Its recommendations on standard Czech (spisovná čeština) are viewed as binding by the educational system, newspapers and others, although this has no legal basis.

The institute's rich publishing activity has two main branches, firstly scientific monographies, magazines (Naše řeč, Slovo a slovesnost) and articles, that could be viewed as conversation between bohemists themselves, discussing matters of the Czech language.

Of the recommendations published most weight carry those, to which the institute itself assigns "codification status":[3] monolingual dictionaries of the Czech language, Slovník spisovného jazyka českého and Slovník spisovné češtiny pro školu a veřejnost, and the orthography manual Pravidla českého pravopisu.

Similarly to analogous institutions around the world, the Academy’s fundamental task was to compile a large explanatory dictionary of the national language.

A number of leading Czech linguists subsequently led the Institute: František Daneš, Miloš Dokulil, Karel Horálek and Jan Petr.