Conflict of interest policy

Journal defines a conflict of interest as arising from any relationship authors, reviewers or editors have which interferes with the full and objective presentation, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of a manuscript.

Conflicts of interest can be financial or non-financial, professional or personal, and can arise in relation to an organization or an individual. Journal requires full disclosure by authors of all conflicts of interest relevant to a submitted manuscript, which is integral to the transparent reporting of research.

Reviewers

To ensure that the review process is free of conflicts:

Editors should select a guest editor when there is a conflict of interest with respect to an author. Editors should ensure that reviewers are free of conflict of interest with respect to an author.

Reviewers should contact the editorial office to declare any potential conflicts of interest in advance of refereeing an article.

Minor conflicts do not disqualify a reviewer from reporting on an article but will be taken into account when considering the referees’ recommendations.

Authors

All authors and co-authors are required to disclose any potential conflict of interest when submitting their articles. If the article is subsequently accepted for publication, this information should be included in the end section.

Editors

Editors should not make any editorial decisions or get involved in the editorial process if they have any conflict of interest for a submitted manuscript. If editors have any such conflict of interest with respect to the authors or their work, the editors should remove themselves from the decision-making process.

An editor may have a conflict of interest if a manuscript is submitted from their own academic department or from their institution in such situations, they should have explicit policies for managing it.

When editors submit their own work to their journal, a colleague in the editorial office should manage the manuscript and the editor/author should recuse himself or herself from discussion and decisions about it.