Conflict of Interest

Vision: Journal for Language and Foreign Language Learning is committed to transparency, objectivity, and integrity at every stage of publication. Authors, editors, and reviewers must disclose and properly manage any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest that could affect, or could reasonably appear to affect, the research, the peer-review process, or editorial decisions.

1. Authors

Authors must disclose any financial or non-financial interest that could affect, or appear to affect, the findings, their interpretation, or the publication of the manuscript. Such interests include employment, consultancy, honoraria, research grants, funding, personal or professional relationships, institutional affiliations, competing research interests, intellectual property, and any other relationship that could compromise the objectivity of the work.

In language education research, relevant interests also include:

authorship, ownership, or commercial interest in a textbook, learning application, AI-based tool, course, or language test that the study evaluates or recommends;
involvement with an institution, test centre, or course provider whose program or product is examined in the study; and
a teaching, assessing, or supervisory relationship with the participants, for example when teacher-researchers study their own students.

All sources of financial support for the research must be acknowledged clearly in the manuscript. Authors are responsible for making sure their declarations are accurate, complete, and transparent.

If there is no conflict of interest, authors should include this statement in the manuscript:

"The authors declare no conflict of interest."

If a conflict of interest exists, authors must describe its nature clearly and, where relevant, explain the steps taken to manage it.

2. Editors

Editors must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest relating to a submitted manuscript. An editor with a conflict of interest may not take part in evaluating the manuscript or deciding on it, and the manuscript will be reassigned to an independent editor who can assess it objectively and impartially.

Manuscripts submitted by members of the editorial team, or by close colleagues from the same department or study program, follow the same standard peer-review process and are handled by an editor with no conflict of interest.

Editors may not use unpublished information, data, or ideas obtained through the editorial process for their own research or personal benefit without the author's express written consent.

3. Reviewers

Reviewers must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest before accepting a review assignment. Conflicts may come from financial interests, personal relationships, professional collaboration, institutional affiliation, academic competition, a current or past supervisory relationship, or any other connection with the authors or with the organizations or institutions linked to the manuscript.

A reviewer who finds a conflict of interest that could affect their impartiality must inform the editor promptly and decline or withdraw from the review. Reviewers must keep submitted manuscripts confidential and must not use privileged information or ideas from the review for personal or professional gain.

4. Editorial Management

Vision makes editorial decisions on the basis of the manuscript's scholarly quality, originality, methodological rigour, relevance, and contribution to language and foreign language learning research. Advertising, reprints, and other commercial income have no influence on editorial decisions.

The journal reviews every disclosed conflict of interest and takes appropriate steps to protect the fairness, independence, and integrity of the editorial and peer-review processes.

Failure to disclose a relevant conflict of interest, or an inaccurate declaration, may lead to further editorial investigation and action under the journal's publication ethics policies.

By submitting a manuscript to Vision, authors confirm that all relevant conflicts of interest and sources of financial support have been disclosed accurately and transparently.