A conflict of interest exists where a personal, professional, financial, or institutional interest could reasonably be thought to influence how you conduct, report, review, or decide on a piece of research. Having one is not misconduct and is not, by itself, a bar to publishing, reviewing, or editing; failing to declare one is. The test Peer Academics applies is not whether you believe your judgment was affected, but whether an informed reader would want to know about the interest when weighing the work.
What must be declared
Declare interests held by you, and by an immediate family member where you are aware of them, arising within the 36 months before submission or expected to arise from the work.
- Financial — employment, consultancy, advisory or board positions; research grants and contracts paid to you or your institution for this work or related work; honoraria, speaking or writing fees, travel or hospitality; patents, patent applications, royalties, and licensing income; shares, options, or other ownership in an entity with an interest in the results; paid expert testimony or litigation support; equipment, materials, data, or services supplied free or at a discount.
- Non-financial — unpaid positions in organizations with a stake in the findings; membership of advocacy, campaigning, professional, or political bodies relevant to the subject; personal or family relationships with people or institutions studied; academic competition or a known dispute with those whose work is assessed; strongly held commitments — political, religious, ideological, or methodological — that a reader would want to know about; involvement in the events, policies, or institutions under study.
- Institutional — affiliation with, or funding from, a body that stands to gain or lose from the results.
Funding is declared separately and in full under Funding Disclosure; the two declarations overlap and both must be complete.
Authors
The corresponding author collects declarations from every author and enters them in the Conflicts of interest declaration described in Manuscript Structure. In the anonymous manuscript the statement appears in anonymized form; the named version goes on the title page. Where no author has anything to declare, write: "The authors declare no conflicts of interest." If an interest arises or changes while the manuscript is under review, at proof stage, or after publication, tell [email protected] promptly.
The declaration is published with the article, in the form the authors gave it. A declared interest does not affect the editorial decision, which turns on the quality of the work. An interest discovered after publication that should have been declared is handled under Publication Ethics, and normally results in a published correction; where the undeclared interest is substantial and bears directly on the findings, it may result in retraction.
Reviewers
Decline an invitation, stating the reason, where you:
- work at the same institution as an author, or did within the past three years;
- have co-authored, collaborated, or held a grant with an author within the past three years;
- are, or have been, an author's supervisor, doctoral examiner, or student;
- have a personal relationship, a known dispute, or a competing manuscript or grant application on the same question;
- hold a financial interest in the outcome, or could not write a report that you would be content for the authors to read.
Because review here is double-anonymous you may not know who the authors are when you accept. If you work it out during the review, stop and tell the editor. Confirm at the end of your report that you have no undeclared conflict. Never use a manuscript you have reviewed to advance your own work, and never delay a report to gain an advantage over a competitor.
Editors
- An editor with a conflict on a manuscript hands it to another editor and takes no part in it. The handover is recorded.
- An editor who is an author on a submission is excluded from the entire workflow for that manuscript: they cannot see the reviewers, the reports, or the decision correspondence, and the manuscript is assigned by the Editor-in-Chief to an editor with no relationship to them. A submission by the Editor-in-Chief is handled throughout by another editor, whose decision is final.
- Articles by editors carry a statement that the author is an editor of the journal and that they were excluded from the handling of the manuscript.
- Editors do not consider their own interests, their institution's interests, or the Publisher's interests when deciding, and the Publisher has no role in decisions on individual manuscripts.
If you are unsure
Declare it. An interest that turns out to be irrelevant costs you a sentence; an undeclared interest that surfaces later costs the article its credibility. Questions go to [email protected].