Conflicts of Interest
General Recommendations
According to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) "A journal shall have clear policies on handling potential conflicts of interest of editors, authors, and reviewers and the policies should be clearly stated."
By conflicts of interest we imply the situation(s) in which our Author(s), Editor(s) or Reviewer(s) may have financial, business, legal, professional relationship(s) with those organizations, or with those people working for them, which may potentially influence their judgment(s) or activities and may have an impact on their research and their studies as a result.
We follow the ICMJE recommendations claiming that all participants in peer-review and publication processes are without any exception required to consider their conflicts of interest, and we demand that they disclose all relationship(s) that can be regarded as possible conflicts of interest.
We request from all our Authors to state openly any current or potential future conflict(s) of interest, including but not limited to financial, business, personal, any other relationship(s), which may influence their scientific cooperation with us. They are required to indicate any conflict(s) of interest in our checklist in Editor's Tool before submitting their papers.
Reviewer(s) must refrain from considering manuscripts in which they have any conflict(s) of interest as a result of competitive, cooperation, business or any other relationship(s) or ties to any of our Author(s), companies, or institution(s) as far as our papers are concerned.
Editors may have their personal, professional, or financial involvement. But they should refrain from making any editorial decision(s) if they have a conflict of interest, which may influence what they publish. Editors should manage conflicts of interest of their Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, and Authors.