Conflicts of Interest and Competing Interests

  1. Editor-in-Chief, authors, and peer reviewers should disclose interest that might appear to affect their ability to present or review work objectively. These might include relevant financial interest (for example, ownership, consultancies or speaker’s fees) or personal, political or religious interests.

  2. MMU Press defines conflict of interest as follows;

    “A conflict of interest exists when professional judgement concerning a primary interest (such as the validity/originality of the writing)  may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Perceptions of conflict of interest are as important as actual conflicts of interest.”

  3. Strict policy preventing people with conflict of interest from publishing might encourage authors to conceal relevant interests and might therefore be counterproductive.
    1. Editor-in Chief, Members of Editorial Broad and staff who are involved with decisions about publication should declare their interests. Journal should consider publishing these on their website and updating as required as well as disclosing how conflicts of interest were managed for specific papers.
    2. Editor-in-Chief should clearly explain what should be disclosed including the period that these statements should cover (for example, 3 years). Editor-in-Chief should ask authors to describe relevant funding, including the purpose of the funding (for example, travel grant) and to describe relevant patents, stocks and shares that they own.
    3. Editor-in-Chief should publish authors’ conflict of interest whenever they are relevant, or a statement of their absence. If there is doubt, Editor-in-Chief should opt in favor of greater disclosure.
    4. If authors state that there are no conflicts of interest, editors should publish a confirmation to this effect.
    5. Editor-in-Chief should manage peer reviewers’ conflicts of interest. An invitation to review a manuscript should be accompanied by a request for the reviewer to reveal any potential conflicts of interest a request for the peer reviewer to disqualify or recuse themselves when these are relevant.
    6. When Editor-in-Chief, Members of Editorial Broad and other editorial staff are presented with papers where their own interest may be perceived to impair their ability to make unbiased editorial decision, they should withdraw from discussions, deputize decisions or suggest that authors seek publications in a different journal.