Conflict of Interests Policy
Declaration of Conflicting Interests Policy
The Journal is committed to ensuring disclosure of the competing interests in the published manuscripts. The author(s) may have a potential conflict of interests that could affect or could be seen to affect their manuscript submitted to the journal. Therefore, the author(s) must declare a conflict-of-interest statement during the manuscript submission enabling a written statement to be recorded within the paginated published article.
A potential conflicting interest might arise from the relationships, allegiances or hostilities to particular groups, organisations or interests, which may influence excessively one's judgments or actions. The issue is particularly sensitive when such interests are private and/or may result in personal gain.
The examples of conflicts of interest might include but are not limited to having received fees for consulting; received research funding; being employed by a related company, or holding stocks or shares in a company which might be affected by the manuscript, or having received funds or reimbursement for attending a related symposium or talk.
If there are other interests that the reasonable reader might feel have affected the research submitted to the journal, the author(s) must declare it at least before acceptance of the manuscript.
The manuscripts are evaluated fairly and accepted when competing interests are not declared until necessary by the policy.
The editorial team of the journal does not expect details of the financial arrangements to be disclosed when a competing interest is declared.
The author(s) must check the Manuscript Submission Guidelines of the journal to ensure compliance with the specific requirements needed by the journal. The author(s) are required to certify in the author agreement form that:
- All forms of financial support are given due acknowledgement in the contribution.
- Any commercial or financial involvement that might present a conflict of interest related to the contribution is recorded during submission.
- Any potential conflict of interest shall be discussed with the Editor to decide whether its information is to be disclosed in the manuscript.
- The author(s) did not sign any agreement with any sponsor of the research submitted to the journal that prevents the author(s) from publishing both positive and negative results or that forbids the author(s) from publishing the research without prior approval of the sponsor.
- The author(s) have checked the manuscript submission guidelines of the journal for a Declaration of Conflicting Interests requirement and have complied with specified requirements.
The author(s) must include such a declaration at the end of the manuscript after any acknowledgements and before the Funding Acknowledgement, Notes (if relevant) and References, under the heading 'Declaration of Conflicting Interest'. If no conflict exists, please state that 'The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest'.
The same obligations apply to the editors or guest editors writing an editorial that will be published in the journal and to the peer reviewers, where applicable.
