Conflicts of Interest

Members of the editorial team, reviewers and authors must declare any financial or non-financial relationship (employment-related, institutional or personal) that could constitute a conflict of interest or influence their judgment in relation to the submitted article.

Authors

This includes, among others: research funding, honoraria, institutional relationships, personal ties with reviewers or editors, and relevant academic competition. Even if authors consider that no conflicts exist, they must state so explicitly.

Declarations must cover, at a minimum, the 36 months prior to manuscript submission, in line with the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Each author must declare their conflicts of interest in the manuscript's cover letter, using the template available from the journal, and authors must also include a conflict of interest statement in the manuscript; where there are none, this is stated expressly. The statement will be published in the article, together with the funding source and institutional affiliations.

Deliberate omission of conflicts of interest is a serious ethical breach and may lead to rejection, correction or retraction of the article, as appropriate, in accordance with the research integrity policy and the corrections and retractions policy.

Reviewers and editorial team

Reviewers who identify a conflict must recuse themselves and notify the editorial team. When a member of the editorial team is an author, they are removed from the process and the management of the manuscript is assigned to another editor. Cases not covered here are resolved according to COPE guidelines.