Conflicts of interest exist when an author’s professional judgement and actions may be influenced by secondary interests, primarily financial, although this category can also include conflicts from personal and professional relationships. The latter may be seen as a perceived conflict of interest, which should still be acknowledged.
All authors are asked to submit a conflict of interest form upon submission. Previous conflict of interest statements already completed for the work under review, for example any IRB-approved research, must be included upon manuscript submission.
Conflicts of interest among peer reviewers and editors will be addressed by asking editors to recuse themselves from any decision involving manuscripts where they have a preexisting conflict of interest. Those manuscripts will be assigned to an alternate editor or reviewer in those cases. Peer reviewers and editors are prohibited from using information obtained from submissions for their own gain.
