Conflicts of Interest

A conflict of interest is defined as a situation where personal relationships (e.g. friend, colleague or family), business relationships (e.g. working in a competing company), or financial influences (e.g. funding) will affect the judgement of any person during the publication of the journal.

All manuscripts for articles, original research reports, editorials, comments, reviews, book reviews, and letters that are submitted to the journal must be accompanied by a conflict of interest disclosure statement or a declaration by the authors that they do not have any conflicts of interest to declare. Difficult cases will be referred to the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) for advice. 

Authors are required to declare (within the article and to the Editor-in-Chief) any COI that may have affected their research (e.g. funding) or decision to submit to the journal.

Authorship: Anyone identified as an author must have made a substantial intellectual contribution to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work. Authors must be willing to take a shared responsibility in the research and in the article and approve the final version to be published. Authors must agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions regarding the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Anyone who does not meet the criteria stated above but who contributed to the research or the writing of the article should be acknowledged and thanked in the "Acknowledgements" section at the end of the article.

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work s/he has done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors.

Any changes in authorship during the peer review process or after acceptance must be confirmed by all named authors and the Editor-in-Chief must be notified of any reason for addition/removal.

Author Responsibilities: Authors are required to declare (within the article and to the Editor-in-Chief) any conflict of interest that may have affected their research (e.g. funding) or decision to submit to the journal. The corresponding author must ensure that all co-authors agree with the author list and technical content before submitting the manuscript. The corresponding author is responsible for the completeness and accuracy of the manuscript at the time of submission. Author names and affiliations must be competed and correct at the time of paper submission. While corrections can be made at the proof stage for authors who have changed institutions since the time of paper acceptance, author names cannot be added or deleted at the proof stage. If the corresponding author wishes to add or delete authors the paper must be withdrawn, corrected, and resubmitted for review.

Reviewers: Reviewers are required to declare if they have any conflict of interest that may affect their judgement of any article they review. The conflict of interest may not prevent them reviewing the article, but must be declared to the Editor-in-Chief as soon as it is known.

Editors: Editors are excluded from any publishing decision in which they may have a conflict of interest. For example, if an article by a colleague of the Editor-in-Chief is submitted to the journal, the peer review and all editorial decisions will managed by another editor.