Conflicts of interest

• Many potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed, including financial ones, such as honoraria, educational grants or other funding, participation in speakers’ bureaus, membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest, and paid expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements, as well as non-financial ones such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript.
• Unpublished information disclosed in a manuscript will not be used by editors or editorial board members for their own research purposes without the author’s explicit consent.
• During the course of handling the manuscript, editors will obtain privileged information or ideas which will be kept confidential. As a result of their competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions involved in the papers, editors will recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest. Instead, another editorial board member will handle the manuscript.
• Some common conflicts are
• any prior partnership with the reviewers
• any personal relationship with the reviewers
• financial benefits from the work.
• Intellectual Property
• Academic competitors with the reviewers
• Authors

Any conflicts of interest that could influence the results or interpretation in the manuscript should be disclosed by authors as early as possible (generally by submitting a disclosure form and including a statement in the manuscript). Please disclose all sources of funding (including grant numbers or other reference numbers, if applicable).

• Editors
• Editors have the complete responsibility to accept or reject the manuscript depending on the reviews obtained from the reviewers.
• Every manuscript should be treated as a confidential document by the editor.
• It is prohibited for editors to use any submitted manuscripts in their own research.
• Editors should have no conflict of interest on the articles they accept or reject.
• It is the editor’s responsibility to ensure that the peer-review process is conducted to a high standard.
• Double blind review process must be ensured by the editors.
• Reviewers

Reviewers should decline to be involved with a submission if they have any of the following:

• any prior partnership with the authors
• any personal relationship with the authors
• financial benefits from the work.
• hatred towards the author
• Academic competitors with the authors
• Reviewers must declare any remaining interests in the ‘Confidential’ section of the review form, which will be considered by the editor.