Instructions for authors

Profile

AKUTNE.CZ is an internet portal which, with its publishing activities, is dedicated to the subject of Acute Medicine

The relationship between authors and the editorial board

The editors accept articles relating to the theme of this portal in Czech, Slovak and English. Apart from letters to the editor letters, short articles and discussions, all articles are reviewed, during which time both parties observe anonymity.

Published material then become the property of the portal and printing parts of it (exceeding abstracts) or using images/graphical data from other publications is possible only with the consent of the editors

Sending of texts

Authors are requested to please send all the completed texts to the following- email address of the editorial in electronic format (attachments in emails or in a cd) along with the graphs, schemes and pictures. Also, editors request authors to attach these as individual files (it saves time in the processing of the data).

Editorial Review and final draft

After an article/work has been submitted to the editorial , the editorial will notify the coresponding author of its arrival and whether the article/work has been accepted for review. The author will be notified of the decision of the editorial review by email and at the same time informed of the opinions of the editors on the final draft of the article

The Ediotorial board reserves the right tomake minor drafting amendments and edit spelling according to the progressive version. Before the final upload on the website the author will be sent the amended version for proofreading . Authors are requested to use the usual proofreading symbols and signs, and send the article back immediately after the proofreading.

General Requirements

Title page:

  • title of the work without abbreviations
  • name of the author and co-authors in abbreviated form without titles (P. stdio, R. Hzkh, ...) with links to the names of their workplaces
  • names of institutions (institutional affiliation)
  • method of communication (see below) / content
  • Full contact address of the corresponding author, including e-mail addresses (for further contact with the editors)
  • the full names of authors, including titles and academic degrees (due to write to MEDLINE)
  • a clause stating that the work has been sent for publication on the portal Akutne.cz and that the co-authors agree with the sending of the work and its publication on this portal
  • statements of negative declarations about sponsorship and conflicts of interest. Also, if the work is sponsored (by a grant, another organization,or manufacturer, and so on.) or if there is a conflict of interest (eg, the author is directly or indirectly, a stakeholder in the outcome of production or sales, owner of the patent described, etc.), this fact must be stated clearly in the conclusion
  • Clinical studies must be accompanied by an affidavit of approval by the local ethics committeel
  • If experiments were performed on animals, compliance with constitutional or national regulations and guidelines in animal breeding and experimental use of animals must be stated

Editorial doesn not need an "imprimatur" from author/s’ Head of the department!

Extent and correction of individual types of content

Each entry must be defined by the author him/herself as one of the following catagories. The work will then be reviewed under that given catagory.

Original article

The work contains the results of one’s own laboratory, clinical or epidemiological research. Usually content covers about 8-16 pages, tables, graphs and figures number between 2-10, literary references are around 10 to 20. A Summary of about 10-20 lines must be structured as follows and divided into paragraphs: Aim or Background / Objective [s] - Material and methods -Results - Conclusions .The summary must express the questions motivating the author/s to take up the particular research, state the results of the study/work, and finally convey the practical message that can be taken from this work. A few appropriate keywords (from 3 to 10) must be affixed to the summary. The text of the work should be divided into sections (Uniform Requirements): Introduction - Material and methods - Results - Discussion - Conclusion. The work will be assessed by two independent reviewers.

Review

These statements provide an overview of current knowledge about certain issues. As a rule they do not contain any self researched results, but may be accompanied by brief case reports on the topic in question. If author/s include their own opinions or comments, these views must be clearly separated fromobjective text/ findings. The usual range of work lies between10-20 pages, tables, graphs and figures can be from 2-10; literary references 20-50, and at least 50% of them should be older than 3-5 years. A summary of 10-20 lines must be included which should be concise and contain the most important ideas of the text. There are usually 3-10 keywords affixed to the summary.The work is assessed two independent reviewers.

Short cases / reports / articles

These may be case reports or other interesting observations from clinical practice, the results of a pilot study, a brief summary of findings of little known issues, etc. Content usually covers 3-6 pages; total number of tables, graphs and figures is usually 1-4 and literary references around 3 to 10. A concise summary comprising 5-10 rows with key words should be included. The text itself contains an introductory section, personal observations, discussion and conclusions. Short articles go through the review process..

Economics and Management

Articles belonging to this catagory deal with economic issues, finance and management (including crisis) in acute medicine. They may include issues dealing with the point/scale system used in evaluation of procedures or relevant changes, problems dealing with health insurance and payment of acute care. Text usually contains 1-4 pages and ncludes a brief summary of 5-10 rows with keywords. The work also goes through the review process.

Guidelines

Guidelines to diagnostic and therapeutic procedure describe approaches to diagnosis,treatment and care of a patient with a specific disease. The Guidelines set out precise conditions,and are linked to measurable criteria and indicators of quality and efficiency of the procedure. Guidelines also confirm in print that they have been accredited by the respective professional societies..

Report/News

Editors also encourage publishing of news and reports from international congress or placement abroad, on topics of professional interest. Details on congress news with comments is welcomed, it is not neccessary to list out the lectures or events, a sentence on each would suffice. Number of pages may be from 1-5 without a summary. The text is not reveiwed by the board.

Letters-to-the-editor

These comprise opinions of an author on a problem, comments on or ontroversy over a previous article Letters may be from 1-5 pages, including the neccessary tables, graphs, images and literary references, without a summary. Letters do not go through the peer review process , and the editors do not neccessarily share the opinion of the author.

Book review

These comprise reviews of a book or script that deals with issues in acute medicine. A succint critical concept is desirable and the review may cover 1-2 standard pages.

Announcement

These comprise information about events, actions or decisions that may be important to our readers

General requirements for editing manuscripts

The scope of the manuscript is determined by the type of article (see above). Standard page range corresponds to 1800 characters including spaces. Pages should be numbered.Any standard text editor and spreadsheet can be used in the creation of the text, tables and charts. Authors are requested to use common fonts and before sending the text to check whether the text is in proper printable format by printing a test page

If the author is forced to create a post in an unusual computer program, it is recommended that this fact be discussed in advance with the editors (e-mail: redakce@akutne.cz). If the text contains graphs, t is recommended to also send graphical background data in tabular form

Text Structure

Original articles have a uniform structure, most other types of articles and work are structured similarly.The work contains the type of article (header), Topic, the abbreviated names of the authors, workplace of authors (affiliation), summary and key words in Czech (or Slovak) and English, the name of the site, year, contact address including e-mail of the author, intimation about when article was recieved by the editorial board, and when the work was (after review and corrections by the author) accepted as an original article.

Name

The name must be brief, concise and reflect the content of the article. It should not contain abbreviations (except ones that are commonly used such as ARDS, AIDS, and so on.).

Summary

The summary is written in Czech (or Slovak) and English. An English summary is not strictly required for short articles and case reports. The summary must containthe basic information contained in the article a in condensed form (i.e. 10-20 lines,and up to 250 words) . Summary of the original articles is structured.

Research objectives, basic procedures, main results and major conclusions are contained in four sections, and astructured n abstract is included comprising Background / Objective [s] - Material and Methods-Results - Conclusions. The summary must reflect the initial question the author has resolved to investigate, the results reached and the practical output of the message. Usually in first2-4 sentences is denotes the issue , the next 2-3 sentences indicate the target of the work.Methods and results include characteristics of the monitored sample groups and the methods used. The abstracts may also include key numerical results with an indication of statistical significance. It is a mistake to give a mere promise that this article contains such and such without confirmation of results. The conclusion must be explicitly expressed, with the authors’ view on the benefits of the study and may include one sentence expressed as a specific recommendation for practice.

The summary of a review article must also be concise and must contain the most important ideas in a text. It should have a logical format, but doesnt need to be structured..

Abstracts are an integral part of bibliographic databases. Interested parties who download work from MEDLINE must be given a comprehensive overview the topic. Readers often rely on this extracted form for information (summaries, unfortunately, become independent units of scientific knowledge). Therefore, maximum attention should be paid to the summary, both to content and language .

Keywords

keywords can be specific or more general. Technical terms included in the thesaurus of descriptors Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) from the workshop of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the its czech translations may be particularly useful for the purpose of finding keywords

Custom Text

The actual text of the original article is normally divided into the following sections:

Introduction - Material and methods - Results - Discussion - Conclusions

The introduction includes an evaluation of the present status ot the topic. It also explains lesser known facts and establishes the questions and hypotheses, which the author of the study proceeded to investigate. The introduction should not be longer than the discussion.

Materials and methods describe the experiments or study.This is followed by an unambiguous description of methods, definition and number of sample population or experimental animals. The method of collection, selection, processing and evaluation of obtained data should be well explained.. For statistical evaluation the computer programs used are also listed.The description of materials and methods ought to make it possible to repeat the experiment or study again and hence verify the results.

The results section contains the results and statistical evaluation, without interpretation. In case statistical evaluation was not performed, trends, directions and similarities are cited. The text should include links to all tables, graphs and pictures.

The Discussion highlights the interpretation of the data and confrontation with the existing and recently published results, particularly those that significantly affect developments in the relavent area. This includes assessment and whether achieved results are consistent or inconsistent with current knowledge. Development of new methods of treatment or testing procedure also requires discussions of the strengths and shortcomings of the procedure used. In the discussion the author demonstrates how he sees the problem..

Finally, it assessed whether the main hypothesis was confirmed or refuted. The work must provide specific and practical recommendations and in case of more general results, the author should try to point out the direction of further experiments and studies.

Review articles are not tightly structured. They should contain an introduction and a conclusion. Review articles allow the reader to become familiar with the topic and outline of a problem, often in a historical context. The conclusion logically builds on previous findings (that means absolutely no new information) and highlights the main facts which have led to understanding of the given problem.

In the Conclusion it is appropriate to include an idea about the possible prospective development and if appropriate call out for/challenge recommendations

Dedication, acknowledgments, note

Thanks are addressed to all those who have contributed to the results (eg, lab, sponsors ...),

Comments on support by grants (with agencies and numbers) is authors’ document of proof for use of funds provided by the Grant Agency.

List of Abbreviations

A list of abbreviations and explanation should be given as needed, especially if the article/work contains a large no. of abbreviations.

Literature

References should be numbered in the order in which they appear in the text. They are represented by Arabic numerals in square parentheses. Editing bibliographic references are subject to specific rules (see below). Selected publications must be strictly relevant to the topic, should cover the period until the date of termination of the manuscript, to take account of accessibility for readers (limit the journals and publications unavailable in other than the world languages, Czech and Slovak).

Tables, graphs, diagrams and pictures

The text should be appropriate placed on the tables, graphs, diagrams with links. It is not always possible to place a picture or other graphic elements to the author’s desired location.Every attatchment (table, graph, diagram) has to be intelligible on its own, without reading text. All abbreviations used must be linked by explanations.

Editors recommend sending digital photographs, tables, graphs and other illustrations as an individually attatched documents in their original formats (eg *. Jpg, *. gif, *. tif, *. bmp, *. eps, *. xls, etc.) and rather than just inserting them into the MS Word document (*. doc). This wll ease our processing of the document.

The author must make sure all charts and diagrams are correct before submitting them for formal correction. The Editorial will reject extensive non- lucid tables as well as tables in a number disproportionate to the scope and content text.

Additional information about design of the manuscript

Authors are requested to express the test results in numerical form using SI units standards. Only the values ​​of pulse, temperature and blood pressure can be expressed with conventional units (/ min, ° C, mmHg).

If an author uses abbreviations in the text, the first time the expression used it must be written in full, followed by its abbreviation indicated in parentheses.

If more abbreviations are used, an alternative option is to create an additional supplement with a list of abbreviations of abbreviations used.

Names of organisms should be written in italics under the current taxonomic classification. The first time the name of the microorganism is used, it must be in its unabridged form (Staphylococcus aureus), with its repetition in abbreviated form (S. aureus).

Names of drugs should be given in generic form, only if for any reason, the authors want to point out that it was a specific product (eg description of adverse effects), it can in addition to generic name be referred to by its brand name and the name of the manufacturer.

Further editing of text layout should be according to the recommendations of the Czech Standards Institute, Editing documents using written or machine-processed text editors found in the CSN 01 6910 of August 1997.

Legal and ethical issues

If documentation or Significant sections of texts are taken from other publications, and used in the work, the source must be explicitly stated and written consent of the original author and publisher submitted along with the work. It is entirely the authors’ responsibility to obtain the necessary consent. The author of submitted work is responsible for respecting the copyrights of his sources. Ambiguity in this respect may cause the article/work to be rejected.

All work submitted including tables or images must not violate patient anonymity. Therefore, authrors are requested not to include any names, initials, patients and hospital protocol numbers, etc in the text. The author has an obligation to notify company support or sponsoring organizations, or conflict of interest when the author is directly or indirectly, a stakeholder in the outcome of production or sales.

Literature

Literary references are numbered in the order in which they were first given in text. Links are indicated by Arabic numerals in square parentheses. Editing bibliographic references should be based on ISO 690 and adapted to the format of citations in the database MEDLINE / PubMed.

Citations are divided into thematic units (called fields) in the following order:

  1. Author - surname and first names, abbreviations of five authors, if six or more authors, only the first three are shown followed by the abbreviation "et al.." . Composers of monographs/ memoirs are designated as "(editors)" or with the abbreviation "(eds)".
  2. Name - full name of the work in the original language with an initial capital letter in the beginning, the subtitle is written after the colon.
  3. Media type-, respective forms of data devices - also in square brackets "[CD-ROM]", "[Web site]" "[homepage on the Internet]", "[Monograph on the Internet] ", a Czech website can be labeled" [www page]. "In traditional (printed) documents this information is omitted.
  4. Edition version - data in connection to the books and monographs, if the article is not written in a periodical. Includes order of release and place of issue. For czech documents the English word "edition", respectively. "Ed." can replace the czech word "Vydání", respectively. "vyd.." Name of the city, should also be in english , for example, London, New York, not Londýn, Nový York. In the absence of data on the pubishing location, the country can be include in brackets or the abbreviation "[sl]" (From the Latin sine loco = without place).
  5. Publishing / Publishing information:
    1. The name of the book publisher, respectively. publisher in the shortest understandable form,in the official periodicals, journal title abbreviation. If the name of the publisher is the abbreviation s.n. is written into the square brackets(From the Latin sine nomine = no name).
    2. The date or year of release, the electronic material, the date of last modification and the date of citation "[Mon DD YYYY updated; cited YYYY Month DD,] "or." [DD updates. Month YYYY, quoted.DDMonth YYYY] "or" [updated DD. Month YYYY, cited. DD. month YYYY] "
    3. Physical description, ie, year, event. number (in parentheses) and page range. In citation of an entire monograph the no. of pages is not quoted chapters in the monograph isare denoted by the abbreviation "p." or. 'S " The first and last page separated by a hyphen.Ciitation of articles in the journal iare given by the first and last page separated by a hyphen without other symbols. Citations from the Internet are approximated to the content , eg: "[about 3 p.]" or "[about 2 screens]".
    4. Access to the source indicating in particular at the Internet address: "Available from: http://www.lf1.cuni.cz/ ...." event. "Available from:http://www.lf1.cuni.cz/ ... .. "Underline indicates the active hyperlink.

Resources about publishing

General requirements for the publications in biomedical journals are accordiing to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Editor’s Office

MUDr. Petr Štourač
KARIM FN Brno
Jihlavská 20
62500 Brno

E-mail: redakce@akutne.cz