Competing Interests (whether financial, relational, academic competition or intellectual passion) https://publicationethics.org/guidance Public trust in science and the reliability of published papers depend on how conflicts of interest are handled during planning, implementation, writing, peer review, editing and publication.
A conflict of interest occurs when a secondary interest may influence professional judgement about a core interest (such as patient welfare or research validity) (such as financial gain). Actual and perceived conflicts of interest are equally essential.
Financial links (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership or options, honoraria, patents, and paid expert testimony) are the most easily detectable conflicts of interest and the most likely to impair journal, author, and scientific credibility.
Conflicts may include the following but not limited to: • Financial - funding and other payments, goods and services received or expected by the authors relating to the subject of the work or from an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work
• Affiliations - being employed by, on the advisory board for, or a member of an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work
• Intellectual property - patents or trademarks owned by someone or their organization
• Personal - friends, family, relationships, and other close personal connections
• Ideology - beliefs or activism, for example, political or religious, relevant to the work
• Academic - competitors or someone whose work is critiqued.
Declaration of Potential Conflict of Interest
1. Participants All participants in the peer-review and publication process—not only authors but also peer reviewers, editors, and editorial board members of journals—must consider their conflicts of interest when fulfilling their roles in the process of article review and publication and must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest.
a. Authors When authors submit a manuscript of any type or format they are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that might bias or be seen to bias their work.
b. Peer Reviewers Reviewers should be asked at the time they are asked to critique a manuscript if they have conflicts of interest that could complicate their review. Reviewers must disclose to editors any conflicts of interest that could bias their opinions of the manuscript, and should recuse themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if the potential for bias exists. Reviewers must not use knowledge of the work they’re reviewing before its publication to further their own interests.
c. Editors and Journal Staff Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts should recuse themselves from editorial decisions if they have conflicts of interest or relationships that pose potential conflicts related to articles under consideration. Other editorial staff members who participate in editorial decisions must provide editors with a current description of their financial interests or other conflicts (as they might relate to editorial judgments) and recuse themselves from any decisions in which a conflict of interest exists. Editorial staff must not use information gained through working with manuscripts for private gain. Editors should publish regular disclosure statements about potential conflicts of interests related to the commitments of journal staff. Guest editors should follow these same procedures.
Reporting Conflicts of Interest
Articles should be published with statements or supporting documents:
• Authors’ conflicts of interest; and
• Sources of support for the work, including sponsor names along with explanations of the role of those sources if any in study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the report; the decision to submit the report for publication; or a statement declaring that the supporting source had no such involvement; and
• Whether the authors had access to the study data, with an explanation of the nature and extent of access, including whether access is on-going.
Copyright Terms
The submission of a manuscript by the authors implies that they automatically agree to sign the consent and exclusive copyright to Blueprint Academic Publishers.
