Purpose and Scope
This policy applies to authors, reviewers, editors, editorial-board members, guest editors, and other participants whose interests may affect—or reasonably appear to affect—the research or publication process. Its purpose is transparency and appropriate management, not an assumption that a disclosed interest constitutes misconduct.
Competing interests may be actual, potential, or perceived and may arise from financial, professional, academic, personal, institutional, intellectual, legal, or other relationships.
Author Disclosure
Authors should disclose interests relevant to the submitted work and provide required information about funding, sponsor involvement, employment, consultancies, ownership interests, patents, paid expert activity, relevant personal or professional relationships, and other circumstances that could reasonably be considered pertinent.
When uncertain, disclosure is generally preferable to omission. Editors may request clarification or an updated statement when the information supplied is incomplete or circumstances change.
Funding and Sponsor Role
Funding sources should be identified accurately. Where relevant, authors should describe the sponsor’s role in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, publication decisions, or access to underlying data.
Funding does not automatically invalidate research. Transparency enables editors, reviewers, and readers to assess the relationship appropriately.
Reviewer Competing Interests
Reviewers should decline or seek editorial guidance when financial, collaborative, competitive, personal, institutional, or other relationships could compromise—or reasonably be perceived to compromise—their independent assessment.
Editors should not rely solely on automated conflict detection. Reviewers retain responsibility for declaring relevant interests that may not be visible from bibliographic or institutional data.
Editor and Editorial-Board Interests
Editors should recuse themselves from manuscripts when a relevant conflict could impair or reasonably call into question independent decision-making. A suitable independent editor should then manage the manuscript and decision process.
Editorial position must not be used to obtain preferential treatment for an editor’s own work, that of close collaborators, family members, direct competitors, or others with whom a material conflict exists.
Institutional and Publisher Interests
Ownership, sponsorship, advertising, revenue, article-processing charges, institutional relationships, or strategic interests must not improperly determine editorial decisions. Commercial arrangements should be separated from scientific judgment to the extent necessary to protect editorial independence.
Where a publisher-level interest is relevant to a particular publication, transparent management may include independent editorial handling or disclosure.
Assessment and Management
Disclosure is the beginning of conflict management, not necessarily the end. Depending on the circumstances, appropriate management may include publication of a statement, clarification, independent review, recusal, reassignment, additional oversight, or—in exceptional cases—declining participation.
The response should be proportionate to the nature and significance of the interest.
Changes and Omitted Disclosures
Participants should update relevant disclosures when circumstances change during the publication process. If a material competing interest is identified after publication, the journal should assess whether the published disclosure requires correction and whether the undisclosed relationship affected the integrity of the work or editorial process.
Failure to disclose may range from inadvertent omission to deliberate concealment; conclusions should be based on evidence and context rather than the fact of omission alone.
Confidentiality and Documentation
Information about competing interests should be handled with appropriate confidentiality during assessment while allowing necessary disclosure in the published record. Journals should document significant conflict-management decisions sufficiently to support accountability.
Personal information not necessary for editorial assessment or public transparency should not be disclosed merely because a conflict review occurred.
Journal Implementation and Version Control
This policy is publisher mandatory. Journals may define discipline-specific disclosure forms, thresholds, time periods, or additional requirements where justified, but local procedures should not weaken the obligation to identify and manage relevant competing interests.
Material changes should be versioned and preserved, and published disclosure statements should remain linked to the relevant scholarly work.
Version Control
Version 1.0. This page is the canonical publisher-level policy text for the current version. Material revisions should receive a new version or effective date, and superseded versions should remain identifiable so that the policy applicable at an earlier point in the publication lifecycle can be determined.