Conflict of interest

Editorial team members and reviewers shall recuse themselves in the event of a conflict of interest regarding the authors or the content of a manuscript under evaluation. All conflicts of interest involving authors, reviewers, editorial team members, and the scientific committee must be avoided.

Editors and reviewers must recuse themselves from decision-making when:

1. A direct relationship exists between an author and a reviewer.

2. There is a recent and significant professional collaboration between reviewers and authors.

3. An editor or reviewer is a collaborator on the submitted project.

4. An editor or reviewer believes they cannot be objective, whether due to personal reasons or a financial interest not otherwise covered by the policy.

Conflicts of interest involving authors

The most obvious conflicts of interest are financial relationships, such as direct employment, paid consultancy, equity ownership, honoraria, patent authorship, or lecture fees. However, conflicts may also arise from friendships, intellectual rivalries, academic competition, or personal beliefs.
When submitting an article for publication, all authors must declare any financial or personal relationships with public or private entities that could intentionally influence the results of their work. They must also declare any non-financial relationships that could give rise to conflicts of interest regarding their manuscript (personal, academic, ideological, intellectual, political, or religious).