-anonymized; normally >=2 independent external reviewers for research articles.",
              "DEPENDENCIES": "Named EIC; Section Editors; reviewer pool; conflict procedure.",
              "EVIDENCE": "OJS audit trail; two completed reports; decision by an authorized editor.",
              "STOP": "A conflicted editor selects reviewers or decides their own/closely connected manuscript."
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "INT-01",
            "title": "INT-01 — International-first without acceptance quotas",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "INT-01",
              "RULE": "Internationalization is measured using verified institutional affiliation, never inferred nationality.",
              "ISSUE1_SANITY": "4–5 affiliation countries if the strong-quality pipeline permits; never a quota.",
              "BOARD": "50–60%+ outside Bulgaria; 8–10 countries where realistic; active work required.",
              "CORRECTION": "Acquisition/network building, never preference for a weaker manuscript because of geography.",
              "STOP": "International branding over a structurally local corpus/network."
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "PORT-01",
            "title": "PORT-01 — First thirty articles",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "PORT-01",
              "CORE_RULE": "15 excellent articles > 40 mediocre articles.",
              "AUDITS": "approximately article 10, 20, 30",
              "ORDER": "scope -> quality -> integrity -> peer review -> portfolio balance",
              "TARGET_TRAJECTORY": "invited/founder-led -> mixed -> unsolicited international -> self-sustaining"
            }
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "title": "Stage II: operating model - how strategy becomes a sustainable journal",
        "sections": [
          {
            "id": "OPS",
            "title": "OPS-01 — Year-1 roles",
            "fields": {}
          },
          {
            "id": "ACQ-01",
            "title": "ACQ-01 — Author acquisition",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "ACQ-01",
              "PROSPECT_UNIVERSE": "40–60 qualified prospects",
              "FIRST_WAVE": "8–12 priority prospects",
              "ANCHOR_TARGET": "3–4 invited anchor submissions",
              "RULE": "Invited != accepted. A genuine open-submission route remains permanent.",
              "YEAR3_NORTH_STAR": "Recurring qualified unsolicited submissions from institutions outside Bulgaria."
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "META-01",
            "title": "META-01 — Persistent identity and rich metadata",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "META-01",
              "ARTICLE_FIELDS": "title, abstract, keywords, authors/order, affiliations, ORCID, ROR, funding, dates, licence, copyright, references, data/code, relations",
              "RULE": "Rich metadata from Article 1; never treat metadata as a later retrofit.",
              "NO_FABRICATION": "Never invent ORCID/ROR/funding identifiers."
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "REF-01",
            "title": "REF-01 — References",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "REF-01",
              "DISPLAY_STYLE": "Chicago Manual of Style 18th ed. — Author–Date; Works Cited",
              "DOI_FORM": "https://doi.org/...",
              "CROSSREF_TARGET": "100% eligible research-article reference lists deposited",
              "RULE": "Reference linking != reference registration; BSMT performs both.",
              "STOP": "Unverified DOI matching or dropping non-DOI historical/music references."
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "FMT-01",
            "title": "FMT-01 — Publication object",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "FMT-01",
              "METADATA_AUTHORITY": "OJS",
              "INTERMEDIATE": "BSMT Semantic Article Model",
              "TARGET_OUTPUTS": "JATS 1.4 + semantic HTML + accessible PDF",
              "LAUNCH_MINIMUM": "canonical landing page + complete machine metadata + accessible high-quality PDF; never a PDF-only architecture",
              "JATS_MATURITY": ">=10 representative articles; 100% schema validation; math/harmony/music/reference/HTML parity; no routine manual XML patching"
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "ACC-01",
            "title": "ACC-01 — Accessibility",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "ACC-01",
              "WEB_TARGET": "WCAG 2.2 AA",
              "PDF_TARGET": "PDF/UA-2 / ISO 14289-2:2024",
              "RULES": "semantic HTML; no image-only text/equations; figure alt text; semantic tables; MathML; music-example caption + analytical description",
              "CLAIM_GATE": "No conformance claim without validator + manual evidence."
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "DATA-01",
            "title": "DATA-01 — Data, code, reproducibility",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "DATA-01",
              "DAS": "required for every research article",
              "CAS": "required when code/software materially supports claims",
              "COMPUTATIONAL_DEFAULT": "repository + versioned archival release/PID + environment + config + seeds if stochastic + dataset provenance + licence + reproduction instructions",
              "GITHUB": "development/version control; not the sole scholarly archive where archival infrastructure exists",
              "RESTRICTIONS": "privacy, consent, copyright, third-party licence, cultural/community governance, legal/security constraints are legitimate if explicitly disclosed"
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "ETH-01",
            "title": "ETH-01 — Ethics/public-policy corpus",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "ETH-01",
              "COUNT": "35 required public topics before full public Issue 1",
              "CORE": "About; Aims & Scope; Ownership; Publisher; Editorial Independence; Editorial Team; Peer Review; Author/Reviewer Guidelines; Ethics; Authorship/Contributorship; COI; Plagiarism/Duplicate/Misconduct; Data/Code; AI; Copyright/Licensing/OA/Fees; Self-archiving; Preservation; Corrections/Retractions/EoC; Complaints/Appeals; Special Issues; Advertising; Privacy; Funding; Contact",
              "PASS": "Publicly discoverable, no placeholders/contradictions, APC explicitly EUR 0, preservation claims factual."
            }
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "title": "Stage III: execution system - dependencies, gates, KPIs, timeline, and stop conditions",
        "sections": [
          {
            "id": "INFRA",
            "title": "INFRA-01 — OJS production readiness",
            "fields": {}
          },
          {
            "id": "CR-01",
            "title": "CR-01 — Crossref go-live",
            "fields": {
              "ID": "CR-01",
              "OWNER": "BSMT owns/pays membership and prefix; Technical Lead operates deposits",
              "STAGES": "contract=PASS; sandbox=NOT_PASSED; production=NOT_PASSED",
              "DOI_SUFFIX": "opaque/non-semantic",
              "RESOLUTION": "DOI -> canonical article landing page, not directly to PDF",
              "VERIFY": "processed success + doi.org resolution + Crossref REST metadata parity",
              "FORBIDDEN": "fake dummy article registered in production Crossref",
              "REF_TARGET": "100% eligible reference lists deposited"
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "E2E",
            "title": "E2E-01 — Two-stage launch test",
            "fields": {
              "STAGE_A": "synthetic/non-public: submission -> triage -> scholarly desk -> two independent reviewers -> revision -> acceptance -> copyedit -> PDF/HTML/JATS -> landing preview -> discovery markup -> Crossref sandbox/XML",
              "STAGE_B": "first genuine accepted article: metadata freeze -> live landing -> production DOI -> Crossref accepted -> DOI resolves -> REST parity -> Scholar/OpenAlex technically ready",
              "CURRENT": "Stage A NOT PASSED; Stage B NOT STARTED",
              "STOP": "If the first live DOI/metadata path fails materially, pause subsequent Issue-1 releases."
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "DISC",
            "title": "DISC-01 — Discovery and indexing DAG",
            "fields": {}
          },
          {
            "id": "IDX",
            "title": "IDX-01 — Timing matrix",
            "fields": {}
          },
          {
            "id": "KPI",
            "title": "KPI-01 — Dashboard contract",
            "fields": {}
          },
          {
            "id": "RISK",
            "title": "RISK-01 — Critical risks and guards",
            "fields": {}
          },
          {
            "id": "STOP",
            "title": "STOP-01 — Hard stop conditions",
            "fields": {
              "STOP_PUBLICATION": "required review missing; unresolved serious integrity issue; identity/licence ambiguity; critical metadata/DOI defect; broken article/landing page; critical accessibility barrier",
              "STOP_INDEX_APPLICATION": "readiness checklist != PASS",
              "STOP_PUBLIC_CLAIM": "evidence unavailable",
              "STOP_AUTOMATION": "output diverges from authoritative scholarly source",
              "STOP_SPECIAL_ISSUE": "Volume 1; unstable regular workflow"
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "TOP20",
            "title": "TOP20-01 — Immediate execution register",
            "fields": {}
          },
          {
            "id": "ROAD",
            "title": "ROAD-01 — 2026–2036 roadmap",
            "fields": {}
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "title": "Addendum: publication language as a formal strategic parameter",
        "sections": [
          {
            "id": "LANG",
            "title": "LANG-ROOT — What does not change",
            "fields": {}
          },
          {
            "id": "LANG",
            "title": "LANG-01 — Four admissible language-policy models",
            "fields": {}
          },
          {
            "id": "LANG",
            "title": "LANG-02 — Machine rule set for a Bulgarian-full-text model",
            "fields": {
              "ARTICLE_LANGUAGE": "bg OR en according to selected policy",
              "MANDATORY_EN_TITLE": "true",
              "MANDATORY_EN_ABSTRACT": "true",
              "MANDATORY_EN_KEYWORDS": "true",
              "AUTHOR_ROMAN_SCRIPT": "true for international metadata layer",
              "AFFILIATION_EN_ROMAN": "true for international metadata layer",
              "REFERENCES": "retain original script + Roman-script bibliographic representation where required by target service; never falsify the source title",
              "SITE": "A complete English journal-facing policy layer remains required even if Bulgarian is the primary interface/content language"
            }
          },
          {
            "id": "LANG",
            "title": "LANG-03 — Strategic effects",
            "fields": {}
          },
          {
            "id": "LANG",
            "title": "LANG-04 — Recommended decision if Bulgarian is politically important",
            "fields": {}
          },
          {
            "id": "LANG",
            "title": "LANG-05 — What must change in the 63-section plan",
            "fields": {}
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "title": "Canonical decision register — compact representation",
        "sections": []
      },
      {
        "title": "Launch gate — normalized GO/NO-GO checklist",
        "sections": []
      }
    ],
    "decision_register": [
      {
        "id": "D01",
        "decision": "Journal type",
        "canonical_value": "International from Article 1 / Issue 1."
      },
      {
        "id": "D02",
        "decision": "Language",
        "canonical_value": "English-first baseline; language addendum defines alternatives."
      },
      {
        "id": "D03",
        "decision": "Access",
        "canonical_value": "Diamond OA; no APC."
      },
      {
        "id": "D04",
        "decision": "Copyright/licence",
        "canonical_value": "Author-retained; CC BY 4.0."
      },
      {
        "id": "D05",
        "decision": "Frequency",
        "canonical_value": "Biannual; 5–7, target 6."
      },
      {
        "id": "D06",
        "decision": "Peer review",
        "canonical_value": "Double-anonymized; normally >=2 external reviewers."
      },
      {
        "id": "D07",
        "decision": "DOI/Crossref",
        "canonical_value": "BSMT-owned; article DOI; opaque suffix; references deposited."
      },
      {
        "id": "D08",
        "decision": "Format",
        "canonical_value": "Landing + accessible PDF + structured HTML/JATS target."
      },
      {
        "id": "D09",
        "decision": "Issue 1",
        "canonical_value": "5–7 target 6; anchor submissions + open route; all normally reviewed."
      },
      {
        "id": "D10",
        "decision": "First 30",
        "canonical_value": "Diverse portfolio; no quotas; low endogeny/concentration."
      },
      {
        "id": "D11",
        "decision": "Scope",
        "canonical_value": "Music-theoretical/analytical contribution central."
      },
      {
        "id": "D12",
        "decision": "Governance",
        "canonical_value": "Publisher continuity separate from scholarly decisions."
      },
      {
        "id": "D13",
        "decision": "Year-1 staffing",
        "canonical_value": "One technical/operations lead; scholarly authority separate."
      },
      {
        "id": "D14",
        "decision": "Year-1 cash",
        "canonical_value": "Donated hosting/labour; BSMT pays domain/Crossref/DOI."
      },
      {
        "id": "D15",
        "decision": "Internationalization",
        "canonical_value": "Affiliation-based; no geographic acceptance quotas."
      },
      {
        "id": "D16",
        "decision": "Metric integrity",
        "canonical_value": "Optimize scholarship/discovery, never citation counts directly."
      },
      {
        "id": "D17",
        "decision": "Indexing",
        "canonical_value": "Parallel evidence branches; Scopus/WoS own gates."
      },
      {
        "id": "D18",
        "decision": "Launch gate",
        "canonical_value": "OJS/E2E/governance/policies/recovery must pass."
      },
      {
        "id": "D19",
        "decision": "Crossmark",
        "canonical_value": "Year 1/2 after stable Crossref; not Day-1 blocker."
      },
      {
        "id": "D20",
        "decision": "Similarity Check",
        "canonical_value": "Full-text URLs from DOI 1; activate when eligible."
      },
      {
        "id": "D21",
        "decision": "Scholarly gravity",
        "canonical_value": "Qualified unsolicited outside-Bulgaria flow is Year-3 north star."
      },
      {
        "id": "D22",
        "decision": "Final architecture",
        "canonical_value": "Scholarship upstream; metrics downstream."
      }
    ],
    "launch_gate": {
      "GO_REQUIRES": "scientific identity; final title; EIC; active Section Editors/Board; credible author pipeline; functional OJS/review; public policies; legitimate ISSN path; Crossref path; DOI validation; preservation/recovery; sustainable capacity",
      "CONDITIONAL_GO_MAY_LACK": "DOAJ; erih+; Scopus; WoS; Crossmark; Similarity Check before eligibility; bibliometric metrics",
      "NO_GO_IF_MISSING": "authors/pipeline; scholarly editors; scientific identity; real peer review; production/recovery integrity; ethics/policy foundation; metadata/DOI path",
      "CURRENT": "NO_GO until live execution gates pass"
    },
    "sources": [
      {
        "id": "finalarch",
        "citation": "BSMT. 2026a",
        "title_or_note": "Final Journal Architecture. Internal canonical strategy, branch journal/phase4b-phase5.",
        "type": "internal"
      },
      {
        "id": "trap",
        "citation": "BSMT. 2026b",
        "title_or_note": "Bulgarian Trap Guardrails. Internal canonical strategy.",
        "type": "internal"
      },
      {
        "id": "first30",
        "citation": "BSMT. 2026c",
        "title_or_note": "First-30 Article Portfolio. Internal canonical strategy.",
        "type": "internal"
      },
      {
        "id": "decision",
        "citation": "BSMT. 2026d",
        "title_or_note": "Authoritative Decision Register. Internal canonical strategy.",
        "type": "internal"
      },
      {
        "id": "gravity",
        "citation": "BSMT. 2026e",
        "title_or_note": "Year-3 Scholarly Gravity. Internal canonical strategy.",
        "type": "internal"
      },
      {
        "id": "e2e",
        "citation": "BSMT. 2026f",
        "title_or_note": "First-Article End-to-End Test. Internal canonical strategy.",
        "type": "internal"
      },
      {
        "id": "doaj",
        "citation": "Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). 2026",
        "title_or_note": "``Guide to Applying.'' Accessed October 2, 2026",
        "url": "https://doaj.org/apply/guide/",
        "type": "external"
      },
      {
        "id": "erih",
        "citation": "erih+. 2026",
        "title_or_note": "``Criteria for Inclusion.'' Updated September 22, 2026. Accessed October 2, 2026",
        "url": "https://erihplus.hkdir.no/informationarticles/criteria-for-inclusion",
        "type": "external"
      },
      {
        "id": "rilm",
        "citation": "RILM. 2026",
        "title_or_note": "``Scope: RILM Abstracts of Music Literature.'' Accessed October 2, 2026",
        "url": "https://www.rilm.org/abstracts/scope/",
        "type": "external"
      },
      {
        "id": "scopus",
        "citation": "Elsevier. 2026",
        "title_or_note": "``Scopus Content Policy and Selection.'' Accessed October 2, 2026",
        "url": "https://www-prod.elsevier.com/products/scopus/content/content-policy-and-selection",
        "type": "external"
      },
      {
        "id": "wos",
        "citation": "Clarivate. 2026",
        "title_or_note": "``Journal Evaluation Process and Selection Criteria.'' Accessed October 2, 2026",
        "url": "https://clarivate.com/academia-government/scientific-and-academic-research/research-discovery-and-referencing/web-of-science/web-of-science-core-collection/editorial-selection-process/journal-evaluation-process-selection-criteria/",
        "type": "external"
      },
      {
        "id": "crossrefojs",
        "citation": "Crossref. 2026a",
        "title_or_note": "``Registering DOI Records Using OJS 3.5.'' Accessed October 2, 2026",
        "url": "https://www.crossref.org/documentation/register-maintain-records/ojs-plugin/ojs-3.5/",
        "type": "external"
      },
      {
        "id": "verify",
        "citation": "Crossref. 2026c",
        "title_or_note": "``Verify Your Registration.'' Accessed October 2, 2026",
        "url": "https://www.crossref.org/documentation/register-maintain-records/verify-your-registration/",
        "type": "external"
      },
      {
        "id": "reflink",
        "citation": "Crossref. 2026d",
        "title_or_note": "``Reference Linking.'' Accessed October 2, 2026",
        "url": "https://www.crossref.org/documentation/reference-linking/",
        "type": "external"
      },
      {
        "id": "scholar",
        "citation": "Google Scholar. 2026",
        "title_or_note": "``Inclusion Guidelines for Webmasters.'' Accessed October 2, 2026",
        "url": "https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/inclusion.html",
        "type": "external"
      },
      {
        "id": "openalex",
        "citation": "OpenAlex. 2026",
        "title_or_note": "``Getting Indexed - Sources.'' Accessed October 2, 2026",
        "url": "https://help.openalex.org/how-to/getting-indexed/",
        "type": "external"
      },
      {
        "id": "jats",
        "citation": "NISO/NLM. 2024",
        "title_or_note": "``JATS: Journal Publishing Tag Set, Version 1.4 (ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2024).''",
        "url": "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/publishing/1.4/",
        "type": "external"
      },
      {
        "id": "wcag",
        "citation": "World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). 2023",
        "title_or_note": "``Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2.''",
        "url": "https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/",
        "type": "external"
      },
      {
        "id": "pdfua",
        "citation": "International Organization for Standardization (ISO). 2024",
        "title_or_note": "ISO 14289-2:2024 - PDF/UA-2.",
        "url": "https://www.iso.org/standard/82278.html",
        "type": "external"
      },
      {
        "id": "zenodo",
        "citation": "Zenodo. 2026a",
        "title_or_note": "``GitHub and Software.'' Accessed October 2, 2026",
        "url": "https://help.zenodo.org/docs/github/",
        "type": "external"
      },
      {
        "id": "issn",
        "citation": "ISSN International Centre. 2026",
        "title_or_note": "``ISSN National Centre for Bulgaria.'' Accessed October 2, 2026",
        "url": "https://www.issn.org/centre/bulgaria-bulgarie/",
        "type": "external"
      }
    ]
  },
  "language_addendum": {
    "present": true,
    "sections": [
      {
        "type": "section",
        "title": "A1. What changes - and what does not",
        "text": "If BSMT decides that full-text articles should be published in Bulgarian, the project does not collapse. DOI, Crossref, OJS, peer review, ethics, Diamond OA, copyright, metadata, preservation, accessibility, and most of the production architecture remain intact. What changes most strongly is the geometry of author acquisition: who can realistically write for the journal, who can read it without a language barrier, and how easily the journal can develop independent unsolicited international submissions. DOAJ explicitly accepts OA journals in any language. (DOAJ 2026) RILM covers music publications anywhere in the world and in any language, with bilingual representation for non-Roman scripts. (RILM 2026) erih+ explicitly recognizes the maintenance of linguistic diversity in European scholarly communication as one possible dimension of European relevance. (erih+ 2026)\n\nScopus does not require full text in English; its technical criteria require English titles and abstracts and content that is relevant/readable for an international audience. (Elsevier 2026) Web of Science likewise permits non-English content while requiring accurate English bibliographic elements and Roman-script bibliographic information under its current quality framework. (Clarivate 2026)\n\nThe issue is therefore not simply “will the indexes accept Bulgarian?” The deeper question is what kind of journal does the Society want to build?"
      },
      {
        "type": "section",
        "title": "A2. Four language models",
        "text": "Model Strength Strategic risk Bulgarian only Strong national mission; supports terminology and local scholarly communication. International author pool is largely restricted to scholars able to write academic Bulgarian. Bulgarian primary + English accepted Preserves Bulgarian dominance while leaving an open door to international authors. May become Bulgarian-only in practice without active English-language acquisition. Bulgarian and English equal Strong compromise between national scholarly mission and international submissions. Requires consistently high editorial/language production in both languages. English primary + justified Bulgarian exceptions Lowest barrier to international authors/readers; current baseline strategy.\n\nSome Society members may perceive the Bulgarian scholarlylanguage mission as secondary."
      },
      {
        "type": "section",
        "title": "A3. Bulgarian-only",
        "text": "This is a legitimate scholarly model. DOAJ, RILM, erih+, Scopus, and WoS remain possible if their criteria are met. The strategic cost is narrower international authorship: an external scholar must be able to write academic Bulgarian or invest in translation. The model is coherent if BSMT explicitly defines the mission as a national reference journal for Bulgarian music-theoretical terminology and scholarship with international metadata/discovery infrastructure. That is a different identity from an English-language international journal based in Bulgaria. Every article should still carry English title, abstract, and keywords; reliable Roman-script author/affiliation representation; and internationally interoperable metadata. The public journal-facing policy layer should be available in English."
      },
      {
        "type": "section",
        "title": "A4. Bulgarian-primary with English submissions accepted",
        "text": "Bulgarian can be the default interface and dominant language while the submission policy explicitly accepts both Bulgarian and English. This reduces the cultural tension without closing the journal to external authors. The risk is de facto localization if English-language manuscripts are technically permitted but not actively acquired."
      },
      {
        "type": "section",
        "title": "A5. Equal Bulgarian and English",
        "text": "This is the strongest compromise if the Society wants Bulgarian to remain a full scholarly publication language while retaining a realistic international author pool. A possible policy wording is: “Research articles are accepted in Bulgarian or English. All articles carry complete English metadata; Bulgarianlanguage articles additionally provide Bulgarian metadata.” The cost is operational rather than conceptual: the editorial and production system must sustain comparable quality in both languages."
      },
      {
        "type": "section",
        "title": "A6. English-primary with justified Bulgarian exceptions",
        "text": "This is the current frozen baseline. It provides the lowest barrier to international authorship and readership. Bulgarian can be admitted for historically/source-oriented, terminological, or otherwise justified cases with complete English metadata. The strategic concern is cultural rather than indexing-related: members may feel that the national theoretical language is being treated as a secondary object rather than a living scholarly medium."
      },
      {
        "type": "section",
        "title": "A7. Mandatory elements under every model",
        "text": "Regardless of full-text language:\n\nevery article has an English title, abstract, and keywords;\n\nnames and affiliations have reliable Roman-script forms;\n\nORCID/ROR are used when validly available;\n\nDOI/Crossref metadata remain complete;\n\nreferences are deposited and, where necessary, carry transliterated/English-accessible representation\n\nwithout replacing the original;\n\ncore public policies are available in English;\n\npeer-review quality does not vary by language.\n\nRILM is especially compatible with this model because it works across all languages and preserves original-language information alongside English translations/abstracts. (RILM 2026)"
      },
      {
        "type": "section",
        "title": "A8. Bulgarian as a scholarly mission, not a technical concession",
        "text": "If BSMT gives Bulgarian a strong publication role, that role should be framed positively: systematic modernization and international mapping of Bulgarian music-theoretical terminology. This includes the canonical bilingual glossary, Hadjiev-derived functional-harmonic terminology, and terms for alteration, modulation, mode, function, and analytical notation. The glossary can itself become a scholarly contribution. English equivalents should not mechanically replace Bulgarian terms; they should map relationships between theoretical traditions. In this model, the Bulgarian language becomes part of the journal’s international contribution rather than evidence of isolation."
      },
      {
        "type": "section",
        "title": "A9. Effect on the Year-3 scholarly-gravity test",
        "text": "In a Bulgarian-only model, the same volume of unsolicited foreign submissions is not a realistic benchmark. Scholarly gravity would need additional evidence from international readership, citations, reviewers, collaborations, and Bulgarian-speaking scholars abroad. In a genuinely bilingual Bulgarian-English model, the current unsolicited-external-submission criterion can remain substantially unchanged. The metric must not be rewritten merely to conceal localization. If the ambition remains an international journal, international author flow should remain a meaningful health signal."
      },
      {
        "type": "section",
        "title": "A10. Recommended decision process",
        "text": "The Society should not frame the decision simply as “Bulgarian or English?” That conflates cultural identity with operational strategy. The four models above should be presented with their consequences for authorship, readership, production capacity, and international development. If the Society wants both Bulgarian as a genuine publication language and a realistic international author pool, the most balanced option is an equal Bulgarian/English submission policy with mandatory English metadata. If it chooses Bulgarian-only, the journal should honestly reposition itself as an internationally visible European scholarly journal in Bulgarian rather than an English-language international journal.\n\nCentral point: the language decision does not cancel the other 63 strategic decisions. It changes author acquisition, readership, and the internationalization model. It should therefore be resolved consciously before the final title/ISSN/public Call for Papers."
      }
    ],
    "ids": [
      "A1",
      "A2",
      "A3",
      "A4",
      "A5",
      "A6",
      "A7",
      "A8",
      "A9",
      "A10"
    ]
  },
  "full_gate_0_comparative_analysis": {
    "status": "Gate 0A-0F complete and canonically frozen",
    "causal_chain": [
      "international and Bulgarian field",
      "competitor map",
      "gap analysis",
      "positioning models",
      "scientific identity choice",
      "scope boundaries",
      "title selection",
      "Aims & Scope",
      "First-30 reconciliation",
      "publishing architecture"
    ],
    "international_map": {
      "core_journals": [
        [
          "Journal of Music Theory",
          "Systematic and abstract theory; history of theory; analysis with broad theoretical consequences; interfaces with philosophy, mathematics, computer science, cognition and anthropology.",
          "Adopt its technical ambition, coexistence of systematic and historical theory, and high threshold for conceptual contribution.",
          "Formal theory + history + mathematics/computation cannot be claimed as unique. BSMT must differentiate through more systematic integration across traditions and networks."
        ],
        [
          "Music Theory Spectrum",
          "Broad theory and analysis; deliberate interdisciplinarity; interfaces with ethnomusicology, historical musicology, mathematics, philosophy, psychology and performance.",
          "Adopt repertorial and methodological breadth while preserving a disciplinary centre.",
          "Interdisciplinarity alone is not a niche. Adjacent disciplines enter BSMT only through a clearly music-theoretical/analytical claim."
        ],
        [
          "Music Theory Online",
          "Established peer-reviewed electronic open-access journal; theory and analysis; multimedia; history, popular/media music and quantitative work.",
          "Adopt digitally native publication, free access, multimedia and rich scholarly objects.",
          "OA, electronic delivery, multimedia and popular/media repertories are infrastructure and normal field practice, not scientific uniqueness."
        ],
        [
          "Music Analysis",
          "Theory and analysis across repertoires; technical, historical, cultural and critical approaches; Critical Forum; translations of major writings.",
          "Adopt the coexistence of rigorous analysis with historical/critical debate and a high standard for translation with commentary.",
          "Analysis + context and landmark translations are already established; they may be pillars but not the sole differentiator."
        ],
        [
          "Music Theory and Analysis",
          "International English-language society journal; interplay of theory and analysis; Europe-North America dialogue; multiple peer-reviewed formats.",
          "Adopt the international ambition of a society journal, multiple scholarly formats, and serious historical-source commentary.",
          "Europe-North America bridging, theory + analysis, and source translation are not vacant niches."
        ]
      ],
      "european_society_models": [
        [
          "ZGMTH",
          "German-speaking society journal; systematic and historical approaches, primary sources, pedagogy and reviews; no author fee.",
          "Adopt the national/language-base + international-forum model, society support and coexistence of systematic and historical theory.",
          "Systematic + historical theory + pedagogy is already established; national publisher origin is not itself distinctive."
        ],
        [
          "Musurgia",
          "French Society for Music Analysis; French and English; analytical methods, history/epistemology, semiotics, computer-assisted analysis and pedagogy.",
          "Adopt the European multilingual model and the link between method, history/epistemology and analytical practice.",
          "This broad combination is not unique; BSMT requires a harder theory/analysis admission rule."
        ],
        [
          "Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale",
          "Italian society journal; Italian and English; theory and analysis across periods, genres, styles and geographies.",
          "Adopt the model of a national-base society journal with international subject scope.",
          "A Bulgarian society journal with international submissions is institutionally normal, not scientific differentiation."
        ],
        [
          "Analitica",
          "Peer-reviewed annual OA journal; theory/analysis, performance/artistic research, pedagogy, cognitive/computational science; methodological pluralism.",
          "Adopt openness to new methods when they yield genuine theoretical knowledge.",
          "OA + pluralism + cognition/computation + artistic research already exists; these domains remain conditional interfaces at BSMT."
        ],
        [
          "Intégral",
          "Online OA journal of theory, analysis and criticism; methodological pluralism; strong multimedia encouragement.",
          "Adopt flexibility in scholarly argument form and multimedia presentation.",
          "Broad scope + OA + multimedia are capabilities, not sufficient scientific identity."
        ]
      ],
      "specialized_adjacent": [
        [
          "Analytical Approaches to World Musics",
          "Open, peer-reviewed journal on analytical, theoretical and cultural dimensions of world musical traditions; multimedia; no author fees.",
          "Adopt respect for local/emic categories and a high threshold for actual analysis of musical systems.",
          "Global/non-Western theory is not empty territory; global systems enter BSMT through theory and analysis, not generic world-music description."
        ],
        [
          "Journal of Mathematics and Music",
          "Specialist mathematical modelling and computation in theory, analysis, composition and performance.",
          "Adopt formal rigour, explicit modelling and strong verification/reproducibility expectations where applicable.",
          "A purely mathematical/computational profile would enter an occupied specialist niche and narrow the natural author/reviewer pool."
        ],
        [
          "Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy",
          "Specialist theory pedagogy, aural skills, curriculum and teaching practice.",
          "Admit pedagogy when it changes how theory itself is modelled, represented or understood.",
          "Pedagogy is a mature specialist niche; teaching practice without new theory should not define BSMT."
        ],
        [
          "Perspectives of New Music",
          "Long-standing outlet for contemporary music, theory/analysis, technical reports, composer positions and philosophical/social writing.",
          "Retain serious engagement with contemporary compositional thought and the composer as theoretical interlocutor.",
          "Contemporary/experimental music is a repertoire/domain, not sufficient whole-journal identity."
        ],
        [
          "Music Perception",
          "Empirical perception/cognition; psychology, neuroscience, theory, acoustics, linguistics, philosophy, data/corpus science and AI; strong reproducibility culture.",
          "Adopt transparency, data and reproducibility standards when empirical methods test music-theoretical models.",
          "Cognition, AI and data science have mature outlets; at BSMT they are in scope only when the irreducible contribution is to theory/analysis."
        ]
      ],
      "occupied_single_axis_identities": [
        [
          "Broad music theory & analysis",
          "JMT, MTS, MTO, Music Analysis, MTA",
          "Overcrowded / insufficiently distinctive"
        ],
        [
          "Formal / systematic theory",
          "JMT, MTS, MTA",
          "Occupied"
        ],
        [
          "Mathematical / computational theory",
          "JMM, JMT, MTS, MTO, Analitica",
          "Strongly occupied"
        ],
        [
          "Historical theory",
          "JMT, MTO, Music Analysis, MTA, ZGMTH",
          "Occupied"
        ],
        [
          "Translation / source commentary",
          "Music Analysis, MTA, ZGMTH",
          "Occupied"
        ],
        [
          "Global / comparative systems",
          "AAWM, Music Analysis, MTS, MTO",
          "Occupied"
        ],
        [
          "Performance / artistic research",
          "RATM, Analitica, MTS, Music Analysis",
          "Occupied"
        ],
        [
          "Music-theory pedagogy",
          "JMTP, MTA, ZGMTH, Analitica",
          "Mature specialist niche"
        ],
        [
          "Cognition / empirical / AI",
          "Music Perception, MTS, Analitica, JMM",
          "Occupied"
        ],
        [
          "Open-access digital theory publishing",
          "MTO, ZGMTH, Analitica, AAWM, Intégral",
          "Publication model, not niche"
        ],
        [
          "Society-owned theory journal",
          "SMT, SMA, GMTH, GATM, Dutch-Flemish Society etc.",
          "Normal institutional model"
        ]
      ],
      "prohibited_uniqueness_claims": [
        [
          "“Unique because we combine theory and analysis”",
          "Several leading journals already make this their core identity."
        ],
        [
          "“Unique because we are interdisciplinary”",
          "Interdisciplinarity is normal in MTS, MTO, Music Analysis, Music Perception and others."
        ],
        [
          "“Unique because we publish computational work”",
          "JMM and other journals already occupy strong formal/computational territory."
        ],
        [
          "“Unique because we publish global/non-Western systems”",
          "AAWM and general theory journals already publish this work."
        ],
        [
          "“Unique because we publish historical theory and translations”",
          "JMT, MTA, ZGMTH and Music Analysis already cover this."
        ],
        [
          "“Unique because we are OA, digital and multimedia”",
          "This is an infrastructural choice and established publication model."
        ],
        [
          "“Unique because we are a national society journal”",
          "Many European/international societies work exactly this way."
        ],
        [
          "“Unique because we bridge Europe and North America”",
          "MTA explicitly occupies that bridge."
        ]
      ],
      "core_finding": "No obvious empty topical niche exists; defensible positioning is editorial integration plus an international network, not topic-novelty claims."
    },
    "bulgarian_map": {
      "closest_models": [
        [
          "Academic Forum “Integral Music Theory” - NMA",
          "Closest thematic neighbour; peer-reviewed forum/conference-derived annual series; historically also an English-language annual journal; theory, methodology, pedagogy and technology.",
          "Adopt its active community, thematic forum, two independent anonymous reviewers and capacity to convene Bulgarian theory around real scholarly events.",
          "BSMT must not be an expanded conference volume: it needs continuous submission, conference-independent lifecycle, English-first international author acquisition and a harder theory/analysis admission centre."
        ],
        [
          "Bulgarian Musicology - Institute of Art Studies, BAS",
          "Established quarterly peer-reviewed musicology journal including theory, history, ethnomusicology, documents/archives and analysis; double blind; ERIH PLUS, CEEOL, RILM.",
          "Adopt institutional stability, regularity, external review, indexing discipline and broad scholarly legitimacy.",
          "BSMT must not be a second general musicology journal; its centre is theory and analysis, international/English-first, without Bulgarian repertoire as its subject identity."
        ],
        [
          "NMA Almanac",
          "Broad annual institutional scholarly journal for musicology, music/dance, performance and pedagogy; anonymous review; publication fees.",
          "Adopt institutional continuity, annual accountability and editorial discipline.",
          "BSMT is not an institutional container and should have APC=0; it needs an international disciplinary scope and Diamond OA."
        ],
        [
          "Doctoral Readings - NMA",
          "Doctoral conference/proceedings series focused on early-career researchers.",
          "Use as a future author/reviewer pipeline and a place to identify developing topics.",
          "BSMT is not a career-stage journal and must not duplicate a doctoral-conference identity."
        ],
        [
          "Academic Spring Readings - NMA",
          "Thematic conference/proceedings series with anonymous review; institutional centre in music history/ethnomusicology.",
          "Adopt thematic concentration and strict selection for occasional initiatives/special clusters.",
          "The journal needs a permanent identity and submission flow independent of an annual event or theme."
        ]
      ],
      "adjacent_institutional_models": [
        [
          "Music Criticism - NMA",
          "Publication for criticism/review of musical events.",
          "Useful model for engagement with current musical life and possible public-communication formats.",
          "Not a direct research-journal model; event criticism is not a research article without a theory-bearing contribution."
        ],
        [
          "Studentum opera scripta - NMA",
          "Annual student research publication.",
          "Source of future authors and academic-writing culture.",
          "BSMT is not a student training journal and has no lower quality threshold by career stage."
        ],
        [
          "Problems of Art - Institute of Art Studies, BAS",
          "Peer-reviewed institutional journal for visual, theatre and screen arts.",
          "Use as a publishing/institutional benchmark for editorial consistency and quality.",
          "Not a thematic music-theory competitor and not part of the niche justification."
        ],
        [
          "AMTII Yearbook",
          "Institutional scholarly annual.",
          "Useful map of Bulgarian author supply and academic production outside Sofia.",
          "Not a permanent international disciplinary music-theory journal."
        ],
        [
          "Spring Research Readings - AMTII",
          "Peer-reviewed conference proceedings.",
          "Potential author/topic discovery and regional academic-network channel.",
          "Must not define the journal as a proceedings outlet."
        ],
        [
          "Music, Multimedia and Culture - Sofia University",
          "Broad academic periodical for music, arts, culture, multimedia and education; current records under CC BY 4.0.",
          "Adopt digital/multimedia openness and technology interfaces when scientifically useful.",
          "Music + technology/multimedia is not an empty Bulgarian niche and must not expand BSMT into a generic music-tech/education journal."
        ],
        [
          "Music Horizons",
          "Professional/critical music and dance periodical.",
          "Useful professional visibility and connection to the broader music community.",
          "Not a direct peer-reviewed research competitor and does not determine BSMT scientific scope."
        ]
      ],
      "structural_gap": "No reviewed equivalent combines permanent society ownership, international-first/English-first continuous submission, theory-and-analysis disciplinary centre, Diamond OA, DOI, rich metadata, structured full text and accessibility from Article 1.",
      "hard_rule": "International author acquisition must be upstream of Issue 1."
    },
    "gap_analysis": [
      [
        "Formal / systematic theory",
        "Strongly represented in international flagships.",
        "Keep as major pillar, systematically connected to history, global systems and methodology."
      ],
      [
        "Historical theory and sources",
        "Strong journals and source/translation formats already exist.",
        "Make it a first-class research object, especially for under-connected traditions, with critical apparatus and theoretical consequence."
      ],
      [
        "Computational / reproducible methods",
        "Specialist niche is occupied and general journals also publish these methods.",
        "Use as methodological pillar with interpretability and reproducibility, not whole-journal identity."
      ],
      [
        "Global / comparative / emic systems",
        "Both specialist and general outlets exist.",
        "Treat as equal route into theory while preserving local categories rather than forcing dominant Western frameworks."
      ],
      [
        "CEE/SEE theoretical traditions",
        "Not an empty topic, but under-connected to dominant English-language international discourse.",
        "This is BSMT comparative advantage: systematic international circulation, critical reconstruction and conceptual translation, without regional scope restriction."
      ]
    ],
    "scoring_method": {
      "criteria": [
        [
          "International distinctiveness",
          "20%",
          "How clearly does the model differ from occupied positions?"
        ],
        [
          "International relevance/demand",
          "15%",
          "Is there sustained scholarly interest and potential for strong submissions?"
        ],
        [
          "Author-pool viability",
          "15%",
          "Is the international author pool broad enough?"
        ],
        [
          "Reviewer-pool viability",
          "10%",
          "Can independent international expertise be sustained?"
        ],
        [
          "Bulgarian/BSMT comparative advantage",
          "10%",
          "Is there a contribution BSMT can organize better than an arbitrary editorial team?"
        ],
        [
          "First-30 fit",
          "10%",
          "Does the model fit the frozen First-30 portfolio?"
        ],
        [
          "Identity coherence",
          "10%",
          "Can it be explained without a list of unrelated topics?"
        ],
        [
          "Long-term scalability",
          "10%",
          "Will it remain valid as methods, technologies and trends change?"
        ]
      ],
      "hard_vetoes": [
        "distinctiveness 1/5 with direct collision against multiple core journals",
        "material break with the First-30 architecture",
        "author/reviewer pool too narrow",
        "distinctiveness is merely geographic rather than scholarly"
      ]
    },
    "positioning_models": {
      "scores_part_1": [
        [
          "Model",
          "Distinctiveness",
          "Relevance",
          "Author pool",
          "Reviewer pool",
          "BSMT advantage"
        ],
        [
          "M1 General international music theory and analysis",
          "1",
          "5",
          "5",
          "5",
          "2"
        ],
        [
          "M2 Formal / mathematical / computational",
          "2",
          "4",
          "3",
          "3",
          "3"
        ],
        [
          "M3 Global / comparative musical systems",
          "3",
          "4",
          "3",
          "3",
          "2"
        ],
        [
          "M4 Historical theory / sources + CEE/SEE bridge",
          "4",
          "4",
          "3",
          "3",
          "5"
        ],
        [
          "M5 Structures, systems, concepts and methods across traditions",
          "4",
          "5",
          "4",
          "4",
          "4"
        ]
      ],
      "scores_part_2": [
        [
          "Model",
          "First-30",
          "Coherence",
          "Scalability",
          "Total /100",
          "Decision"
        ],
        [
          "M1",
          "5",
          "2",
          "4",
          "70",
          "Rejected: hard distinctiveness veto"
        ],
        [
          "M2",
          "3",
          "4",
          "3",
          "61",
          "Not primary; retain as major pillar"
        ],
        [
          "M3",
          "3",
          "4",
          "3",
          "63",
          "Not primary; retain as major pillar"
        ],
        [
          "M4",
          "3",
          "4",
          "3",
          "73",
          "Not sole identity; retain signature programme"
        ],
        [
          "M5",
          "5",
          "4",
          "5",
          "87",
          "Selected canonical positioning"
        ]
      ],
      "rationale": [
        [
          "M1 General international theory and analysis",
          "High relevance and wide pool but direct collision with several flagship journals; insufficient distinctiveness.",
          "Reject as primary identity."
        ],
        [
          "M2 Formal / mathematical / computational",
          "Scientifically strong and compatible with BSMT, but JMM occupies the specialist niche; narrows pools and does not accommodate the historical/global mission.",
          "Major pillar, not the whole journal."
        ],
        [
          "M3 Global / comparative systems",
          "Important international and epistemic value, but AAWM and general journals already occupy territory; alone it can dilute the disciplinary centre.",
          "Major pillar, not the whole journal."
        ],
        [
          "M4 Historical theory / sources + CEE/SEE",
          "Strongest geographic/institutional comparative advantage; can internationalize under-connected theoretical traditions. But history/sources alone is too narrow and has strong precedents.",
          "Signature bridge/programme, not geographic scope."
        ],
        [
          "M5 Structures, systems, concepts and methods across traditions",
          "Integrates all five pillars under a hard theory/analysis admission centre; fits First-30; preserves broad international pools; leverages CEE/SEE without regional trap; remains valid across technological change.",
          "Selected."
        ]
      ]
    },
    "canonical_focus": {
      "short_form": "An international journal of music theory and analysis focused on structures, systems, concepts and methods across traditions.",
      "operational_form": "The journal publishes research that advances music theory by developing, testing, comparing, reconstructing or formalizing models of musical organization across repertoires, historical traditions and methodological frameworks.",
      "pillars": [
        [
          "Theory & Analysis",
          "Disciplinary core: models, concepts, harmony, form, rhythm/meter, modality, voice leading and analytical methods.",
          "Without this centre the journal dissolves into general musicology."
        ],
        [
          "Formal / Mathematical / Computational Theory",
          "Formal models, representations, algorithms, corpus tests, AI/MIR when theory-testing; reproducibility.",
          "Provides rigour and testability without turning the journal into engineering/technology."
        ],
        [
          "Historical Theory / Sources",
          "Reconstruction of systems/concepts, critical editions, translations with theoretical apparatus, history of categories.",
          "Internationalizes concepts/sources without collapsing into archival description or biography."
        ],
        [
          "Global / Comparative / Emic Systems",
          "Theoretical systems across traditions, comparative vocabularies/models, analysis using local categories.",
          "Preserves epistemic integrity; no forced conversion into dominant Western frameworks."
        ],
        [
          "Integrative Methods / Metatheory",
          "Methodology, terminology, synthesis, standards, performance/cognition when theory-bearing.",
          "Connects pillars and prevents five separate mini-journals."
        ]
      ],
      "cee_see_role": "Signature internationalization programme, not geographic scope limitation."
    },
    "scope_boundaries": {
      "rule": "A substantive music-theoretical or analytical contribution is mandatory.",
      "epistemic_safeguard": "Local, historical, indigenous and emic systems need not be translated into dominant Anglo-American frameworks."
    },
    "title": {
      "criteria": [
        [
          "Explicit discipline signal",
          "20%"
        ],
        [
          "Semantic fit",
          "20%"
        ],
        [
          "Distinctiveness / collision resistance",
          "15%"
        ],
        [
          "Memorability / brand",
          "15%"
        ],
        [
          "Searchability",
          "10%"
        ],
        [
          "Breadth / future-proofing",
          "10%"
        ],
        [
          "International neutrality",
          "5%"
        ],
        [
          "Metadata stability",
          "5%"
        ]
      ],
      "candidates": [
        [
          "Music Theory: Structures and Systems",
          "94",
          "Selected"
        ],
        [
          "Music Theory: Structures, Systems, and Methods",
          "91",
          "Runner-up; rejected as heavier"
        ],
        [
          "Music Theory: Concepts, Structures, and Systems",
          "91",
          "Runner-up; rejected as heavier"
        ],
        [
          "Music Theory: Systems and Methods",
          "86",
          "Rejected: weaker analysis signal"
        ],
        [
          "Music Theory Across Traditions",
          "83",
          "Rejected: implies every paper must be cross-tradition"
        ],
        [
          "Structures and Systems: A Journal of Music Theory and Analysis",
          "74",
          "Rejected: weaker search/metadata signal"
        ]
      ],
      "selected": "Music Theory: Structures and Systems",
      "descriptor": "An International Journal of Music Theory and Analysis",
      "public_acronym": null
    },
    "first_30": {
      "portfolio": [
        [
          "Theory & Analysis",
          "~40%",
          "11-13",
          "Direct core"
        ],
        [
          "Formal / Mathematical / Computational Theory",
          "~20%",
          "5-6",
          "Major pillar"
        ],
        [
          "Historical Theory",
          "~15%",
          "~4",
          "Major pillar"
        ],
        [
          "Global / Comparative Theoretical Systems",
          "~15%",
          "~4",
          "Major pillar"
        ],
        [
          "Integrative / State-of-field / Method",
          "~10%",
          "3-4",
          "Methodological glue"
        ]
      ],
      "rule": "Diagnostic instrument, never acceptance quota.",
      "precedence": [
        "scope",
        "quality",
        "integrity",
        "peer review",
        "portfolio balance"
      ]
    },
    "sources": [
      "https://dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory",
      "https://academic.oup.com/mts",
      "https://mtosmt.org/",
      "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14682249",
      "https://lup.be/journal/music-theory-and-analysis/",
      "https://www.gmth.de/zeitschrift.aspx",
      "https://sfam.org/c/publications/musurgia/",
      "https://www.gatm.it/it/pubblicazioni/ratm/",
      "https://lnx.gatm.it/analiticaojs/index.php/analitica/index",
      "https://theory.esm.rochester.edu/integral/",
      "https://journal.iftawm.org/",
      "https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/tmam20",
      "https://journals.ou.edu/jmtp/",
      "https://www.perspectivesofnewmusic.org/",
      "https://online.ucpress.edu/mp",
      "https://nma.bg/izdaniya/integralna-muzikalna-teoriya/",
      "https://nma.bg/almanac_bg/",
      "https://nma.bg/izdaniya/doktorantski-cheteniya/",
      "https://nma.bg/izdaniya/akademichni-proletni-cheteniya/",
      "https://nma.bg/izdaniya/muzikalna-kritika/",
      "https://nma.bg/izdaniya/studentum-opera-scripta/",
      "https://artstudies.bg/?page_id=200",
      "https://artstudies.bg/?page_id=198",
      "https://www.artacademyplovdiv.com/amtii/Proekti/nauchni.html",
      "https://www.artacademyplovdiv.com/proletni_cheteniq.html",
      "https://periodicals.uni-sofia.bg/index.php/mmc/en",
      "https://ubmd.bg/списание-музикални-хоризонти/"
    ]
  },
  "update_2026_10_05": [
    {
      "title": "Chapter 0 — Scientific field before infrastructure: why this exact journal should exist",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Gate 0 precedes OJS, DOI, indexing, language policy and even the final title. A technically excellent but scientifically indistinguishable journal has no strategic purpose. Before building the publication object, the Society must establish what field the journal occupies, what is already well served, what remains insufficiently connected, what the journal admits and excludes, and why the selected focus is defensible internationally and in Bulgaria."
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Sequence",
              "Question"
            ],
            [
              "1. International + Bulgarian field",
              "What already exists and which models are mature?"
            ],
            [
              "2. Competitor map",
              "Which intellectual and publishing territories are occupied?"
            ],
            [
              "3. Gap analysis",
              "Is there an empty topic, or rather under-integrated traditions/networks?"
            ],
            [
              "4. Positioning models",
              "Which 3-5 identities are realistic and what are their risks?"
            ],
            [
              "5. Canonical field",
              "What exactly is the journal, and what is it not?"
            ],
            [
              "6. Scope boundaries",
              "What is the hard admission criterion?"
            ],
            [
              "7. Title",
              "Which name best expresses the established identity?"
            ],
            [
              "8. Aims & Scope",
              "How is the decision translated into a public editorial contract?"
            ],
            [
              "9. First 30 articles",
              "Can the first corpus actually prove the identity?"
            ],
            [
              "10. Only then infrastructure",
              "OJS, DOI, metadata, indexing and metrics."
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The title and Aims & Scope are therefore not literary inventions. They are outputs of the comparative analysis. The full Gate 0 must be semantically identical in BG PDF, EN PDF, BG JSON and EN JSON."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0A.1 Method of the international comparison",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The international field is mapped in three layers: (1) core general music-theory/analysis journals competing directly for high-level original theory and analysis; (2) European society-based journals that model disciplinary identity, society ownership, language policy and open access; and (3) specialized/adjacent journals already occupying mathematical/computational, global/comparative, pedagogy, cognition and other niches."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Each journal is read through the same practical questions: what intellectual territory is already occupied; which article types and methods are normalized; which publication model works; what BSMT can reasonably adopt as good practice; and what can no longer be claimed as unique."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0A.2 Core international journals: occupied territory and lessons for BSMT",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Journal",
              "Occupied territory",
              "What to adopt",
              "What it means for BSMT focus"
            ],
            [
              "Journal of Music Theory",
              "Systematic and abstract theory; history of theory; analysis with broad theoretical consequences; interfaces with philosophy, mathematics, computer science, cognition and anthropology.",
              "Adopt its technical ambition, coexistence of systematic and historical theory, and high threshold for conceptual contribution.",
              "Formal theory + history + mathematics/computation cannot be claimed as unique. BSMT must differentiate through more systematic integration across traditions and networks."
            ],
            [
              "Music Theory Spectrum",
              "Broad theory and analysis; deliberate interdisciplinarity; interfaces with ethnomusicology, historical musicology, mathematics, philosophy, psychology and performance.",
              "Adopt repertorial and methodological breadth while preserving a disciplinary centre.",
              "Interdisciplinarity alone is not a niche. Adjacent disciplines enter BSMT only through a clearly music-theoretical/analytical claim."
            ],
            [
              "Music Theory Online",
              "Established peer-reviewed electronic open-access journal; theory and analysis; multimedia; history, popular/media music and quantitative work.",
              "Adopt digitally native publication, free access, multimedia and rich scholarly objects.",
              "OA, electronic delivery, multimedia and popular/media repertories are infrastructure and normal field practice, not scientific uniqueness."
            ],
            [
              "Music Analysis",
              "Theory and analysis across repertoires; technical, historical, cultural and critical approaches; Critical Forum; translations of major writings.",
              "Adopt the coexistence of rigorous analysis with historical/critical debate and a high standard for translation with commentary.",
              "Analysis + context and landmark translations are already established; they may be pillars but not the sole differentiator."
            ],
            [
              "Music Theory and Analysis",
              "International English-language society journal; interplay of theory and analysis; Europe-North America dialogue; multiple peer-reviewed formats.",
              "Adopt the international ambition of a society journal, multiple scholarly formats, and serious historical-source commentary.",
              "Europe-North America bridging, theory + analysis, and source translation are not vacant niches."
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The five core journals show that “another high-quality international journal of music theory and analysis” is not enough identity. They already publish formal, historical, cultural, global, computational and interdisciplinary work. BSMT must therefore distinguish itself through a systematically organized editorial intersection rather than a single topic."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0A.3 European and society-based models",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Journal",
              "Model / scope",
              "What to adopt",
              "What is not unique to BSMT"
            ],
            [
              "ZGMTH",
              "German-speaking society journal; systematic and historical approaches, primary sources, pedagogy and reviews; no author fee.",
              "Adopt the national/language-base + international-forum model, society support and coexistence of systematic and historical theory.",
              "Systematic + historical theory + pedagogy is already established; national publisher origin is not itself distinctive."
            ],
            [
              "Musurgia",
              "French Society for Music Analysis; French and English; analytical methods, history/epistemology, semiotics, computer-assisted analysis and pedagogy.",
              "Adopt the European multilingual model and the link between method, history/epistemology and analytical practice.",
              "This broad combination is not unique; BSMT requires a harder theory/analysis admission rule."
            ],
            [
              "Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale",
              "Italian society journal; Italian and English; theory and analysis across periods, genres, styles and geographies.",
              "Adopt the model of a national-base society journal with international subject scope.",
              "A Bulgarian society journal with international submissions is institutionally normal, not scientific differentiation."
            ],
            [
              "Analitica",
              "Peer-reviewed annual OA journal; theory/analysis, performance/artistic research, pedagogy, cognitive/computational science; methodological pluralism.",
              "Adopt openness to new methods when they yield genuine theoretical knowledge.",
              "OA + pluralism + cognition/computation + artistic research already exists; these domains remain conditional interfaces at BSMT."
            ],
            [
              "Intégral",
              "Online OA journal of theory, analysis and criticism; methodological pluralism; strong multimedia encouragement.",
              "Adopt flexibility in scholarly argument form and multimedia presentation.",
              "Broad scope + OA + multimedia are capabilities, not sufficient scientific identity."
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "This layer is institutionally decisive: German-, French-, Italian- and Dutch/Flemish-based societies already demonstrate that national or language origin does not require a national subject scope. Regional editorial behaviour would be a problem for BSMT; Bulgarian ownership is not."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0A.4 Specialized and adjacent niches",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Journal",
              "Specialist niche",
              "What to adopt",
              "Strategic boundary for BSMT"
            ],
            [
              "Analytical Approaches to World Musics",
              "Open, peer-reviewed journal on analytical, theoretical and cultural dimensions of world musical traditions; multimedia; no author fees.",
              "Adopt respect for local/emic categories and a high threshold for actual analysis of musical systems.",
              "Global/non-Western theory is not empty territory; global systems enter BSMT through theory and analysis, not generic world-music description."
            ],
            [
              "Journal of Mathematics and Music",
              "Specialist mathematical modelling and computation in theory, analysis, composition and performance.",
              "Adopt formal rigour, explicit modelling and strong verification/reproducibility expectations where applicable.",
              "A purely mathematical/computational profile would enter an occupied specialist niche and narrow the natural author/reviewer pool."
            ],
            [
              "Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy",
              "Specialist theory pedagogy, aural skills, curriculum and teaching practice.",
              "Admit pedagogy when it changes how theory itself is modelled, represented or understood.",
              "Pedagogy is a mature specialist niche; teaching practice without new theory should not define BSMT."
            ],
            [
              "Perspectives of New Music",
              "Long-standing outlet for contemporary music, theory/analysis, technical reports, composer positions and philosophical/social writing.",
              "Retain serious engagement with contemporary compositional thought and the composer as theoretical interlocutor.",
              "Contemporary/experimental music is a repertoire/domain, not sufficient whole-journal identity."
            ],
            [
              "Music Perception",
              "Empirical perception/cognition; psychology, neuroscience, theory, acoustics, linguistics, philosophy, data/corpus science and AI; strong reproducibility culture.",
              "Adopt transparency, data and reproducibility standards when empirical methods test music-theoretical models.",
              "Cognition, AI and data science have mature outlets; at BSMT they are in scope only when the irreducible contribution is to theory/analysis."
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The specialist journals close off the easy solutions: pure mathematics/computation, pure pedagogy, pure cognition, a generic “world musics” identity or contemporary-composer theory alone do not provide a sufficiently broad and distinctive identity for the BSMT journal."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0A.5 Map of already occupied single-axis identities",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Candidate identity",
              "Existing occupants / overlap",
              "Result"
            ],
            [
              "Broad music theory & analysis",
              "JMT, MTS, MTO, Music Analysis, MTA",
              "Overcrowded / insufficiently distinctive"
            ],
            [
              "Formal / systematic theory",
              "JMT, MTS, MTA",
              "Occupied"
            ],
            [
              "Mathematical / computational theory",
              "JMM, JMT, MTS, MTO, Analitica",
              "Strongly occupied"
            ],
            [
              "Historical theory",
              "JMT, MTO, Music Analysis, MTA, ZGMTH",
              "Occupied"
            ],
            [
              "Translation / source commentary",
              "Music Analysis, MTA, ZGMTH",
              "Occupied"
            ],
            [
              "Global / comparative systems",
              "AAWM, Music Analysis, MTS, MTO",
              "Occupied"
            ],
            [
              "Performance / artistic research",
              "RATM, Analitica, MTS, Music Analysis",
              "Occupied"
            ],
            [
              "Music-theory pedagogy",
              "JMTP, MTA, ZGMTH, Analitica",
              "Mature specialist niche"
            ],
            [
              "Cognition / empirical / AI",
              "Music Perception, MTS, Analitica, JMM",
              "Occupied"
            ],
            [
              "Open-access digital theory publishing",
              "MTO, ZGMTH, Analitica, AAWM, Intégral",
              "Publication model, not niche"
            ],
            [
              "Society-owned theory journal",
              "SMT, SMA, GMTH, GATM, Dutch-Flemish Society etc.",
              "Normal institutional model"
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The central international result is negative but strategically decisive: there is no obvious empty topical niche. Nearly every single-axis identity already has established journals. Distinction must therefore come from how the journal systematically connects domains, what theory-bearing contribution it requires, and what international network it constructs."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The 2026 field also shows that the old opposition “formal theory versus historical/cultural musicology” is inadequate. Leading journals normalize combinations such as formal theory + historical sources; analysis + performance; popular/media music + rigorous structural analysis; global repertories + theory; corpus/quantitative work + traditional theory; mathematical models + analysis; cognition + theory; translation + critical commentary."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0A.6 Weak uniqueness claims that are explicitly prohibited",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Weak claim",
              "Why it is not defensible"
            ],
            [
              "“Unique because we combine theory and analysis”",
              "Several leading journals already make this their core identity."
            ],
            [
              "“Unique because we are interdisciplinary”",
              "Interdisciplinarity is normal in MTS, MTO, Music Analysis, Music Perception and others."
            ],
            [
              "“Unique because we publish computational work”",
              "JMM and other journals already occupy strong formal/computational territory."
            ],
            [
              "“Unique because we publish global/non-Western systems”",
              "AAWM and general theory journals already publish this work."
            ],
            [
              "“Unique because we publish historical theory and translations”",
              "JMT, MTA, ZGMTH and Music Analysis already cover this."
            ],
            [
              "“Unique because we are OA, digital and multimedia”",
              "This is an infrastructural choice and established publication model."
            ],
            [
              "“Unique because we are a national society journal”",
              "Many European/international societies work exactly this way."
            ],
            [
              "“Unique because we bridge Europe and North America”",
              "MTA explicitly occupies that bridge."
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Diamond OA, rich metadata, multimedia, data/code and structured scholarly objects remain important competitive advantages and ethical choices, but they are not the scientific niche itself. The scientific niche must remain valid even if the dominant publication technology changes."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0A.7 International conclusion: the gap is integration and circulation, not a “new topic”",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The plausible gap is not an empty subject area but insufficiently integrated circulation among four music-theoretical traditions: formal/systematic; historical/source-based; computational/reproducible; and global/comparative. A related network problem is that theoretical traditions from Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe remain under-connected to dominant English-language international discourse."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "This does not mean “a journal for Eastern Europe.” It means an international journal capable of systematically translating local theoretical languages into international debate while publishing equally strong work with no regional connection."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0B.1 Bulgarian publication map: closest and structurally important models",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The Bulgarian environment is not empty. It contains genuine peer-reviewed music-theory publication, broad musicological journals, institutional annuals, conference series and early-career publication ladders. BSMT therefore cannot justify the journal by claiming that “there is nowhere to publish theory.”"
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Publication",
              "Publication model / scope",
              "What to adopt",
              "Why BSMT must differ"
            ],
            [
              "Academic Forum “Integral Music Theory” - NMA",
              "Closest thematic neighbour; peer-reviewed forum/conference-derived annual series; historically also an English-language annual journal; theory, methodology, pedagogy and technology.",
              "Adopt its active community, thematic forum, two independent anonymous reviewers and capacity to convene Bulgarian theory around real scholarly events.",
              "BSMT must not be an expanded conference volume: it needs continuous submission, conference-independent lifecycle, English-first international author acquisition and a harder theory/analysis admission centre."
            ],
            [
              "Bulgarian Musicology - Institute of Art Studies, BAS",
              "Established quarterly peer-reviewed musicology journal including theory, history, ethnomusicology, documents/archives and analysis; double blind; ERIH PLUS, CEEOL, RILM.",
              "Adopt institutional stability, regularity, external review, indexing discipline and broad scholarly legitimacy.",
              "BSMT must not be a second general musicology journal; its centre is theory and analysis, international/English-first, without Bulgarian repertoire as its subject identity."
            ],
            [
              "NMA Almanac",
              "Broad annual institutional scholarly journal for musicology, music/dance, performance and pedagogy; anonymous review; publication fees.",
              "Adopt institutional continuity, annual accountability and editorial discipline.",
              "BSMT is not an institutional container and should have APC=0; it needs an international disciplinary scope and Diamond OA."
            ],
            [
              "Doctoral Readings - NMA",
              "Doctoral conference/proceedings series focused on early-career researchers.",
              "Use as a future author/reviewer pipeline and a place to identify developing topics.",
              "BSMT is not a career-stage journal and must not duplicate a doctoral-conference identity."
            ],
            [
              "Academic Spring Readings - NMA",
              "Thematic conference/proceedings series with anonymous review; institutional centre in music history/ethnomusicology.",
              "Adopt thematic concentration and strict selection for occasional initiatives/special clusters.",
              "The journal needs a permanent identity and submission flow independent of an annual event or theme."
            ]
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0B.2 Bulgarian adjacent and institutional publications",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Publication",
              "Model / function",
              "What to adopt",
              "Boundary relative to BSMT"
            ],
            [
              "Music Criticism - NMA",
              "Publication for criticism/review of musical events.",
              "Useful model for engagement with current musical life and possible public-communication formats.",
              "Not a direct research-journal model; event criticism is not a research article without a theory-bearing contribution."
            ],
            [
              "Studentum opera scripta - NMA",
              "Annual student research publication.",
              "Source of future authors and academic-writing culture.",
              "BSMT is not a student training journal and has no lower quality threshold by career stage."
            ],
            [
              "Problems of Art - Institute of Art Studies, BAS",
              "Peer-reviewed institutional journal for visual, theatre and screen arts.",
              "Use as a publishing/institutional benchmark for editorial consistency and quality.",
              "Not a thematic music-theory competitor and not part of the niche justification."
            ],
            [
              "AMTII Yearbook",
              "Institutional scholarly annual.",
              "Useful map of Bulgarian author supply and academic production outside Sofia.",
              "Not a permanent international disciplinary music-theory journal."
            ],
            [
              "Spring Research Readings - AMTII",
              "Peer-reviewed conference proceedings.",
              "Potential author/topic discovery and regional academic-network channel.",
              "Must not define the journal as a proceedings outlet."
            ],
            [
              "Music, Multimedia and Culture - Sofia University",
              "Broad academic periodical for music, arts, culture, multimedia and education; current records under CC BY 4.0.",
              "Adopt digital/multimedia openness and technology interfaces when scientifically useful.",
              "Music + technology/multimedia is not an empty Bulgarian niche and must not expand BSMT into a generic music-tech/education journal."
            ],
            [
              "Music Horizons",
              "Professional/critical music and dance periodical.",
              "Useful professional visibility and connection to the broader music community.",
              "Not a direct peer-reviewed research competitor and does not determine BSMT scientific scope."
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "These outlets matter not because all are direct competitors but because they map existing Bulgarian publication functions: general musicology, institutional annual, forum/proceedings, doctoral/student pipeline, professional criticism and broad music/multimedia scholarship."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0B.3 Bulgarian structural conclusion and the Bulgarian Trap",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The defensible structural gap is specific: the reviewed Bulgarian corpus does not show an equivalent to a permanent society-owned, international-first, English-first, continuous-submission disciplinary journal centred on music theory and analysis and combining Diamond OA, DOI, rich persistent metadata, structured full text and accessibility from Article 1."
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Existing model",
              "Strength",
              "Correct relationship to BSMT"
            ],
            [
              "Integral Music Theory",
              "Theory community, annual thematic forum, peer-reviewed forum publication",
              "Complementary partner model; BSMT is a permanent conference-independent continuous-submission journal"
            ],
            [
              "Bulgarian Musicology",
              "Established broad musicology, regularity, indexing and external review",
              "Complementary broad journal; BSMT has a narrower disciplinary centre and international-first profile"
            ],
            [
              "Planned BSMT journal",
              "Permanent international disciplinary identity, society ownership, Diamond OA and modern scholarly objects",
              "Does not replace existing Bulgarian outlets; occupies a different structural/international function"
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The largest domestic risk is a finite and highly interconnected Bulgarian author pool. If Issue 1 is supplied primarily by members, colleagues and nearby institutions, the journal will look like an internal society outlet regardless of English language or international title. Therefore international author acquisition must be upstream of Issue 1."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Public claims such as “the first Bulgarian music-theory journal,” “the only Bulgarian outlet publishing theory,” or “there are no Bulgarian outlets for music theory” are prohibited, as are dismissive claims about Integral Music Theory or Bulgarian Musicology."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0C.1 Gap synthesis: what BSMT must connect",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Dimension",
              "What already exists",
              "Role in BSMT"
            ],
            [
              "Formal / systematic theory",
              "Strongly represented in international flagships.",
              "Keep as major pillar, systematically connected to history, global systems and methodology."
            ],
            [
              "Historical theory and sources",
              "Strong journals and source/translation formats already exist.",
              "Make it a first-class research object, especially for under-connected traditions, with critical apparatus and theoretical consequence."
            ],
            [
              "Computational / reproducible methods",
              "Specialist niche is occupied and general journals also publish these methods.",
              "Use as methodological pillar with interpretability and reproducibility, not whole-journal identity."
            ],
            [
              "Global / comparative / emic systems",
              "Both specialist and general outlets exist.",
              "Treat as equal route into theory while preserving local categories rather than forcing dominant Western frameworks."
            ],
            [
              "CEE/SEE theoretical traditions",
              "Not an empty topic, but under-connected to dominant English-language international discourse.",
              "This is BSMT comparative advantage: systematic international circulation, critical reconstruction and conceptual translation, without regional scope restriction."
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The niche is therefore not formulated as a “new topic” but as an editorial programme: different ways of producing knowledge about musical organization are placed under one disciplinary contract and connected more systematically than in general journals where they often appear merely as one option among many."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0C.2 Focus-selection method: eight criteria and hard vetoes",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Criterion",
              "Weight",
              "Question"
            ],
            [
              "International distinctiveness",
              "20%",
              "How clearly does the model differ from occupied positions?"
            ],
            [
              "International relevance/demand",
              "15%",
              "Is there sustained scholarly interest and potential for strong submissions?"
            ],
            [
              "Author-pool viability",
              "15%",
              "Is the international author pool broad enough?"
            ],
            [
              "Reviewer-pool viability",
              "10%",
              "Can independent international expertise be sustained?"
            ],
            [
              "Bulgarian/BSMT comparative advantage",
              "10%",
              "Is there a contribution BSMT can organize better than an arbitrary editorial team?"
            ],
            [
              "First-30 fit",
              "10%",
              "Does the model fit the frozen First-30 portfolio?"
            ],
            [
              "Identity coherence",
              "10%",
              "Can it be explained without a list of unrelated topics?"
            ],
            [
              "Long-term scalability",
              "10%",
              "Will it remain valid as methods, technologies and trends change?"
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Scores use a 1-5 scale and are converted to 100. Four hard vetoes apply: (1) distinctiveness 1/5 with direct collision against multiple established core journals; (2) material break with the frozen First-30 architecture; (3) author/reviewer pool too narrow for independent international review; (4) distinctiveness is merely geographic rather than scholarly."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0C.3 Full comparative scorecard of the five models",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Model",
              "Distinctiveness",
              "Relevance",
              "Author pool",
              "Reviewer pool",
              "BSMT advantage"
            ],
            [
              "M1 General international music theory and analysis",
              "1",
              "5",
              "5",
              "5",
              "2"
            ],
            [
              "M2 Formal / mathematical / computational",
              "2",
              "4",
              "3",
              "3",
              "3"
            ],
            [
              "M3 Global / comparative musical systems",
              "3",
              "4",
              "3",
              "3",
              "2"
            ],
            [
              "M4 Historical theory / sources + CEE/SEE bridge",
              "4",
              "4",
              "3",
              "3",
              "5"
            ],
            [
              "M5 Structures, systems, concepts and methods across traditions",
              "4",
              "5",
              "4",
              "4",
              "4"
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Model",
              "First-30",
              "Coherence",
              "Scalability",
              "Total /100",
              "Decision"
            ],
            [
              "M1",
              "5",
              "2",
              "4",
              "70",
              "Rejected: hard distinctiveness veto"
            ],
            [
              "M2",
              "3",
              "4",
              "3",
              "61",
              "Not primary; retain as major pillar"
            ],
            [
              "M3",
              "3",
              "4",
              "3",
              "63",
              "Not primary; retain as major pillar"
            ],
            [
              "M4",
              "3",
              "4",
              "3",
              "73",
              "Not sole identity; retain signature programme"
            ],
            [
              "M5",
              "5",
              "4",
              "5",
              "87",
              "Selected canonical positioning"
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Model",
              "Why this result",
              "Status in the final architecture"
            ],
            [
              "M1 General international theory and analysis",
              "High relevance and wide pool but direct collision with several flagship journals; insufficient distinctiveness.",
              "Reject as primary identity."
            ],
            [
              "M2 Formal / mathematical / computational",
              "Scientifically strong and compatible with BSMT, but JMM occupies the specialist niche; narrows pools and does not accommodate the historical/global mission.",
              "Major pillar, not the whole journal."
            ],
            [
              "M3 Global / comparative systems",
              "Important international and epistemic value, but AAWM and general journals already occupy territory; alone it can dilute the disciplinary centre.",
              "Major pillar, not the whole journal."
            ],
            [
              "M4 Historical theory / sources + CEE/SEE",
              "Strongest geographic/institutional comparative advantage; can internationalize under-connected theoretical traditions. But history/sources alone is too narrow and has strong precedents.",
              "Signature bridge/programme, not geographic scope."
            ],
            [
              "M5 Structures, systems, concepts and methods across traditions",
              "Integrates all five pillars under a hard theory/analysis admission centre; fits First-30; preserves broad international pools; leverages CEE/SEE without regional trap; remains valid across technological change.",
              "Selected."
            ]
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0C.4 Why the selected focus is “structures, systems, concepts and methods across traditions”",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The selected model is not a compromise “everything journal.” It has a hard centre: music theory and analysis. “Structures, systems, concepts and methods” describe what is investigated and how theoretical knowledge is produced; “across traditions” ensures that historical, culturally situated and emic systems are legitimate theoretical objects without turning the journal into a regional or ethnomusicological publication."
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Pillar",
              "Function in the common identity",
              "Guardrail"
            ],
            [
              "Theory & Analysis",
              "Disciplinary core: models, concepts, harmony, form, rhythm/meter, modality, voice leading and analytical methods.",
              "Without this centre the journal dissolves into general musicology."
            ],
            [
              "Formal / Mathematical / Computational Theory",
              "Formal models, representations, algorithms, corpus tests, AI/MIR when theory-testing; reproducibility.",
              "Provides rigour and testability without turning the journal into engineering/technology."
            ],
            [
              "Historical Theory / Sources",
              "Reconstruction of systems/concepts, critical editions, translations with theoretical apparatus, history of categories.",
              "Internationalizes concepts/sources without collapsing into archival description or biography."
            ],
            [
              "Global / Comparative / Emic Systems",
              "Theoretical systems across traditions, comparative vocabularies/models, analysis using local categories.",
              "Preserves epistemic integrity; no forced conversion into dominant Western frameworks."
            ],
            [
              "Integrative Methods / Metatheory",
              "Methodology, terminology, synthesis, standards, performance/cognition when theory-bearing.",
              "Connects pillars and prevents five separate mini-journals."
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Canonical short form: an international journal of music theory and analysis focused on structures, systems, concepts and methods across traditions. Operational form: the journal publishes research that advances music theory by developing, testing, comparing, reconstructing or formalizing models of musical organization across repertoires, historical traditions and methodological frameworks."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The journal is NOT primarily: general musicology; a Bulgarian-music journal; a Balkan/CEE area-studies journal; mathematics-and-music; AI/music technology; ethnomusicology; theory pedagogy; history of theory; translation; conference proceedings; or a journal whose scientific uniqueness is simply open access."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0D. Canonical scope boundaries and desk triage",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Hard rule: a substantive music-theoretical or analytical contribution is mandatory. The editor must be able to state the manuscript’s music-theoretical/analytical research problem, its theory-bearing claim, and how its evidence or method establishes that claim. Context need not be removable, universality is not required, and culturally specific/emic systems are legitimate."
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Area",
              "In scope when...",
              "Out of scope when..."
            ],
            [
              "Single-work analysis",
              "it develops/tests/refines/challenges theory or method, or yields a theoretically consequential counterexample",
              "it remains interpretation or description only"
            ],
            [
              "Historical scholarship",
              "it reconstructs a theoretical system, concept, argument or analytical method",
              "it is biography/archive description only"
            ],
            [
              "Ethnomusicology / global traditions",
              "it reconstructs, develops or analyses a theoretical system using appropriate local concepts",
              "it describes context without theoretical result"
            ],
            [
              "Computation, corpora, AI",
              "they test/develop/interrogate theory and yield interpretable theory-bearing results",
              "they optimize engineering accuracy, classification or generation only"
            ],
            [
              "Cognition / perception / acoustics",
              "they test or change a model of musical organization",
              "music theory is incidental"
            ],
            [
              "Pedagogy",
              "it changes theory, representation, model or epistemology of theoretical knowledge",
              "it is only curriculum/intervention/satisfaction research"
            ],
            [
              "Performance / artistic research",
              "performance evidence yields explicit critically assessable analytical/theoretical knowledge",
              "it is practice reflection alone"
            ],
            [
              "Translations / sources",
              "they document significance, provenance, method, terminology, rights and substantive theoretical commentary",
              "they are raw translation/transcription/facsimile"
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Epistemic safeguard: non-Western, indigenous, historical and emic systems are not required to be converted into Roman-numeral, Schenkerian, set-theoretic or other dominant frameworks. Comparison must preserve and justify source categories."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0E. Title and bibliographic identity: the decision follows the field choice",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Once field and scope are established, the title is evaluated by the same evidence logic. It must immediately signal the discipline, remain distinctive, fit the real scope, survive technological change and remain stable in citation, metadata, DOI and indexing."
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Criterion",
              "Weight"
            ],
            [
              "Explicit discipline signal",
              "20%"
            ],
            [
              "Semantic fit",
              "20%"
            ],
            [
              "Distinctiveness / collision resistance",
              "15%"
            ],
            [
              "Memorability / brand",
              "15%"
            ],
            [
              "Searchability",
              "10%"
            ],
            [
              "Breadth / future-proofing",
              "10%"
            ],
            [
              "International neutrality",
              "5%"
            ],
            [
              "Metadata stability",
              "5%"
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Candidate",
              "Score /100",
              "Decision"
            ],
            [
              "Music Theory: Structures and Systems",
              "94",
              "Selected"
            ],
            [
              "Music Theory: Structures, Systems, and Methods",
              "91",
              "Runner-up; rejected as heavier"
            ],
            [
              "Music Theory: Concepts, Structures, and Systems",
              "91",
              "Runner-up; rejected as heavier"
            ],
            [
              "Music Theory: Systems and Methods",
              "86",
              "Rejected: weaker analysis signal"
            ],
            [
              "Music Theory Across Traditions",
              "83",
              "Rejected: implies every paper must be cross-tradition"
            ],
            [
              "Structures and Systems: A Journal of Music Theory and Analysis",
              "74",
              "Rejected: weaker search/metadata signal"
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The selected official title is Music Theory: Structures and Systems. “Music Theory” fixes the disciplinary centre. “Structures” covers analytical and organizational relations such as form, harmony, rhythm/meter, voice leading, pitch organization, structurally theorized texture/timbre and formal/computational representations. “Systems” covers theoretical, conceptual, formal, historical, emic, representational and comparative systems. The title does not imply exclusive formalism."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The descriptor “An International Journal of Music Theory and Analysis” is separate and not part of the official title. No public acronym is adopted. ISSN-system confirmation remains an external administrative step, not an unresolved scientific-design question."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "0F. Final Aims & Scope, First-30 reconciliation and Gate-0 closure",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Final public contract: Music Theory: Structures and Systems is an international, peer-reviewed, English-first journal published by the Bulgarian Society for Music Theory. It advances music theory and analysis by publishing research that develops, tests, compares, reconstructs, or formalizes accounts of musical organization across repertoires, historical traditions, and methodological frameworks. Its disciplinary centre is music theory and analysis; a substantive music-theoretical or analytical contribution is mandatory."
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Cluster",
              "Diagnostic share",
              "Practical range in 30 papers",
              "Role"
            ],
            [
              "Theory & Analysis",
              "~40%",
              "11-13",
              "Direct core"
            ],
            [
              "Formal / Mathematical / Computational Theory",
              "~20%",
              "5-6",
              "Major pillar"
            ],
            [
              "Historical Theory",
              "~15%",
              "~4",
              "Major pillar"
            ],
            [
              "Global / Comparative Theoretical Systems",
              "~15%",
              "~4",
              "Major pillar"
            ],
            [
              "Integrative / State-of-field / Method",
              "~10%",
              "3-4",
              "Methodological glue"
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The First-30 portfolio passes without redesign. Shares are never acceptance quotas. Precedence remains scope -> quality -> integrity -> peer review -> portfolio balance. A weaker manuscript is never accepted to fill a desired cluster or geography."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "At approximately article 10, 20 and 30 the journal audits whether the corpus actually demonstrates the chosen identity: clear theory-bearing claims; visible but non-dominating historical/global/computational pillars; international author/reviewer graph; genuine internationalization of some CEE/SEE theory without regionalizing the journal; functioning DOI/metadata/data/code/source practices."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Gate 0A-0F is therefore closed. It does not create §64 and does not reopen the completed 63/63 Master Plan. It establishes and freezes the scientific field, scope, title and public Aims & Scope that all downstream infrastructure must serve."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "Chapter 4 — Staffing, internationalization and execution update as of 5 October 2026",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "This chapter contains the post-Gate-0 decisions on staffing analysis, editorial-team architecture, the international Editorial Board, author and reviewer networks, geographic balancing, and the updated financial/timeline frame. It does not replace Chapters 1-3 or the full language addendum."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.1 Founding Editor-in-Chief fit analysis",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The Editor-in-Chief decision belongs to BSMT’s competent body. The scores below are non-binding decision support, not appointments, nominations or contact authorization. Availability was not scored."
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Candidate",
              "Type",
              "Score",
              "Main finding"
            ],
            [
              "Nathan J. Martin",
              "external",
              "95",
              "strongest verified journal-editing evidence; broad historical/theory profile"
            ],
            [
              "Milena Bozhikova",
              "BSMT member",
              "94",
              "strongest integrated internal fit; seniority, theory/history, international and editorial experience"
            ],
            [
              "Christian Utz",
              "external",
              "92",
              "very broad theory/analysis, intercultural and performance profile"
            ],
            [
              "Robert Hasegawa",
              "external",
              "87",
              "strong formal, historical and interdisciplinary profile"
            ],
            [
              "Angelina Petrova",
              "BSMT member",
              "81",
              "strong disciplinary legitimacy and seniority"
            ],
            [
              "Dimitar Ninov",
              "BSMT member",
              "75",
              "strong core theory and US bridge; governance firewall needed because of presidency"
            ],
            [
              "Bozhidar Chapkanov",
              "BSMT member",
              "74",
              "strong current analytical fit and edited-volume experience; also a strong AE option"
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Milena Bozhikova is a top-tier EIC candidate, not an internal fallback. An internal EIC should be balanced by visibly international Associate Editors, Board, reviewers and authors. An external EIC must be a working leader rather than an honorary name."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.2 Associate Editor architecture and fit analysis",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The public role is Associate Editor, without permanent subject silos. Internally, overlapping expertise tags are used: TA, HTS, FMC, GCS and IMM. The target is at least three active Associate Editors, optimally four or five."
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Candidate",
              "Lane",
              "Score",
              "Tags"
            ],
            [
              "Daphne Leong",
              "external",
              "95",
              "TA, IMM, HTS"
            ],
            [
              "Christian Utz",
              "external",
              "95",
              "TA, GCS, IMM, HTS"
            ],
            [
              "Robert Hasegawa",
              "external",
              "94",
              "TA, FMC, IMM, HTS"
            ],
            [
              "Felix Diergarten",
              "external",
              "93",
              "HTS, TA"
            ],
            [
              "Mariusz S. Kozak",
              "external",
              "92",
              "IMM, TA, FMC"
            ],
            [
              "Toru Momii",
              "external",
              "91",
              "GCS, TA, IMM"
            ],
            [
              "Bozhidar Chapkanov",
              "BSMT",
              "90",
              "TA, FMC"
            ],
            [
              "Dmitri Tymoczko",
              "external",
              "90",
              "FMC, TA"
            ],
            [
              "Elaine Chew",
              "external",
              "89",
              "FMC, IMM, TA"
            ],
            [
              "Angelina Petrova",
              "BSMT",
              "86",
              "TA, IMM"
            ],
            [
              "Ivan Penev",
              "BSMT",
              "78",
              "TA, IMM"
            ],
            [
              "Emilia Kolarova",
              "BSMT",
              "70",
              "HTS, GCS"
            ],
            [
              "Vladimir Popov",
              "BSMT",
              "68",
              "TA, HTS"
            ],
            [
              "Mila Mihova",
              "BSMT",
              "62",
              "TA, IMM"
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Reference models remain: an internal EIC should be paired with strongly international Associate Editors; an external EIC should be paired with meaningful internal BSMT scholarly representation. Final appointments follow the EIC decision."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.3 International Editorial Board",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The Board is not a prestige wall. The active target is 14-18 people, roughly 50-60%+ outside Bulgaria and about 8-10 countries where real participation allows. Members should review, refer reviewers/authors, advise on policy, or provide another actual scholarly function."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The research pool as of 5 October contains 34 prospects from 23 countries, with 88.2% institutionally outside Bulgaria. This is deliberately larger than the final Board so that the final 14-18 can be selected after EIC/AE appointments and role-conflict deduplication."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.4 Author network and geographic rebalancing",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The author-prospect registry has reached its canonical cap of 60. It is not an automatic invitation list. No outreach is authorized until BSMT appoints the EIC/Associate Editors and freezes the real first wave of 8-12 personalized contacts. Invited does not mean accepted."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The first pass was overly North-American. After rebalancing, the USA accounts for 18 of 60 and explicit lanes cover Russia, CEE/SEE, Turkey/MENA, Africa, South and East Asia, and Latin America. Further balancing occurs by replacement, not unlimited growth."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Russia is an explicit standalone lane rather than an invisible subcategory of CEE/SEE. Six Russia-based theory scholars are in the author registry: Tatiana Kyuregyan, Grigory Lyzhov, Rimma Pospelova, Marina Karaseva, Elena Titova and Tatiana Naumenko. This complements international scholars of Russian/Soviet theory. Russian institutional affiliation is neither a positive nor a negative acceptance criterion."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.5 Reviewer pool and workload rules",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The reviewer pool is a simultaneous expertise graph, conflict graph and workload graph. Minimum verified launch capacity is 50; a healthy Year-1 target is 80-120. The research registry now contains 87 candidates, but nobody becomes ACTIVE merely by being listed."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Activation requires verified identity, reviewed expertise tags, enough conflict information and at least one accepted invitation or explicit willingness. The soft workload cap is normally no more than two completed BSMT reviews in a rolling 12 months; a third review is exceptional and voluntary."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Complex manuscripts may use complementary pairs: historical-source specialist + systematic theorist; emic-tradition specialist + comparative theorist; computational-method specialist + music theorist; performance specialist + analytical theorist."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.6 Updated financial and timeline frame",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The architecture remains Diamond Open Access with no author fees. Master Plan planning scenarios are: EUR 500-2,000 annual external cash under heavy volunteer contribution; EUR 8,000-20,000 with professional language editing, production, technical support and structured outputs; EUR 25,000-60,000+ under international growth with management and production capacity. These are scenarios, not promises."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Assuming Volume 1 begins in 2027, the realistic trajectory is DOI from Article 1 in 2027; RILM after Issue 1; DOAJ realistically in 2028; erih+ earliest in 2029; Scopus and WoS readiness audits in 2029; major-index applications only when evidence is mature, plausibly 2029-2030 or later. Q2+ around 2032-2033 and sustained Q1-level performance around 2034-2036+ are internal aspirations, not guarantees."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.7 Current state after the full strategic master",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The strategic master is complete. Scientific identity, scope, title and public Aims & Scope are closed. No staffing appointments have been made, no author outreach has been sent, and no reviewer candidates have been activated. Staffing decisions belong to BSMT. Technical and institutional work may proceed in parallel, but it must never substitute for scholarly governance."
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "post_gate_staffing_and_internationalization": [
    {
      "title": "Chapter 4 — Staffing, internationalization and execution update as of 5 October 2026",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "This chapter contains the post-Gate-0 decisions on staffing analysis, editorial-team architecture, the international Editorial Board, author and reviewer networks, geographic balancing, and the updated financial/timeline frame. It does not replace Chapters 1-3 or the full language addendum."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.1 Founding Editor-in-Chief fit analysis",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The Editor-in-Chief decision belongs to BSMT’s competent body. The scores below are non-binding decision support, not appointments, nominations or contact authorization. Availability was not scored."
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Candidate",
              "Type",
              "Score",
              "Main finding"
            ],
            [
              "Nathan J. Martin",
              "external",
              "95",
              "strongest verified journal-editing evidence; broad historical/theory profile"
            ],
            [
              "Milena Bozhikova",
              "BSMT member",
              "94",
              "strongest integrated internal fit; seniority, theory/history, international and editorial experience"
            ],
            [
              "Christian Utz",
              "external",
              "92",
              "very broad theory/analysis, intercultural and performance profile"
            ],
            [
              "Robert Hasegawa",
              "external",
              "87",
              "strong formal, historical and interdisciplinary profile"
            ],
            [
              "Angelina Petrova",
              "BSMT member",
              "81",
              "strong disciplinary legitimacy and seniority"
            ],
            [
              "Dimitar Ninov",
              "BSMT member",
              "75",
              "strong core theory and US bridge; governance firewall needed because of presidency"
            ],
            [
              "Bozhidar Chapkanov",
              "BSMT member",
              "74",
              "strong current analytical fit and edited-volume experience; also a strong AE option"
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Milena Bozhikova is a top-tier EIC candidate, not an internal fallback. An internal EIC should be balanced by visibly international Associate Editors, Board, reviewers and authors. An external EIC must be a working leader rather than an honorary name."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.2 Associate Editor architecture and fit analysis",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The public role is Associate Editor, without permanent subject silos. Internally, overlapping expertise tags are used: TA, HTS, FMC, GCS and IMM. The target is at least three active Associate Editors, optimally four or five."
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Candidate",
              "Lane",
              "Score",
              "Tags"
            ],
            [
              "Daphne Leong",
              "external",
              "95",
              "TA, IMM, HTS"
            ],
            [
              "Christian Utz",
              "external",
              "95",
              "TA, GCS, IMM, HTS"
            ],
            [
              "Robert Hasegawa",
              "external",
              "94",
              "TA, FMC, IMM, HTS"
            ],
            [
              "Felix Diergarten",
              "external",
              "93",
              "HTS, TA"
            ],
            [
              "Mariusz S. Kozak",
              "external",
              "92",
              "IMM, TA, FMC"
            ],
            [
              "Toru Momii",
              "external",
              "91",
              "GCS, TA, IMM"
            ],
            [
              "Bozhidar Chapkanov",
              "BSMT",
              "90",
              "TA, FMC"
            ],
            [
              "Dmitri Tymoczko",
              "external",
              "90",
              "FMC, TA"
            ],
            [
              "Elaine Chew",
              "external",
              "89",
              "FMC, IMM, TA"
            ],
            [
              "Angelina Petrova",
              "BSMT",
              "86",
              "TA, IMM"
            ],
            [
              "Ivan Penev",
              "BSMT",
              "78",
              "TA, IMM"
            ],
            [
              "Emilia Kolarova",
              "BSMT",
              "70",
              "HTS, GCS"
            ],
            [
              "Vladimir Popov",
              "BSMT",
              "68",
              "TA, HTS"
            ],
            [
              "Mila Mihova",
              "BSMT",
              "62",
              "TA, IMM"
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Reference models remain: an internal EIC should be paired with strongly international Associate Editors; an external EIC should be paired with meaningful internal BSMT scholarly representation. Final appointments follow the EIC decision."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.3 International Editorial Board",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The Board is not a prestige wall. The active target is 14-18 people, roughly 50-60%+ outside Bulgaria and about 8-10 countries where real participation allows. Members should review, refer reviewers/authors, advise on policy, or provide another actual scholarly function."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The research pool as of 5 October contains 34 prospects from 23 countries, with 88.2% institutionally outside Bulgaria. This is deliberately larger than the final Board so that the final 14-18 can be selected after EIC/AE appointments and role-conflict deduplication."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.4 Author network and geographic rebalancing",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The author-prospect registry has reached its canonical cap of 60. It is not an automatic invitation list. No outreach is authorized until BSMT appoints the EIC/Associate Editors and freezes the real first wave of 8-12 personalized contacts. Invited does not mean accepted."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The first pass was overly North-American. After rebalancing, the USA accounts for 18 of 60 and explicit lanes cover Russia, CEE/SEE, Turkey/MENA, Africa, South and East Asia, and Latin America. Further balancing occurs by replacement, not unlimited growth."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Russia is an explicit standalone lane rather than an invisible subcategory of CEE/SEE. Six Russia-based theory scholars are in the author registry: Tatiana Kyuregyan, Grigory Lyzhov, Rimma Pospelova, Marina Karaseva, Elena Titova and Tatiana Naumenko. This complements international scholars of Russian/Soviet theory. Russian institutional affiliation is neither a positive nor a negative acceptance criterion."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.5 Reviewer pool and workload rules",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The reviewer pool is a simultaneous expertise graph, conflict graph and workload graph. Minimum verified launch capacity is 50; a healthy Year-1 target is 80-120. The research registry now contains 87 candidates, but nobody becomes ACTIVE merely by being listed."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Activation requires verified identity, reviewed expertise tags, enough conflict information and at least one accepted invitation or explicit willingness. The soft workload cap is normally no more than two completed BSMT reviews in a rolling 12 months; a third review is exceptional and voluntary."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Complex manuscripts may use complementary pairs: historical-source specialist + systematic theorist; emic-tradition specialist + comparative theorist; computational-method specialist + music theorist; performance specialist + analytical theorist."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.6 Updated financial and timeline frame",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The architecture remains Diamond Open Access with no author fees. Master Plan planning scenarios are: EUR 500-2,000 annual external cash under heavy volunteer contribution; EUR 8,000-20,000 with professional language editing, production, technical support and structured outputs; EUR 25,000-60,000+ under international growth with management and production capacity. These are scenarios, not promises."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Assuming Volume 1 begins in 2027, the realistic trajectory is DOI from Article 1 in 2027; RILM after Issue 1; DOAJ realistically in 2028; erih+ earliest in 2029; Scopus and WoS readiness audits in 2029; major-index applications only when evidence is mature, plausibly 2029-2030 or later. Q2+ around 2032-2033 and sustained Q1-level performance around 2034-2036+ are internal aspirations, not guarantees."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.7 Current state after the full strategic master",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The strategic master is complete. Scientific identity, scope, title and public Aims & Scope are closed. No staffing appointments have been made, no author outreach has been sent, and no reviewer candidates have been activated. Staffing decisions belong to BSMT. Technical and institutional work may proceed in parallel, but it must never substitute for scholarly governance."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.8 Samuel Andreyev — multi-role fit and warm prior contact",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Samuel Andreyev is added to the staffing analysis as a separate high-priority profile. This is non-binding fit analysis across four possible roles, not an appointment and not outreach authorization."
        },
        {
          "type": "table",
          "content": [
            [
              "Role",
              "Score",
              "Uncertainty",
              "Finding"
            ],
            [
              "potential BSMT member",
              "94",
              "±3",
              "very high fit"
            ],
            [
              "potential reviewer",
              "88",
              "±4",
              "high fit in defined lanes"
            ],
            [
              "potential founding Editor-in-Chief",
              "82",
              "±5",
              "strong but not leading fit for this role"
            ],
            [
              "potential Associate Editor",
              "90",
              "±4",
              "very high fit"
            ]
          ]
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Prior contact improves the plausibility of renewed dialogue, but does not automatically raise scholarly/editorial fit and does not itself authorize outreach."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "4.9 Funding route: Bulgarian Science Fund — “Bulgarian Scientific Periodicals”",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "The programme is added as a medium-term funding route, not launch funding. In the checked 2027 cycle, a core condition is a peer-reviewed, indexed Bulgarian scientific periodical with at least three years of publication history."
        },
        {
          "type": "p",
          "content": "Once the minimum publication history is reached, BSMT must re-check each annual call. Any award confers no editorial rights and cannot influence manuscript acceptance."
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "canonical_decision_register": [
    {
      "id": "D01",
      "decision": "Journal type",
      "canonical_value": "International from Article 1 / Issue 1."
    },
    {
      "id": "D02",
      "decision": "Language",
      "canonical_value": "English-first baseline; language addendum defines alternatives."
    },
    {
      "id": "D03",
      "decision": "Access",
      "canonical_value": "Diamond OA; no APC."
    },
    {
      "id": "D04",
      "decision": "Copyright/licence",
      "canonical_value": "Author-retained; CC BY 4.0."
    },
    {
      "id": "D05",
      "decision": "Frequency",
      "canonical_value": "Biannual; 5–7, target 6."
    },
    {
      "id": "D06",
      "decision": "Peer review",
      "canonical_value": "Double-anonymized; normally >=2 external reviewers."
    },
    {
      "id": "D07",
      "decision": "DOI/Crossref",
      "canonical_value": "BSMT-owned; article DOI; opaque suffix; references deposited."
    },
    {
      "id": "D08",
      "decision": "Format",
      "canonical_value": "Landing + accessible PDF + structured HTML/JATS target."
    },
    {
      "id": "D09",
      "decision": "Issue 1",
      "canonical_value": "5–7 target 6; anchor submissions + open route; all normally reviewed."
    },
    {
      "id": "D10",
      "decision": "First 30",
      "canonical_value": "Diverse portfolio; no quotas; low endogeny/concentration."
    },
    {
      "id": "D11",
      "decision": "Scope",
      "canonical_value": "Music-theoretical/analytical contribution central."
    },
    {
      "id": "D12",
      "decision": "Governance",
      "canonical_value": "Publisher continuity separate from scholarly decisions."
    },
    {
      "id": "D13",
      "decision": "Year-1 staffing",
      "canonical_value": "One technical/operations lead; scholarly authority separate."
    },
    {
      "id": "D14",
      "decision": "Year-1 cash",
      "canonical_value": "Donated hosting/labour; BSMT pays domain/Crossref/DOI."
    },
    {
      "id": "D15",
      "decision": "Internationalization",
      "canonical_value": "Affiliation-based; no geographic acceptance quotas."
    },
    {
      "id": "D16",
      "decision": "Metric integrity",
      "canonical_value": "Optimize scholarship/discovery, never citation counts directly."
    },
    {
      "id": "D17",
      "decision": "Indexing",
      "canonical_value": "Parallel evidence branches; Scopus/WoS own gates."
    },
    {
      "id": "D18",
      "decision": "Launch gate",
      "canonical_value": "OJS/E2E/governance/policies/recovery must pass."
    },
    {
      "id": "D19",
      "decision": "Crossmark",
      "canonical_value": "Year 1/2 after stable Crossref; not Day-1 blocker."
    },
    {
      "id": "D20",
      "decision": "Similarity Check",
      "canonical_value": "Full-text URLs from DOI 1; activate when eligible."
    },
    {
      "id": "D21",
      "decision": "Scholarly gravity",
      "canonical_value": "Qualified unsolicited outside-Bulgaria flow is Year-3 north star."
    },
    {
      "id": "D22",
      "decision": "Final architecture",
      "canonical_value": "Scholarship upstream; metrics downstream."
    },
    {
      "id": "D23",
      "decision": "Canonical scientific positioning",
      "canonical_value": "Structures, systems, concepts and methods across traditions; a substantive theory/analysis contribution is mandatory."
    },
    {
      "id": "D24",
      "decision": "Official title",
      "canonical_value": "Music Theory: Structures and Systems; descriptor is separate; no public acronym."
    },
    {
      "id": "D25",
      "decision": "CEE/SEE role",
      "canonical_value": "Signature internationalization programme, not a geographic scope limit."
    },
    {
      "id": "D26",
      "decision": "Staffing decision",
      "canonical_value": "BSMT decides appointments; fit analyses are non-binding decision support and do not authorize contact."
    },
    {
      "id": "D27",
      "decision": "Author registry",
      "canonical_value": "60 prospects; geographically rebalanced by replacement; no outreach before staffing decisions."
    },
    {
      "id": "D28",
      "decision": "Russia",
      "canonical_value": "Standalone international network lane for Russian theoretical traditions and current institutions; no nationality quota or preference."
    },
    {
      "id": "D29",
      "decision": "Reviewer pool",
      "canonical_value": "87 candidates; activation only after verification, conflict screening and real willingness; soft cap two reviews per rolling 12 months."
    },
    {
      "id": "D30",
      "decision": "Editorial Board",
      "canonical_value": "Final active Board 14-18; larger research pool reduced after EIC/AE appointments."
    }
  ],
  "author_research_registry": {
    "count": 60,
    "outreach_authorized": false,
    "people": [
      {
        "name": "David Temperley",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "FMC",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "REGISTRY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Jason Yust",
        "affiliation": "Boston University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "FMC",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "FIRST_WAVE_RESEARCH_SHORTLIST",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Yonatan Malin",
        "affiliation": "University of Colorado Boulder",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "GCS",
          "FMC"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "REGISTRY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Nicole Biamonte",
        "affiliation": "McGill University",
        "country": "Canada",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "lane": "FIRST_WAVE_RESEARCH_SHORTLIST",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Kofi Agawu",
        "affiliation": "CUNY Graduate Center",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "GCS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "DISTINGUISHED",
        "lane": "REGISTRY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Philip Ewell",
        "affiliation": "Hunter College / CUNY Graduate Center",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "FIRST_WAVE_RESEARCH_SHORTLIST",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Yayoi Uno Everett",
        "affiliation": "Hunter College / CUNY Graduate Center",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "GCS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "REGISTRY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Johanna Devaney",
        "affiliation": "CUNY Graduate Center",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "IMM",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_CAREER",
        "lane": "REGISTRY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Joseph Straus",
        "affiliation": "CUNY Graduate Center",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "DISTINGUISHED",
        "lane": "REGISTRY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Matthew BaileyShea",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "REGISTRY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Zachary Bernstein",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "lane": "REGISTRY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Nathan Lam",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "FMC",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "EARLY_MID",
        "lane": "FIRST_WAVE_RESEARCH_SHORTLIST",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Sarah Marlowe",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_CAREER",
        "lane": "REGISTRY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Jonathan Dunsby",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "DISTINGUISHED",
        "lane": "REGISTRY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Daniel Shanahan",
        "affiliation": "Northwestern University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "GCS",
          "IMM",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "lane": "REGISTRY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Vasili Byros",
        "affiliation": "Northwestern University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_CAREER",
        "lane": "REGISTRY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Danuta Mirka",
        "affiliation": "Northwestern University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "FIRST_WAVE_RESEARCH_SHORTLIST",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Anna Yu Wang",
        "affiliation": "Princeton University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "EARLY_CAREER",
        "lane": "FIRST_WAVE_RESEARCH_SHORTLIST",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Christian Utz",
        "affiliation": "University of Music and Performing Arts Graz",
        "country": "Austria",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "GCS",
          "IMM",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "HOLD_PENDING_STAFFING_DECISION",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Felix Diergarten",
        "affiliation": "Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts",
        "country": "Switzerland",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "HOLD_PENDING_STAFFING_DECISION",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Ariane Jeßulat",
        "affiliation": "Berlin University of the Arts",
        "country": "Germany",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "FIRST_WAVE_RESEARCH_SHORTLIST",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Markus Neuwirth",
        "affiliation": "Anton Bruckner Private University",
        "country": "Austria",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "FMC"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "HOLD_PENDING_STAFFING_DECISION",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Pieter Bergé",
        "affiliation": "KU Leuven",
        "country": "Belgium",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "FIRST_WAVE_RESEARCH_SHORTLIST",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Anja Volk",
        "affiliation": "Utrecht University",
        "country": "Netherlands",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "FIRST_WAVE_RESEARCH_SHORTLIST",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Moreno Andreatta",
        "affiliation": "CNRS / IRCAM-STMS / University of Strasbourg",
        "country": "France",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "FIRST_WAVE_RESEARCH_SHORTLIST",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Elaine Chew",
        "affiliation": "King's College London",
        "country": "United Kingdom",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "IMM",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "HOLD_PENDING_STAFFING_DECISION",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Peter Harrison",
        "affiliation": "University of Cambridge",
        "country": "United Kingdom",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "IMM",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_CAREER",
        "lane": "FIRST_WAVE_RESEARCH_SHORTLIST",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Alice Xue",
        "affiliation": "Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "EARLY_CAREER",
        "lane": "FIRST_WAVE_RESEARCH_SHORTLIST",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Tatiana Kyuregyan",
        "affiliation": "Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory",
        "country": "Russia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "RUSSIA_BASED_THEORY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Grigory Lyzhov",
        "affiliation": "Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory",
        "country": "Russia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "lane": "RUSSIA_BASED_THEORY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Rimma Pospelova",
        "affiliation": "Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory",
        "country": "Russia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "RUSSIA_BASED_THEORY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Marina Karaseva",
        "affiliation": "Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory",
        "country": "Russia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "RUSSIA_BASED_THEORY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Elena Titova",
        "affiliation": "Saint Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory",
        "country": "Russia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "RUSSIA_BASED_THEORY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Tatiana Naumenko",
        "affiliation": "Gnessin Russian Academy of Music",
        "country": "Russia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "RUSSIA_BASED_THEORY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
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        "name": "Srdjan Teparic",
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        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "IMM"
        ],
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        "name": "Zoran Bozanic",
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        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
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        "name": "Ivana Ilic",
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        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
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        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "FMC",
          "IMM",
          "GCS"
        ],
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        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
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        "name": "Petros Vouvaris",
        "affiliation": "University of Macedonia",
        "country": "Greece",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "lane": "SEE_MEDITERRANEAN",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Qian Renping",
        "affiliation": "Shanghai Conservatory of Music",
        "country": "China",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "FMC",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "EAST_ASIA",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Carlos de Lemos Almada",
        "affiliation": "Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)",
        "country": "Brazil",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "FMC",
          "IMM"
        ],
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        "lane": "LATIN_AMERICA",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Eren Özek",
        "affiliation": "Istanbul Technical University, Turkish Music State Conservatory",
        "country": "Turkey",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "TA",
          "FMC"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "MENA_TURKEY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Nilgün Doğrusöz Dişiaçık",
        "affiliation": "Istanbul Technical University, Turkish Music State Conservatory",
        "country": "Turkey",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "GCS",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "MENA_TURKEY",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Gülay Karamahmutoğlu",
        "affiliation": "Istanbul Technical University, Turkish Music State Conservatory",
        "country": "Turkey",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "GCS",
          "TA"
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        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Nidaa Abou Mrad",
        "affiliation": "Antonine University",
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        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "HTS",
          "TA"
        ],
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        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Wael El Mahallawy",
        "affiliation": "The American University in Cairo",
        "country": "Egypt",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "FMC",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "MENA_ARAB",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Martin Watt",
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        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
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        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Nicholas Haralambous",
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        "country": "South Africa",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM",
          "HTS"
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        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Thomas Pooley",
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        "country": "South Africa",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "IMM",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "AFRICA",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
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        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "IMM"
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        "lane": "AFRICA",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Preeti Rao",
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        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "GCS",
          "IMM"
        ],
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        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Suddhaseel Sen",
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        "country": "India",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "FMC",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_CAREER",
        "lane": "SOUTH_ASIA",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Rajpal Singh",
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        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "TA",
          "HTS"
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        "name": "Kyogu Lee",
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        "country": "South Korea",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "IMM",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
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        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Shinichiro Kato",
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        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
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        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
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        "name": "Katarzyna Szymańska-Stułka",
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        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "IMM"
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        "lane": "CEE",
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      {
        "name": "Nicolae Gheorghiță",
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          "GCS",
          "HTS",
          "TA"
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      },
      {
        "name": "Olguța Lupu",
        "affiliation": "National University of Music Bucharest",
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        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "lane": "CEE_SEE",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Gabriel Pareyón",
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        "country": "Mexico",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "TA",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "lane": "LATIN_AMERICA",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      },
      {
        "name": "Gonzalo Martínez García",
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        "country": "Chile",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "lane": "LATIN_AMERICA",
        "status": "not contacted; no outreach authorized"
      }
    ]
  },
  "reviewer_seed_registry": {
    "count": 87,
    "review_invitations_sent": false,
    "people": [
      {
        "name": "David Temperley",
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        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "FMC",
          "IMM"
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        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
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        "name": "Jason Yust",
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        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "FMC",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
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        "name": "Yonatan Malin",
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        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "GCS",
          "FMC"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
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        "name": "Nicole Biamonte",
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        "country": "Canada",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
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        "name": "Kofi Agawu",
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        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "GCS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "DISTINGUISHED",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
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        "name": "Philip Ewell",
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        "expertise_tags": [
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          "HTS",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
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        "name": "Yayoi Uno Everett",
        "affiliation": "Hunter College / CUNY Graduate Center",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "GCS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
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        "name": "Johanna Devaney",
        "affiliation": "CUNY Graduate Center",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "IMM",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_CAREER",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Joseph Straus",
        "affiliation": "CUNY Graduate Center",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "DISTINGUISHED",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Matthew BaileyShea",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Zachary Bernstein",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Nathan Lam",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "FMC",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "EARLY_MID",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Sarah Marlowe",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_CAREER",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Jonathan Dunsby",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "DISTINGUISHED",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Daniel Shanahan",
        "affiliation": "Northwestern University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "GCS",
          "IMM",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Vasili Byros",
        "affiliation": "Northwestern University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_CAREER",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Danuta Mirka",
        "affiliation": "Northwestern University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Anna Yu Wang",
        "affiliation": "Princeton University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "EARLY_CAREER",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Christian Utz",
        "affiliation": "University of Music and Performing Arts Graz",
        "country": "Austria",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "GCS",
          "IMM",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Felix Diergarten",
        "affiliation": "Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts",
        "country": "Switzerland",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Ariane Jeßulat",
        "affiliation": "Berlin University of the Arts",
        "country": "Germany",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Markus Neuwirth",
        "affiliation": "Anton Bruckner Private University",
        "country": "Austria",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "FMC"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Pieter Bergé",
        "affiliation": "KU Leuven",
        "country": "Belgium",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Anja Volk",
        "affiliation": "Utrecht University",
        "country": "Netherlands",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Moreno Andreatta",
        "affiliation": "CNRS / IRCAM-STMS / University of Strasbourg",
        "country": "France",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Elaine Chew",
        "affiliation": "King's College London",
        "country": "United Kingdom",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "IMM",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Peter Harrison",
        "affiliation": "University of Cambridge",
        "country": "United Kingdom",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "IMM",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_CAREER",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Alice Xue",
        "affiliation": "Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "EARLY_CAREER",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Tatiana Kyuregyan",
        "affiliation": "Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory",
        "country": "Russia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Grigory Lyzhov",
        "affiliation": "Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory",
        "country": "Russia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Rimma Pospelova",
        "affiliation": "Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory",
        "country": "Russia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Marina Karaseva",
        "affiliation": "Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory",
        "country": "Russia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Elena Titova",
        "affiliation": "Saint Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory",
        "country": "Russia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Tatiana Naumenko",
        "affiliation": "Gnessin Russian Academy of Music",
        "country": "Russia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Srdjan Teparic",
        "affiliation": "University of Arts in Belgrade, Faculty of Music",
        "country": "Serbia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Zoran Bozanic",
        "affiliation": "University of Arts in Belgrade, Faculty of Music",
        "country": "Serbia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Ivana Ilic",
        "affiliation": "University of Arts in Belgrade, Faculty of Music",
        "country": "Serbia",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_CAREER",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Costas Tsougras",
        "affiliation": "Aristotle University of Thessaloniki",
        "country": "Greece",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "FMC",
          "IMM",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Petros Vouvaris",
        "affiliation": "University of Macedonia",
        "country": "Greece",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Qian Renping",
        "affiliation": "Shanghai Conservatory of Music",
        "country": "China",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "FMC",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Carlos de Lemos Almada",
        "affiliation": "Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)",
        "country": "Brazil",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "FMC",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Eren Özek",
        "affiliation": "Istanbul Technical University, Turkish Music State Conservatory",
        "country": "Turkey",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "TA",
          "FMC"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Nilgün Doğrusöz Dişiaçık",
        "affiliation": "Istanbul Technical University, Turkish Music State Conservatory",
        "country": "Turkey",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "GCS",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Gülay Karamahmutoğlu",
        "affiliation": "Istanbul Technical University, Turkish Music State Conservatory",
        "country": "Turkey",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "GCS",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Nidaa Abou Mrad",
        "affiliation": "Antonine University",
        "country": "Lebanon",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "HTS",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Wael El Mahallawy",
        "affiliation": "The American University in Cairo",
        "country": "Egypt",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "FMC",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Martin Watt",
        "affiliation": "University of Cape Town, South African College of Music",
        "country": "South Africa",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Nicholas Haralambous",
        "affiliation": "University of Cape Town, South African College of Music",
        "country": "South Africa",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "EARLY_MID",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Thomas Pooley",
        "affiliation": "University of South Africa (Unisa)",
        "country": "South Africa",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "IMM",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Meki Nzewi",
        "affiliation": "University of Pretoria",
        "country": "South Africa",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "DISTINGUISHED",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Preeti Rao",
        "affiliation": "Indian Institute of Technology Bombay",
        "country": "India",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "GCS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Suddhaseel Sen",
        "affiliation": "Indian Institute of Technology Bombay",
        "country": "India",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "FMC",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_CAREER",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Rajpal Singh",
        "affiliation": "University of Delhi, Faculty of Music and Fine Arts",
        "country": "India",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Kyogu Lee",
        "affiliation": "Seoul National University",
        "country": "South Korea",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "IMM",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Shinichiro Kato",
        "affiliation": "Toho Gakuen School of Music",
        "country": "Japan",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Katarzyna Szymańska-Stułka",
        "affiliation": "Fryderyk Chopin University of Music",
        "country": "Poland",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Nicolae Gheorghiță",
        "affiliation": "National University of Music Bucharest",
        "country": "Romania",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "HTS",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Olguța Lupu",
        "affiliation": "National University of Music Bucharest",
        "country": "Romania",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Gabriel Pareyón",
        "affiliation": "Universidad de Guadalajara / UNAM postgraduate music network",
        "country": "Mexico",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "TA",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Gonzalo Martínez García",
        "affiliation": "Universidad de Talca",
        "country": "Chile",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Daphne Leong",
        "affiliation": "University of Colorado Boulder",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Robert Hasegawa",
        "affiliation": "McGill University",
        "country": "Canada",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "FMC",
          "IMM",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "L. Poundie Burstein",
        "affiliation": "CUNY Graduate Center / Hunter College",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Mark Spicer",
        "affiliation": "Hunter College / CUNY Graduate Center",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Mark Anson-Cartwright",
        "affiliation": "CUNY Graduate Center",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Jonathan Pieslak",
        "affiliation": "CUNY Graduate Center",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "GCS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Norman Carey",
        "affiliation": "CUNY Graduate Center",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Ben Baker",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "EARLY_MID",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Erin Johnston",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "EARLY_CAREER",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "William Marvin",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Mariusz S. Kozak",
        "affiliation": "Columbia University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM",
          "FMC"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_CAREER",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Richard Ashley",
        "affiliation": "Northwestern University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "IMM",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Dmitri Tymoczko",
        "affiliation": "Princeton University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "FMC",
          "TA"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis",
        "affiliation": "Princeton University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "IMM",
          "FMC",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Nathan J. Martin",
        "affiliation": "University of Michigan",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "TA",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "MID_SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Steven Rings",
        "affiliation": "University of Chicago",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Toru Momii",
        "affiliation": "Harvard University",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "GCS",
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "EARLY_CAREER",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "John Covach",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Matthew Brown",
        "affiliation": "Eastman School of Music",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "SENIOR",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Milena Bozhikova",
        "affiliation": "Institute for Art Studies BAS / international affiliations",
        "country": "Bulgaria",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS",
          "GCS",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "INTERNAL_PROFILE",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Angelina Petrova",
        "affiliation": "National Academy of Music, Sofia",
        "country": "Bulgaria",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "INTERNAL_PROFILE",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Dimitar Ninov",
        "affiliation": "Texas State University / BSMT",
        "country": "USA",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "INTERNAL_PROFILE",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Bozhidar Chapkanov",
        "affiliation": "South-West University / BSMT",
        "country": "Bulgaria",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "FMC"
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        "career_band": "INTERNAL_PROFILE",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
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        "affiliation": "City St George's research network / BSMT",
        "country": "United Kingdom",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "INTERNAL_PROFILE",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Vladimir Popov",
        "affiliation": "Mozarteum/Musikum network / BSMT",
        "country": "Austria",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "HTS"
        ],
        "career_band": "INTERNAL_PROFILE",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Emilia Kolarova",
        "affiliation": "National Academy of Music, Sofia",
        "country": "Bulgaria",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "HTS",
          "GCS"
        ],
        "career_band": "INTERNAL_PROFILE",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      },
      {
        "name": "Mila Mihova",
        "affiliation": "National Academy of Music, Sofia",
        "country": "Bulgaria",
        "expertise_tags": [
          "TA",
          "IMM"
        ],
        "career_band": "INTERNAL_PROFILE",
        "status": "candidate; not active; no review invitation sent"
      }
    ],
    "soft_load_rule": "normally no more than two completed BSMT reviews in a rolling 12-month period"
  },
  "russia_standalone_network_lane": {
    "active_in_analysis": true,
    "russia_based_scholars": [
      "Tatiana Kyuregyan",
      "Grigory Lyzhov",
      "Rimma Pospelova",
      "Marina Karaseva",
      "Elena Titova",
      "Tatiana Naumenko"
    ],
    "rule": "Russian institutional affiliation is neither a positive nor a negative acceptance criterion; direct Russia-based participation complements international scholarship on Russian and Soviet theory."
  },
  "launch_rule": "DOAJ, erih+, Scopus, Web of Science, Crossmark, Similarity Check and bibliometric metrics are not launch preconditions; scholarly governance, real peer review, recovery, public policy and the metadata/DOI path are.",
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    {
      "citation": "BSMT. 2026a.",
      "description": "Final Journal Architecture. Internal canonical strategy, branch journal/phase4b-phase5.",
      "url": null
    },
    {
      "citation": "BSMT. 2026b.",
      "description": "Bulgarian Trap Guardrails. Internal canonical strategy.",
      "url": null
    },
    {
      "citation": "BSMT. 2026c.",
      "description": "First-30 Article Portfolio. Internal canonical strategy.",
      "url": null
    },
    {
      "citation": "BSMT. 2026d.",
      "description": "Authoritative Decision Register. Internal canonical strategy.",
      "url": null
    },
    {
      "citation": "BSMT. 2026e.",
      "description": "Year-3 Scholarly Gravity. Internal canonical strategy.",
      "url": null
    },
    {
      "citation": "BSMT. 2026f.",
      "description": "First-Article End-to-End Test. Internal canonical strategy.",
      "url": null
    },
    {
      "citation": "DOAJ. 2026.",
      "description": "Guide to Applying.",
      "url": "https://doaj.org/apply/guide/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "erih+. 2026.",
      "description": "Criteria for Inclusion.",
      "url": "https://erihplus.hkdir.no/informationarticles/criteria-for-inclusion"
    },
    {
      "citation": "RILM. 2026.",
      "description": "Scope: RILM Abstracts of Music Literature.",
      "url": "https://www.rilm.org/abstracts/scope/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Elsevier. 2026.",
      "description": "Scopus Content Policy and Selection.",
      "url": "https://www-prod.elsevier.com/products/scopus/content/content-policy-and-selection"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Clarivate. 2026.",
      "description": "Journal Evaluation Process and Selection Criteria.",
      "url": "https://clarivate.com/academia-government/scientific-and-academic-research/research-discovery-and-referencing/web-of-science/web-of-science-core-collection/editorial-selection-process/journal-evaluation-process-selection-criteria/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Crossref. 2026.",
      "description": "OJS 3.5 DOI registration, fees, verification and reference linking.",
      "url": "https://www.crossref.org/documentation/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Google Scholar. 2026.",
      "description": "Inclusion Guidelines for Webmasters.",
      "url": "https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/inclusion.html"
    },
    {
      "citation": "OpenAlex. 2026.",
      "description": "Getting Indexed - Sources.",
      "url": "https://help.openalex.org/how-to/getting-indexed/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "NISO/NLM. 2024.",
      "description": "JATS 1.4, ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2024.",
      "url": "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/publishing/1.4/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "W3C. 2023.",
      "description": "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2.",
      "url": "https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "ISO. 2024.",
      "description": "ISO 14289-2:2024 - PDF/UA-2.",
      "url": "https://www.iso.org/standard/82278.html"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Zenodo. 2026.",
      "description": "GitHub and Software.",
      "url": "https://help.zenodo.org/docs/github/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "ISSN International Centre. 2026.",
      "description": "ISSN National Centre for Bulgaria.",
      "url": "https://www.issn.org/centre/bulgaria-bulgarie/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Duke University Press.",
      "description": "Journal of Music Theory.",
      "url": "https://www.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Oxford University Press / SMT.",
      "description": "Music Theory Spectrum.",
      "url": "https://academic.oup.com/mts/pages/About"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Society for Music Theory.",
      "description": "Music Theory Online.",
      "url": "https://mtosmt.org/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "National Academy of Music, Sofia.",
      "description": "Integral Music Theory.",
      "url": "https://nma.bg/izdaniya/integralna-muzikalna-teoriya/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Institute of Art Studies BAS.",
      "description": "Bulgarian Musicology.",
      "url": "https://artstudies.bg/?page_id=200"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://dukeupress.edu/journal-of-music-theory"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://academic.oup.com/mts"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14682249"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://lup.be/journal/music-theory-and-analysis/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://www.gmth.de/zeitschrift.aspx"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://sfam.org/c/publications/musurgia/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://www.gatm.it/it/pubblicazioni/ratm/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://lnx.gatm.it/analiticaojs/index.php/analitica/index"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://theory.esm.rochester.edu/integral/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://journal.iftawm.org/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/tmam20"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://journals.ou.edu/jmtp/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://www.perspectivesofnewmusic.org/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://online.ucpress.edu/mp"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://nma.bg/almanac_bg/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://nma.bg/izdaniya/doktorantski-cheteniya/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://nma.bg/izdaniya/akademichni-proletni-cheteniya/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://nma.bg/izdaniya/muzikalna-kritika/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://nma.bg/izdaniya/studentum-opera-scripta/"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://artstudies.bg/?page_id=198"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://www.artacademyplovdiv.com/amtii/Proekti/nauchni.html"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://www.artacademyplovdiv.com/proletni_cheteniq.html"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://periodicals.uni-sofia.bg/index.php/mmc/en"
    },
    {
      "citation": "Official Gate 0 source.",
      "description": "International/Bulgarian publication-field comparison.",
      "url": "https://ubmd.bg/списание-музикални-хоризонти/"
    },
    {
      "type": "official",
      "organization": "Bulgarian Science Fund / UMIS",
      "title_or_note": "Bulgarian Scientific Periodicals – 2027 procedure",
      "url": "https://eumis2020.government.bg/bg/s/ProcedureNims/Info/a2b74a62-5f21-4c92-af18-6c4c90e42de5"
    }
  ],
  "traceability": {
    "base": "full 2 October 2026 strategy",
    "update": "canonical decisions through 5 October 2026",
    "precedence_rule": "latest explicitly frozen decision prevails over older recommendations",
    "v2_5_appendix": "v2.4 FULL MASTER + Samuel Andreyev role-fit + Bulgarian Science Fund route + 8 structured diagrams; DELETE=0, OMIT=0."
  },
  "v2_5_appendix_after_2026_10_05": {
    "integrity_rule": "v2.4 is retained in full; v2.5 only appends and, in BG, normalizes terminology. No chapter, section, table, registry or appendix is removed.",
    "samuel_andreyev": {
      "name": "Samuel Andreyev",
      "relationship_status": "WARM_PRIOR_CONTACT_2018",
      "privacy": "The private Gmail correspondence is not reproduced. The strategy records only that a prior relationship exists and that he responded positively to the possibility of a Bulgarian invitation.",
      "family_context": "In direct correspondence in 2018, Andreyev stated that his father’s family is of Macedonian origin and that his grandparents grew up in Sofia and Chucheligovo. This is not relabelled as verified Bulgarian ancestry without separate evidence.",
      "role_fit": [
        {
          "role": "potential BSMT member",
          "score_100": 94,
          "uncertainty": "±3",
          "finding": "very high fit",
          "basis": "international profile, theory/analysis and composition relevance, prior positive Bulgarian contact and family connection to Sofia/Chucheligovo; membership remains a BSMT decision"
        },
        {
          "role": "potential reviewer",
          "score_100": 88,
          "uncertainty": "±4",
          "finding": "high fit in defined lanes",
          "basis": "strong contemporary-music, compositional-thought, analysis and integrative-method fit; activation still requires willingness, expertise and conflict verification"
        },
        {
          "role": "potential founding Editor-in-Chief",
          "score_100": 82,
          "uncertainty": "±5",
          "finding": "strong but not leading fit for this role",
          "basis": "international visibility, network and communication strength; score remains below the leading EIC tier because verified whole-journal peer-reviewed editorial management evidence is weaker"
        },
        {
          "role": "potential Associate Editor",
          "score_100": 90,
          "uncertainty": "±4",
          "finding": "very high fit",
          "basis": "strong fit for contemporary theory/analysis, compositional thought, integrative methods and international author acquisition; a more natural operational fit than EIC on current evidence"
        }
      ],
      "availability_scored": false,
      "outreach_authorized": false,
      "rule": "Prior contact improves the plausibility of renewed dialogue, but does not automatically raise scholarly/editorial fit and does not itself authorize outreach."
    },
    "funding_bulgarian_science_fund": {
      "name": "Bulgarian Science Fund — “Bulgarian Scientific Periodicals” programme",
      "strategic_role": "medium-term operating support, not launch funding",
      "checked_cycle": "Bulgarian Scientific Periodicals – 2027",
      "core_condition_in_checked_cycle": "peer-reviewed and indexed Bulgarian scientific periodical with at least three years of publication history",
      "launch_eligible": false,
      "rule": "After at least three years of publication history, re-check the annual procedure, including indexing, eligible applicant, state-aid, expenditure and deadline rules. Funding confers no editorial rights.",
      "official_source": "https://eumis2020.government.bg/bg/s/ProcedureNims/Info/a2b74a62-5f21-4c92-af18-6c4c90e42de5"
    },
    "diagrams": [
      {
        "id": "S1",
        "title": "From scholarly field to journal identity",
        "type": "causal_chain",
        "nodes": [
          "international + Bulgarian field",
          "competitor map",
          "gap analysis",
          "five positioning models",
          "canonical focus",
          "scope boundaries",
          "title + Aims & Scope",
          "First 30 articles"
        ]
      },
      {
        "id": "S2",
        "title": "Five positioning models",
        "type": "comparison_matrix",
        "data": [
          {
            "model": "M1 general theory/analysis",
            "score": 70,
            "status": "reject"
          },
          {
            "model": "M2 formal/mathematical/computational",
            "score": 61,
            "status": "reject as primary"
          },
          {
            "model": "M3 global/comparative systems",
            "score": 63,
            "status": "pillar only"
          },
          {
            "model": "M4 historical theory + CEE/SEE",
            "score": 73,
            "status": "strong pillar only"
          },
          {
            "model": "M5 structures, systems, concepts and methods across traditions",
            "score": 87,
            "status": "SELECT"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "id": "S3",
        "title": "Editorial separation of powers",
        "type": "organization",
        "nodes": [
          "BSMT: publisher/continuity/budget",
          "EIC: scholarly policy + final decisions",
          "Associate Editors: manuscript handling + reviewer selection",
          "Reviewers: independent expert assessment",
          "Technical operations: OJS/metadata/DOI/production"
        ]
      },
      {
        "id": "S4",
        "title": "Manuscript lifecycle",
        "type": "workflow",
        "nodes": [
          "submission",
          "administrative check",
          "scholarly desk evaluation",
          "two independent reviewers",
          "revision",
          "scholarly decision",
          "copyedit + technical edit",
          "JATS/HTML/PDF",
          "publication + DOI",
          "discovery + maintenance"
        ]
      },
      {
        "id": "S5",
        "title": "First-30 portfolio",
        "type": "portfolio",
        "data": {
          "theory_analysis": 40,
          "formal_mathematical_computational": 20,
          "historical_theory": 15,
          "global_comparative_systems": 15,
          "integrative_methods": 10
        },
        "rule": "diagnostic, not quota"
      },
      {
        "id": "S6",
        "title": "Independent discovery/indexing lanes",
        "type": "dependency_graph",
        "nodes": [
          "ISSN",
          "Crossref/DOI",
          "Google Scholar",
          "OpenAlex",
          "RILM",
          "DOAJ",
          "erih+",
          "Scopus",
          "Web of Science/ESCI",
          "CiteScore/SJR/SNIP",
          "JIF/JCI"
        ],
        "hard_dependencies": [
          "Scopus -> CiteScore/SJR/SNIP",
          "Web of Science/JCR -> JIF/JCI"
        ]
      },
      {
        "id": "S7",
        "title": "Funding sustainability and Bulgarian Science Fund",
        "type": "timeline",
        "stages": [
          "Year 0-1: BSMT + in-kind labour + core infrastructure",
          "Year 2: stabilize production + institutional/project support",
          "after >=3 years history: reassess eligibility for Bulgarian Scientific Periodicals",
          "later: diversified funding with no editorial rights for funders"
        ]
      },
      {
        "id": "S8",
        "title": "Samuel Andreyev — multi-role fit",
        "type": "fit_matrix",
        "data": {
          "BSMT_member": 94,
          "reviewer": 88,
          "Editor_in_Chief": 82,
          "Associate_Editor": 90
        },
        "status": "warm prior contact; no new outreach authorized"
      }
    ]
  }
}