Written Scientific or Professional Communication

Original written communication

Basic questions

• Who? What? How? Why?

The question WHO?

• Author
• Reviewer
• Editorial staff
• Member of the editorial board

CO - Professional text

• A complete, closed, continuous formation of a symbolic nature, which is the result of deliberate human communication activity and whose goal is to inform and communicate ideas and theories of various scientific fields.
• It is coded by linguistic means and communicated by audio or graphic means.
• A characteristic feature of a professional text is professional terminology and conceptual syntactic constructions

Article and magazine

• An Article is a literary genre containing a clear, factual, logical and comprehensible expression of an idea or description of an event. He looks for connections, causes, consequences and analyzes, sorts and generalizes them. It is the result of the author's subjective approach to the issue. It is published most often in a magazine.
• A Magazine is a periodical publication containing information processed in the form of articles and published regularly at a certain place. The identification of the magazine is ensured by the eight-digit numerical code ISSN (International Standard Serial Number), which unambiguously indicates the names of periodicals published anywhere in the world.
• ISSN records are stored in the International ISSN Registry.

Books

• They are a non-periodical publication and a means of disseminating author's work, scientific and technical information.
• It can be a monograph, an anthology, a dictionary, an encyclopedia or a volume. The international standard book code - ISBN is used for identification.
• A book published in electronic form is called an electronic book.
• ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is a code intended for unique identification of book editions.
• The worldwide body of the system is the International ISBN Agency in London.
• The supreme Czech body is the National ISBN Agency working in the National Library of the Czech Republic.

Who is the book intended for?

• A scientific book is a non-periodical professional publication of at least 100 standard pages, published in print with a print run of at least 200 copies in a publishing house with scientific editors and reviewed by at least two generally recognized reviewers from the relevant field (but not from the workplace of the book's authors).
• A professional book refers to a precisely defined problem of a certain scientific field, it contains the formulation of an identifiable and scientifically recognized methodology.
• A popular educational book is a publication bringing scientific and professional information to the lay public.

An important part of scientific and professional books

• Author + Title + Reviewers
• Contents - list of all chapters and subsections
• Index - local, material, personal or undifferentiated. It contains everything that the author considers important and is used for searching in the text of the book.
• Bibliography - a list of other books referred to in the text.
• Illustration

Example

Autor: Jan Kosek

Editor: Alena Koutná

Edition: Knowledge

Category: popular science literature

Language: Czech

Edition: First

Year of publication: 2003

ISBN: 80-7340-014-6

Publisher: Baset

The chapter dealing with the history of the field maps the path taken by psychology (initially as part of religion, philosophy or medicine) from the earliest times to the present day. The author devotes most of the space to the founders of modern psychology (Wundt, James, Freud, Jung, etc.), but he does not neglect ancient philosophers (Plato, Aristotle), Christian thinkers (St. Augustine) or representatives of Eastern religions (Buddha, Lao-tzu) ´).

Editorial board

• It is the highest organizational link in the magazine structure.
• He is responsible for the professional and content side of the magazine, discusses and approves all necessary documents and the editorial plan.
• Its members are selected based on their expertise in individual areas, both theoretically and practically. Each member of the editorial board is a guarantor of the expertise in which they work professionally and is responsible for this expertise (or field) when assessing contributions sent to the editors.
• The Council may appoint members of the Expert Advisory and Consultation Group.
• Its members can:
  • participate in magazine activities
  • propose various changes
  • participate in oppositions and evaluations of submitted contributions and their recommendation or non-recommendation for publication.

Peer reviewed journal and reviewer

• A peer-reviewed journal employs a review board of expert reviewers whose task is to scrutinize the content of all submitted manuscripts and determine whether the content is appropriate for the journal in terms of accuracy and scientific value.
• Reviewers
  • They can receive a form with questions from the editors for the manuscript.
  • They write reviews of professional articles and, based on their reviews, recommend articles for publication.

Questions for reviewers

• What is it about?
  • Original scientific work
  • Collective report
  • Repeater
  • Discussion post
  • Annotation
• The thesis corresponds / does not correspond to the focus of the journal and the guidelines for authors
• The topic is current / no longer current
• This topic was in Czech literature
  • Already sufficiently discussed
  • This topic is exceptional
  • this topic is under discussion

• The formal arrangement corresponds / does not correspond to international customs
• The work has / does not have a good language and stylistic level
• The work is unique in its scope and number of citations
  • Reasonable
  • Too brief
  • Too extensive
• Literature is modern / outdated
• You recommend
  • Expand: summary, introduction, file characteristics, discussion, literature, pictorial documentation.
  • Shorten: summary, introduction, file characteristics, discussion, literature, reduce image documentation
• The statistical processing of the results is:
  • At a good level / insufficient
  • I recommend reworking using statistical processing
• Keywords are / are not listed
• I propose critical notes, reservations to formulations, conclusions, conclusions
• Conclusion of the assessment
  • The work is suitable for publication
    • Without comments
    • After editing according to comments

Article types

• Articles are published in magazines or on websites.
• The magazine of the Czech Medical Chamber addresses more than 40,000 doctors in the Czech Republic. It has been published for 17 years, it includes pharmacotherapeutic information and an advertising supplement.
• It serves doctors to orientate themselves in the field, advises on relations with health insurance companies and state authorities, and informs about further education options.
• A scientific or professional journal publishes the following types of articles:
  • Original work
  • Review articles
  • Reports
  • Translation articles
  • Technical comments
  • Letters to the Publisher
  • Teaching materials
  • Software information
  • Biographical articles
  • Reports from congresses and conferences (only on request, decision of the editorial board)
  • Book reviews (only on request, otherwise as decided by the editorial board)

Original article

Example

Starting point:

In 2007, a total of 871 new cases of tuberculosis (TB) of all forms and locations were reported to the Register of Tuberculosis.

Methods and results:

Of these, 744 were pulmonary tuberculosis, 506 definitive cases of pulmonary tuberculosis, and we diagnosed 266 cases of microscopically positive pulmonary tuberculosis. Compared to 2006, the number of all notified cases of tuberculosis decreased. However, there was an insignificant increase in definitive and microscopically positive pulmonary tuberculosis. The total number of TB cases of all forms and locations in the Czech Republic fell below 10/100,000 inhabitants for the third time. This confirmed the downward trend in the number of notified TB cases starting in 1998. Further TB control measures must be aimed at actively searching for TB cases in risk groups, especially the homeless and illegal immigrants.

Conclusions:

The Czech Republic belongs to the group of European countries with a favorable situation in TB and its effective control.

Key words: tuberculosis, epidemiology, treatment, resistance.

Tuberculosis in the Czech Republic in 2007

Authors: 1Homolka J, 1Krejbich F, 2Holub J. Authors - place of work: 1Charles University in Prague, 1st Faculty of Medicine, 1st Department of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases VFN 2Institute of Health Information and Statistics of the Czech Republic Article: Time. Medicine. Czech, 2009, 148, pp. 197-200. Number of views of the article: 45 times

Review article

Example

Heel pain

Authors: Čižmář I., 1Svíženská I., 2Pilný J., 3Repko M., Ira D.

Authors - place of work: Clinic of Trauma Surgery of the FN, Brno 1Anatomy Institute of the Faculty of Medicine of the MU, Brno 2Orthopedic Department - Pardubice Regional Hospital 3Orthopedic Clinic of the FN, Brno

Article: Time. Medicine. Czech, 2005, 144, pp. 535-538.

Heel pain is a relatively common clinical symptom in our population. Successful therapy is based on the etiology of the difficulties. The most common source of pain is the mechanical base, both on the dorsal and plantar side of the calcaneus. Therapy includes a spectrum of procedures from regimen measures to surgical intervention.

Key words: calcar calcanei, calcaneus, pain.

Case report

Example

In the article, which describes one of the vasculitis occurring in children, in addition to the description of the basic manifestations, we deal more consistently with one of the main criteria that represent eye symptoms. A clinical description is often enough to clarify the disease, which is further specified by laboratory and instrumentation. Knowing the typical symptoms of the disease greatly facilitates and speeds up its determination, they are often already detectable macroscopically. In the case of the differential diagnostic balance of fevers, the reasoning can be so broad that it leads to wrong diagnoses and, consequently, unnecessary therapeutic delay where there can be fatal consequences. In Kawasaki disease, bilateral injection of the bulbar conjunctiva is usually the first sign of objectification, followed by acute bilateral iridocyclitis with later development and longer duration.

Kawasaki disease and its eye symptoms

Authors: Svobodová D., Slaný J., Pískovský T.

Authors - place of work: Clinic of Children's Medicine FN, Ostrava

Article: Time. Medicine. Czech, 2008, 147, pp. 162-164.

Collective report

• The author's personal opinion must be evident in the approach to the topic.
• The work provides an overview of the current state of affairs in the chosen issue, including controversial opinions.
• A bibliography is included.
• No abstract required.
• The range should be 10-15 pages of the manuscript.
• Literature should not exceed 50 citations.

Article rating

• The Impact Factor (IF) has become a measure of the quality of scientific journals .
• It is defined as the ratio of the number of citations recorded in the evaluated year to all articles published in a given journal in the previous two years to the total number of all such articles.
• The Immediacy Index shows how often articles published in a given year are cited in the same year. So it is a measure of response speed.

Journal of Czech doctors

• It is an interdisciplinary and strictly scientific journal, publishing review articles and original scientific works from all fields of medicine.
• It provides information from meetings, congresses, reviews of the latest books, chapters on the history of medicine, personal reports, case studies, answers to readers' professional questions, articles on pre- and post-graduate medical education, etc.

Guidelines for Authors

Manuscript

• It is an author's work protected by copyright law. The author must deliver them to the editorial office in the number of copies required by the editorial office of the magazine or publishing house in which he wants to publish his article or book. It is most often two copies of the text (5 copies in the journal Science) and appendices or 1 copy and electronic processing.
• Below the list of used literature is information on possible grant support (full name of the agency and grant number)
• Electronic form of the manuscript :
  • The editors do not have to rewrite the text - this prevents errors.
  • Articles can also be sent by e-mail
  • The recommended text file formats are: DOC (Word), RTF (Rich Text Format), ASCII in Czech encoding CP1250, Latin 2, Kamenický, exceptionally files of type SAM (Ami Pro 3.0), T602. The name of the text file should be identical to the author's last name, e.g. novak.DOC.
• Attached image files should also be named with the author's last name and the number of the figure, table or graph, eg novaktab3.BMP.
• Each file (diskette) with the article should be accompanied by a black-and-white printout, preferably from a laser or inkjet printer.

Scope of the article

• It is usually determined by the editorial requirements and is part of the Instructions for Authors
• Most often:
  • max. range of 10 standard pages (i.e. 30 lines per page, 1 line = 60 characters)
  • with a maximum of 6 images (tables).
• It includes:
  • the price of the printed page
  • the amount of remuneration for the author
  • article copyright form

Article structure

1. Homepage
2. Short, concise job title; abbreviation of name, surname of author/s; official name of the workplace.
3. Structured abstract: 1x Czech, 1x English, with the following breakdown:
   1. Starting point: 2-4 sentences characterizing the state of the problem, 2-3 sentences indicating the goal of the work.
   2. Methods and results
   3. Characteristics of the monitored group, methods used
   4. The most significant results, expressed numerically with an indication of statistical significance.
   5. Conclusions
   6. What the study shows.
   7. Keywords: 3 – 0 words.
4. Own text - methods - results - discussion
5. List of abbreviations used
6. Literature.

Typographic form

• Photos, tables and graphs only in high-quality originals.
• All marked with the number under which they will be in the text.
• Numbered citations, references in the text are indicated by the citation number in round brackets.
• If acknowledgments for cooperation in the creation of the article appear in the material, they are placed before the book references.

• The first (title) page should contain:
  • The name of the article
  • Names of all authors (without titles) and names of their workplaces. Individual workplaces must be distinguished graphically (preferably with numbers - superscript).
  • Contact address of the first author. The main author's postal address, including telephone number, fax number and e-mail address (contacts for the author are often part of the article and are listed at the end of the article after the Literature section).
  • A brief summary of the content of the contribution in a maximum of 15 lines (including case reports).
  • Article abstract and keywords.

Pictures, Drawings, Diagrams

• All photos, drawings and graphs should be attached "separately" and not inserted into the text and edited to the quality required by the magazine in one of the graphic programs:
  • Adobe PhotoShop, Corel PHOTO-PAINT, Adobe Illustrator, Fractal Design Painter, or PaintBrush in Windows and saved on a CD-Rom as a separate image (this also applies to the so-called "screens" - graphic capture of the screens of the presented programs).
  • The following types of image formats are required for saving: TIFF (Tagged Image File Format), WMF (Windows Metafile), BMP (Windows Bitmap), EPS (Encapsulated PostScript), GIF (Graphic Interchange Format), PCX (Publisher's PaintBrush).
• Image files should be named with the author's last name and image number, eg novakobr1.tiff.
• On the back of the printout of the image, the author should mark the document with an Arabic numeral (the same as the reference in the text), write his name and the initial words of the title of the article in pencil.
• Most editorial offices (e.g. also the publishing and printing center of the ČLS JEP) return their color photos and slides to the authors after the magazine has been produced. If the author does not require this return, he must inform the editors in writing. Feathers are usually returned only if the author requests them in writing.

Graphs and Tables

• Instructions from the Journal of Czech Physicians
• Graphs and tables can be inserted between lines of text only if their width is 11 cm, or if necessary 17 cm (please do not understand as the range between 11-17 cm).
• Columns or curves of individual graphs, where their color differentiation is important, must be filled with different shades of the gray scale (but at least 50% black), or filled with different hatching (applies to black and white reproduction).

Abstract and Keywords

• Each article should have a Czech and English abstract
  • Czech should be in the range of 10–15 lines
  • English up to 30 lines, i.e. one handwritten page. max range 200 words
• The title of the article in English must also be given before the English abstract.

Abbreviations

• Abbreviations for symbols and expressions for terms should be spelled out and clearly explained in parentheses.
• This explanation is sufficient for the first expression, it is not necessary to repeat it in the next part of the text.
• Chemical substances should be described by their systematic name or term.
• Medicines should be described by their generic names.
• Trade names of chemicals, drugs or technical inventions may be used after they have once been defined by their scientific name.
• Radionuclides (radioisotopes) should be symbolized by atomic number.

Requirements of magazine editors

• We will only publish an article that has not and will not be published in another journal. The exception is only abstracts of scientific conferences
• Advertising articles prepared by doctors at the request of companies, which do not have the character of scientific work, can only be published in the form of paid advertising.
• The length of collective articles can only be up to 12 pages.

( The publication of longer works can be consulted with the editor-in-chief and the possible division into separate parts can be arranged.

• The number of citations should not exceed 20.
• It can also look like this:
  • By submitting an article to the journal, the authors undertake that they have not published the same article elsewhere and have not (will not) provide it for publication to another journal without the permission of the publisher. The first author guarantees that all written co-authors agree to the publication of the article, as well as the institution in which they work, and that the publication of the article does not harm the interests of other people - doctors, patients, or companies. This fact must be confirmed by the first author with an affidavit attached to the publication.

Copyright and Originality

• The editors of a journal, especially a peer-reviewed one, always assume that
  • the offered manuscript has not yet been published and is offered to the journal for first publication
  • the author (or author team) offering the SČ manuscript is the sole copyright holder of the relevant manuscript;
  • If the manuscript contains material copyrighted by a third party, the author has obtained permission to use it in full before offering the article
  • By offering the manuscript, the author declares his serious interest to publish the article only in this journal and to provide the publisher with all relevant copyrights in full at the time of acceptance of the manuscript for publication.
  • The editors expect authors to inform them of the fact that all or part of the manuscript or some substantial results have already been published in another publication at the article level in a peer-reviewed scientific journal or monograph.
  • The editors assume that the text offered to them, including the title and abstract, is sufficiently different from other texts published or intended to be published in a peer-reviewed journal or monograph. A finding to the contrary may lead to the termination of the review procedure.
• Creation of copyright:
  • The author has the right to decide on the publication of his work. Furthermore, the author has the right to claim authorship, including the right to decide whether and how his authorship should be indicated during the publication and further use of his work, if the indication of authorship is customary in such use.
  • The author has the right to the inviolability of his work, in particular the right to grant permission for any change or other intervention in his work, unless the copyright law provides otherwise. If the work is used by another person, it must not be done in a way that reduces the value of the work.

The author's work must be a unique result of the author's creative activity. Copyright in a work arises the moment the work is expressed in any objectively perceptible form. However, the destruction of the thing through which the work is expressed does not extinguish the copyright to the work.

• Property rights of the author:
  • The author has the right to use his work in its original or otherwise processed or otherwise changed form, independently, in a set or in connection with another work or elements and to grant another person the right to exercise this right by contract. Another person may use the work without granting such authorization only in cases established by law.
  • By granting this permission, the author's right does not expire. He only has the obligation to tolerate interference with the right to use the work by another person to the extent resulting from the contract.

• The right way to enjoy the work is:
  • The right to reproduce the work,
  • The right to distribute the original or reproduction of the work,
  • The right to rent the original or reproduction of the work,
  • The right to lend the original or reproduction of the work,
  • The right to exhibit the original or reproduction of the work,
  • The right to communicate the work to the public, in particular
  • The right to operate the work live or from a recording a
  • The right to transmit or operate the work,
  • The right to broadcast the work on radio or television,
  • The right to transmit a radio or television broadcast of the work,
  • The right to operate a radio or television broadcast of the work.

Ethical aspects

• If human trials are reported, include an affidavit that the study was approved by the local ethics committee prior to initiation. As a matter of principle, do not include the names or initials of patients or hospital or protocol numbers on the illustrative material.

Editorial board

• Each manuscript is evaluated by the editors and goes through a double review process.
• Unaccepted works are usually returned upon request within 3 months.
• The editors will not accept works:
  • which do not meet the stated requirements,
  • which have been assessed unfavorably by reviewers,
  • if the editors have recently accepted or already published work on the same topic,
  • if it is not the intention of the editors and mission of the journal to publish the issue in question,
  • if the article on the nature of the original work or investigative methods is not accompanied by an English translation.
• The usual time for article publication is 4 months from delivery.
• Shorter articles (up to 4 pages of text including graphs and pictures) can usually be published earlier after agreement with the editor, if they are marked "express" before the deadline of the upcoming issue.

Links

related articles

• Information and information institutions
• Catalogs (1. LF UK, NT)
• Basics of searching in free resources
• Orientation in available e-resources
• Information resources at UK
• Full-text electronic information resources
• Citation of used literature
• Digital portfolio from R&D point of view
• Written scientific or professional communication