Registration of publication activities

Academic libraries are required by law (Act No. 172/2005 Coll. on Arrangement of State Support for Research & Development; Decree no. 397/2020 Coll. and Internal Comenius University Directive no. 39/2023) to bibliographically register publication activities of faculty staff (i. e. teachers, scientific workers, doctoral students, etc.) and responses (mainly citations) to these publications. 

- publication output = publicly available publication (book, article, etc.) that has gone through the proper publishing process;

[Note: Publications in the printing process – frequently labelled as first public, preprints, early access, articles in the printing process, etc. – could not be registered, as they are not considered as publications that have gone through the official publication and distribution process.]

- citation, review or art criticism to above mentioned publication outputs.

The library keeps records of publication activities mainly on the basis of supplied documents related to their publications and citations by the authors in 2 systems: Central registry of publication activities of Slovak universities – CREPC2 and the local university system PETRA.

The registration process includes categorising individual publications by content (scientific, professional, educational and other categories) and according to formal characteristics (article, conference contribution, monograph, domestic/foreign publication, etc.). Register of publication activities is used for various statistical reports, evaluations and assessments. Among other things, the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic distributes the financial support to universities partially on the basis of publication performance within the so-called reporting periods.

The reporting period includes publications that have been registered during the current calendar year till the January 31st of the next year and were published in the current year or previous year but had not been registered previously. (The current reporting period 2024 will end on January 31st, 2025 and it will include all publications registered till this date published in 2024 and those publications published in 2023 that were not registered within the 2023 reporting period.)

The following conditions apply for the publication output to be included in the reporting period:

- the author has a fulltime contract (100 %) with the faculty/university,
- publication had been published in the current year or a year earlier but was not covered by the previous reporting period,
- it is an original, first edition of the publication or a significantly updated or revised edition of the publication (unchanged editions or language mutations are not included in the reporting period, but they can be registered for information purposes).

Relevant documentation or full texts related to publications and citations for registration have been submitted in electronic form to the e-mail address fif.epcuniba.sk

The library accepts to process the documentation which is:

- complete and easy to read,
- for online publications, it is necessary to provide a permanent URL which is publicly available
- in the case of a publication written in a non-Latin character set (e. g. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Ukrainian language, etc.) – a Latin transcription is a necessary part of the documentation.

In general, documentation for registration of publication output should contain:
- first name and surname of the author,
- title/subtitle of the publication,
- title of source publication of which the document is a part (proceedings, monograph, journal, etc.),
- physical description of the publication, such as pages, length in standard pages (one standard page contains 1800 text symbols (including gaps),
- name of the publisher,
- place of publication (does not apply to journals),
- year of publication and, in the case of serial publications, also volume, no./issue or article number,
- author’s share/contribution in % (breakdown for each author separately),
- name, place and date of the conference, if it is a conference paper/abstract
- identifier, such as ISBN, ISSN, DOI,
- number, grant agency and grant number (if the publication is an output of some grant/project)
- information whether the publication is indexed within the database of interest, especially Web of Science or SCOPUS (documented by record URL in given db.)
- proposed category,

V* category requires full-text submission in electronic form (pdf or permanent URL).

Necessary documentation for response/citation registration:
- title page and/or imprint of citing publication (containing identification bibliographic information),
- content page of citing publication,
- that part of the text of citing publication which contains the citation,
- in case the citing publication is indexed in WoS CC or Scopus – record URL or e-mail alert.

V – Scientific publication output

The full text in electronic form (pdf format) must be submitted to the library as part of the documentation for the registration process of publications aspiring to the scientific category for evaluation purposes. These publications must have an explicitly documented peer-review process.

V1 – scientific single, self-contained book publication, i.e. monograph (max. 3 authors), source-critical edition, critical annotated translation, cartographic work, catalogue of works of art, edited volume, proceedings.

V2 – scientific publication output as a part of a monograph, edited volume or proceedings, i.e. book chapter, conference contribution, abstract, etc.

V3 – scientific journal article or abstract.

O – Professional publication output

O1 – professional single, self-contained book publication, i.e. j. book, annotated interpretation work, dictionary, encyclopedia, proceedings, etc.

O2 – professional publication output as a part of book or proceedings, i.e. j. chapter, contribution, conference abstract, review, etc.

O3 – professional journal article or abstract, i.e. article, review, abstract, etc.

P – Pedagogical publication output

P1 – pedagogical single, self-contained publication, i.e. textbook, workbook, didactic guide, etc.

P2 pedagogical publication output as part of a textbook, i.e. chapter.

U – Artistic publication output

U1 – artistic single, self-contained publication, i.e. book, anthology, catalogue, works of art, score of a musical work (sheet music), dramatic work, architectural study, fiction, collection of short stories, collection of poetry.

U2 – artistic publication output as part of a book or collection, i.e. chapter, contribution.

U3 – artistic journal article, i.e. poem, short story, etc.

D – Document of intellectual property rights

D1 – intellectual property rights document, i.e. j. patent application, patent, utility model application, utility model, design, topography of semiconductor products, indication of product origin, geographical indication of products, breeding certificate.

I – Other output of publishing activity

I1 – other publication single, self-contained publication which cannot be classified in categories V, O, P, U or D.

I2 – other publication output as a part of a book or proceedings which cannot be classified in categories V, O, P, U or D.

I3 – other journal article, i.e. j. articles that cannot be classified in category V, O, P, U or D.

01 – citation registered in the citation indexes Web of Science Core Collection or Scopus

02 – citation not registered within citation indexes WoS CC and Scopus

03 – review or art criticism

For scientific categories (V*) and P1/P2 – higher education textbooks and chapters, it is mandatory that publication output has an explicitly documented peer-review process.
- An editor, compiler, lector or other (co)author of the same publications is not considered as a valid reviewer.
- Members of the scientific/editorial board, program committee, etc. are not automatically considered as reviewers, and there has to be an explicit declaration of who the reviewers are.
- Reviewers must have different affiliations than authors (at least in different departments).
- Domestic (i.e., Slovak) publications must have at least two reviewers explicitly listed within the publication (one reviewer is sufficient for journal articles), or information about the peer-review process should be explicitly stated in the publication to be considered them as reviewed.

Foreign publications are considered as reviewed if:
- there is at least one named reviewer,
- there is an explicit statement about the peer-review process,
- the publisher is included in the list of scientific publishers systematically providing blind/double-blind peer review (a list of such publishers is maintained by CVTI SR – LINK),
- publisher provides a signed/stamped affidavit that the publication had been reviewed and how/by whom (such confirmation must contain: the name and address/contact info of the publisher, information about the review process, the date of issue of the confirmation – ideally on trademark paper).

Compilation works, edited volumes are registered for editors if the book publication or proceedings have at least three authors who are not at the same time the editors of the given publication.

The scientific editor is not considered a compiler or an editor.

The academic library keeps records of publications and responses to them for applicants who:
- have worked and are currently working at faculty/university continuously and complexly,
- are/were working at other institutions (Slovak or foreign) – to the extent that they meet the required criteria in the given field of study with an overlap of max. +10%,

Applicants are required to contact the library at least 45 days before applying for habilitation or inauguration with the aim to verifying, modifying and supplementing the overview of publications and citations.

Newly hired employees of the faculty/university who had publications registered within another university are obliged to contact the library no later than 100 days after signing the contract to agree upon a schedule for retrospective registration of publication activity and citations.