Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest is a financial or non-financial relationship or activity that could bias a judgment, or that readers might think could. Examples include a financial tie to a company, a personal relationship or rivalry with another researcher, academic competition, and a strong belief about the subject. Authors, reviewers, and editors all declare conflicts (ICMJE, Section II.B).

• Declare any financial, professional, or personal relationship that could influence your work in the Conflicts of interest section of the manuscript. If you have none, write: “The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.” Name every funder in the Acknowledgments.
• Do not handle a manuscript if you are a co-author, supervisor, student, collaborator, close colleague, or competitor of an author, or if you have a financial tie to the work. Take no part in the review, in the choice of reviewers, or in the decision. The Editor-in-Chief assigns another editor, and a Managing Editor does so if the conflict is the Editor-in-Chief’s.
• Manuscripts from editors. An editor who has no conflict with the author handles a manuscript from the Editor-in-Chief, a Managing Editor, an Associate Editor, an Editor, or an editorial board member, and we review it through the normal process. The author takes no part in choosing reviewers or in the decision and has no access to the review record. If the Editor-in-Chief is an author, a Managing Editor or an Associate Editor without a conflict takes charge.