Conflict of interest

The most easily identifiable conflicts of interest are economic relationships such as direct employment, consulting fees, participation in companies, royalties, patent authorship, or conference fees. However, there may also be conflicts of interest arising from friendships, intellectual rivalries, academic competitions or beliefs. When submitting articles for publication, all authors are responsible for declaring any financial or personal relationships with any public or private organizations that could (intentionally) influence the results of their work. Similarly, authors must declare any non-financial relationships that may cause a conflict of interest in their manuscript (personal, academic, ideological, intellectual, political, or religious).

Conflicts of interest, both financial and non-financial, must be disclosed at the time of article submission. This is to prevent authors with a potential conflict of interest from publishing. Conflicts should be clearly identified so that readers can judge whether the authors were prone to a particular bias and how this may have affected the work.