Conflicts of Interest

Guidelines for identifying and managing competing interests in scholarly publishing.

Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions (such relationships are also known as “dual commitments”, “competing interests”, or “competing loyalties”).

Editor

Editors and editorial board members will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent.

• Privileged information or ideas obtained by editors as a result of handling the manuscript will be kept confidential and not used for their personal advantage.
• Editors will recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers; instead, they will ask another member of the editorial board to handle the manuscript.

Referees

Any invited referee who has conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript and the work described therein should immediately notify the editors to declare their conflicts of interest and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted.

• Unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the authors.
• Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for the reviewer’s personal advantage. This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

Author

Authors should—at the earliest stage possible (generally by submitting a disclosure form at the time of submission and including a statement in the manuscript)—disclose any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript.

Examples of Potential Conflicts of Interest:

• Financial: Honoraria, educational grants or other funding, participation in speakers’ bureaus, membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest, and paid expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements.
• Non-financial: Personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript.