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Scientific Publication Support

Literature Search

The service provides the preparation of a literature search from bibliographic databases on a given medical topic. A “search” is understood as a list of literature on a specific subject, with possible refinements (language, retrospection, article type, etc.). This service is free for FNUSA staff. 

Order searches via: 

Delivery format: e‑mail, printed copy 

Follow‑up retrieval or ordering of unavailable full‑text articles 

Where Is Appropriate to Publish?

When evaluating suitable publication venues we rely, among other things, on the Methodology 25+, which serves as a framework for research assessment in the Czech Republic and emphasizes quality and disciplinary relevance of outputs. Hence, it is advisable to publish in recognized outlets that match your research focus and reach the relevant scholarly community. 

Need help? We can assist you with: 

  • choosing an appropriate journal 
  • verifying its quality 
  • navigating the databases 

Write to cpvis@fnusa.cz or call +420 2059. 

Article in a Scholarly Journal

The most prestigious journals are indexed in the international databases Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus. At FNUSA only the WoS database is available. 

What Is Important
  • The journal’s scope matches your discipline 
  • The journal is peer‑reviewed 
  • Ideally it is indexed in WoS or Scopus 

📌 Publishing outside these databases is possible if: 

  • it is a scholarly peer‑reviewed journal 
  • the article meets scientific‑output requirements 
Beware of Predatory Journals

Always check the publisher, peer‑review process, and the journal’s indexing status. 

👉 We recommend using: „Think. Check. Submit.“

Proceeding paper

Where to verify: 

  • Scopus – source types: Book Series, Conference Proceedings 
  • Web of Science – database Conference Proceedings Citation Index 

📌 Requirements: 

  • Minimum length: 2 pages 
  • Assigned ISBN or ISSN 
  • Indexed in Scopus or WoS 

✔ An article in a special issue of a journal is also considered a relevant output. 

Final Recommendations

When selecting a publication venue consider: 

  • journal quality and prestige (quartile) 
  • relevance to your field 
  • target readership 
  • publisher transparency 

🎯 Goal: publish **less, but with higher quality**. 

Source

How to avoid predatory journals?

Predatory Practices

With the rise of Open Access publishing, so‑called predatory journals have appeared. Their goal is not quality science but the collection of Article Processing Charges (APC) without genuine peer review. 

The Problem 

Predatory journals do not conduct standard peer review, publish quickly and without quality control, and often provide false information about indexing or metrics. 

👉 Publishing in these journals can damage your reputation and research outcomes. 

How to Spot a Predatory Journal 

Typical warning signs: 

  • Missing or unclear peer‑review process 
  • Suspiciously fast acceptance 
  • Opaque or hidden publication fees 
  • False claims about indexing (WoS, Scopus, etc.) 
  • Generic or misleading title (e.g., International Journal of…) 
  • Low‑quality website (errors, poor navigation) 
  • Missing or untrustworthy contacts (e.g., Gmail addresses) 
  • Aggressive solicitation e‑mails 
  • Unverifiable or fake editorial board 
Beware of Fake (Stolen) Journals

Fraudulent sites may copy the name and ISSN of a reputable journal, appear trustworthy, and charge publication fees. The difference is usually a different URL, altered scope, or payment requirement. 

How to Choose a Journal

Verify the journal’s indexing in Web of Science or Scopus. Check the journal in the DOAJ. Search Google for “journal name + predatory” or “journal name + scam” to see experiences and reviews. Verify the publisher. Consult colleagues or us! 

👉 We recommend using: „Think. Check. Submit.“

Things to Keep in Mind 
  • Do not respond to unsolicited e‑mails. 
  • Do not publish in journals you do not verify
  • Even well‑known titles can have counterfeit copies. 
If You Already Made Contact 
  • You have submitted an article: 
    • Request the publisher to withdraw it.
    •  Be aware that the article may not be publishable elsewhere. 
  • You have been asked to review: 
    • You are under no obligation to respond.
    • Decline and ask to be removed from their contacts. 
    • Mark the e-mail as spam.
Need Advice? 
  • We can help you verify a journal, assess its quality, and avoid predatory publishing. 
  • Write to cpvis@fnusa.cz or call +420 2059. 
Useful Resources
Open Access

Open Access

Publishing model that provides free online access to scientific results that are funded by public resources.

Key principles:

  1. Immediate – available no later than the day of publication (no embargo), possibly earlier as a preprint
  2. Free – no charge for readers
  3. Permanent – long‑term storage in a repository
  4. Open – allows reuse under public licences
How to Achieve Open Access
Green OA
  • Deposit the article in a repository (self‑archiving) 
  • Combines journal publication with full‑text availability 

Possible versions: 

  • Preprint (submitted version) 
  • Postprint (accepted version) 
  • Version of Record (publisher’s final version) 

Always respect the publisher’s licence terms. 

For sharing your already published outputs we have created an official FNUSA community in the Zenodo repository, where we take care of correct metadata and compliance with FAIR principles and legislation. 

Gold OA
  • Publish in open‑access, peer‑reviewed journals 
  • Access is provided by the publisher
  • Usually associated with an APC (Article Processing Charge)

Costs: 

  •  Paid by the author or the project 
  •  Recognised as an allowable expense in most grants   
Open Publishing without Fees
FNUSA Transformative Agreements

FNUSA is a member of the CzechELib (CZEL) consortium. Through subscription agreements with some publishers (Wiley and Springer) it is possible to publish articles without additional fees. Each year we have a limited number of tokens (each token = one free article). 

Eligibility for Funding
  • Corresponding author must have an affiliation with FNUSA/FNUSA‑ICRC 
  • Journal must be listed in the approved table 
  • Tokens are allocated on a first‑come, first‑served basis until the yearly allotment is exhausted  
How an Author Publishes an OA Article with Springer Nature? 
  1. After an article is accepted for publication, the author is asked by the publisher to sign a “publishing agreement”.
  2. The publisher’s system recognizes the author’s affiliation based on three parameters:
    institutional e-mail domain in the contact details
    the affiliation selected by the author (the most important parameter)
    the IP address from which publishing agreement is compoleted
  3. If the author’s institution is a member of the consortium and the article type is listed as eligible, as well as if the journal is included among the eligible titles, the author will see information about the transformative agreement.
  4. The system is set to Open Access by default. The author cannot opt out independently; if Open Access is not desired, the opt-out must be performed by the author’s institution via the OA administrator.. The author cannot independently decide to opt out of Open Access publishing. If the author does not wish to publish the article Open Access, the opt-out must be carried out by the author’s institution (via the OA administrator).
  5. In the next step, “Publishing and Rights,” the author can select the “Submit for approval” option if publishing Open Access.
  6. The author must then sign the “Licence to Publish”.
  7. Once approved for OA token use by the member institution administrator, the article will be published Open Access.
  8. If rejected, the author can either pay the publication fee personally or publish the article behind a paywall.


Detailed Instructions from the Publisher:
Springer Nature guide.

How does an author publish an Open Access article?
  1. Once an article is accepted for publication, you will be prompted by the publisher to manage the article in Author Services. At the beginning of the workflow it is necessary to select Manage article.
  2. After completing the individual sections, you will be asked to select a Responsible Corresponding Author. There can only be one and they will be responsible for signing the publication agreement and his/her affiliation will be used to determine eligibility for free OA publishing under the transformative agreement.
  3. If you select yourself as the Responsible Corresponding Author, you will proceed to the Funder/Grant section. If the Responsible Corresponding Author is another author, they will be prompted to log in to Author Services.
    After filling in the grant details, you will be taken to Confirm/Enter Institutional Affiliation to confirm your affiliation. The display of a green ✓ indicates your institution is recognized in the database. You will also see on the Author Services home screen the sentence Article is eligible for Open Access through your institution at no fee. If you have multiple affiliations, the system will ask you which affiliation you want to use to pay the APC. We recommend selecting the first affiliation that the drop-down box offers you.
  4. When the system recognizes your institution as eligible for OA benefits, the purple Open Access text will appear at the bottom of the screen.
  5. After completing the Copyright Ownership section, you are taken to the Open Access Option section, where you confirm your interest in publishing in open access mode by confirming “Yes, make my article open access”.
  6. Then in the Licence Agreement Types section, select the Creative Common Licences you need.
  7. After signing the publishing agreement in the Licence Submission, you will see the message “Your order and licence have been successfully submitted” in the Licence Signing section. Below this you will find information that it is possible for your institution to pay the APC.
  8. If the institution accepts and approves your request, your article will be published in OA mode.
  9. If the institution rejects your request, the publisher will contact you and offer you the option of publishing traditionally (the article will be paywalled) or paying the APC directly if you would like to publish OA.


Detailed Instructions from the Publisher:
Wiley publisher’s guide.

Open Access Fund

The Open Access Fund enables FNUSA authors to publish open‑access in journals that charge an APC.

Who May Apply 
  • FNUSA employee who is the principal or corresponding author of the article 
  • One application per year per author 

Applications are submitted through the form.

Application Procedure 
  • Applications may be submitted after article acceptance. 
  • Submission window: 1 Jan – 20 Dec of the given year (acceptance date must be no later than 1 Dec of the previous year). 
  • Tax invoice must be issued by 31 Dec of the same year. 
  • Requests are processed continuously on a “first‑come, first‑served” basis until the allocated budget is exhausted. 
Acceptance Criteria

  • Journal must be in 1st or 2nd quartile according to AIS (Web of Science) for the previous calendar year. 
  • Article is published under a public Creative Commons licence. 
  • Article must appear in a fully OA (gold OA) journal. 
  • Fully OA journals must be indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). 
  • Hybrid OA journals are acceptable if they meet the funding agency’s OA requirements. 
  • Journal must meet transparency and good‑practice criteria for scientific publishing. 
  • Article must comply with the FNUSA employee Ethical Code. 
  • The Fund covers the APC up to CZK 85 000 (incl. VAT). 
  • Any amount above the limit is paid by the author’s institution. 
  • Funding may be requested only when APC cannot be covered from project funds. 
  • Fees for reprints, colour figures, or other administrative charges are not covered. 
  • The application must include three attachments: article acceptance confirmation, manuscript title page, and an affidavit (template available in intraportál “Katalog tiskopisů” no. 1097). 
Payment & Invoicing

After approval, an order is created in the FAMA+ system. The tax invoice is issued only after the order is generated. 

The invoice must contain: 

  • FNUSA details: St. Anne’s University Hospital in Brno, Pekařská 664/53, 602 00 BRNO, VAT CZ00159816. 
  • Publisher details: company name, payment reason, amount, bank details. 
  • Bank details:
    • Europe: bank name, address, account number, SWIFT, IBAN
    • USA: bank name, address, account number, SWIFT, routing number. 

The funded article must be deposited in the FNUSA Zenodo community within 14 days of publication (Publisher’s PDF version). 

Further details are described in the workflow R/A/37999/045 “Request for Support from the Open Access Fund”.  

Other OA Variants
  • Diamond / Platinum OA
    → no publication fees (e.g., university journals)  
  • Bronze OA
    → free to read but without a reuse licence (cannot be republished)
  • Hybrid OA
    → combination of subscription and APC 
      ❗ Not recommended for projects (risk of *double‑dipping*) 

 ❗ Fees are often not eligible for reimbursement 

Need Help?

Contact oa@fnusa.cz or call 2043.

Citations

Bibliography is an essential part of every scientific publication. For citation management you can use EndNote, which is available at FNUSA in a limited version through the Web of Science subscription. Access requires registration and login from an FNUSA network IP address. 

EndNote is a professional reference manager from Clarivate Analytics for handling bibliographic records and automatically generating citations. It allows you to store sources, organise them into libraries, import data from databases (e.g., Web of Science), and insert citations directly into MS Word via Cite While You Write. 

If you need assistance with your bibliography, feel free to contact us at cpvis@fnusa.cz or call 2043. 

Affiliation

Authors of scientific‑research results must unambiguously and fully state the name of the institution and workplace where the result was generated, in line with proper publishing practice. Incorrect or inconsistent affiliation information can lead to erroneous indexing in electronic databases and consequently distort scientific‑performance metrics. We strongly recommend paying attention to correct affiliation formatting already at manuscript preparation, as well as during revisions and peer review, and to insist on the proper format from the publisher. Following the simple rules below will benefit both authors and the institution by providing a clearer overview of outputs and eliminating “lost” records, which positively affects national evaluation and resulting institutional funding. 

FNUSA/ICRC Author Affiliations in Publications

Always use a uniform form:  Name of department / clinic / International Clinical Research Center, St. Anne’s University Hospital Brno 

Recommended ROR identifiers: 

FNUSA
FNUSA ICRC
Guidline

Personal and Others Identifiers

A personal/author identifier uniquely distinguishes an author in the scholarly environment. It helps correctly link publications, projects, and other outputs to the right researcher. 

Benefits 

  • Publications are discoverable regardless of name variants or homonyms. 
  • Increases visibility of scientific output (useful for grant applications, collaborations). 
  • Guarantees that publications are unequivocally linked to the correct author. 
  • Provides full control over one’s profile throughout the research career. 

Create an ORCID in 3 Minutes

Globally recognised services providing such identifiers include ORCID, ResearcherID (Clarivate Analytics), and Scopus Author ID (Elsevier). Over time, ORCID (https://orcid.org/) has become the de‑facto standard for author identification in academia.

ORCID
Tutorial

Services Offered by CPVIS

  • Training on the various services 
  • Individual consultations
  • Assistance with building a publication list 
  • Profile management including the addition of a trusted person from CPVIS 

Write to cpvis@fnusa.cz or call 2043.