Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest (COIs, also referred to as “competing interests”) may indicate the potential to influence the validity or objectivity of research. Editors, authors, and reviewers may be involved into COIs, and JTS considers it essential to identify and seek to mitigate them so as to ensure the integrity of its role in the dissemination and preservation of knowledge. Failure to declare competing interests may result in decline of a manuscript.

Authors must declare all potential conflicts of interest; if they have none to declare, they should state plainly, “The author(s) declare(s) no conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study”.

In order to limit COIs, all roles involved in the peer-review process must identify and declare any personal circumstances or associations that may be perceived as having such influence and acknowledge all funding sources for the work. However, COI statements relating to public funding sources, such as government agencies and charitable or academic institutions, need not be supplied.

To be specific, JTS defines a COI as any relationship that may have an impact on the authors, reviewers, or editors of a manuscript during the peer review process, on the making of editorial decisions, or generally on any stage in the path toward publication.

Thus, COIs may include (but not limited to):

Financial COIs

Stock or share ownership

Patent applications

Research grants

Consultancies

Royalties

Non-financial COIs

Affiliation with the same institution;

Personal relationships, e.g., between thesis advisers and their students, friends, family members, etc.;

Academic relationships, e.g., among co-authors, collaborators, or competitors;

Government employees;

Members of JTS Editorial Committee of a SCIMET Series journal.

COIs are not considered permanent; such relationships that have ended more than two years prior to the submission of a manuscript need not be identified as sources of potential conflict.

Authors

SUAS requires a declaration from all authors of a manuscript regarding any potential COIs that could be relevant to the integrity or reliability of the scientific and professional judgment presented therein, as well as that of otherwise unassociated studies in the same journal. If there is, in fact, no conflict of interest, the authors should state plainly, “The authors declare no conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study.”

Reviewers

Reviewers should declare any COIs when they are assigned a manuscript and disclose this information to the editor, who will then assess whether they should proceed with the review process.

Editors

The evaluation procedure (i.e., peer review and decisions regarding publication) must be free of biased editorial decisions. If an editor, guest editor, or associate editor believes that a personal, professional, or financial connection to an author may compromise the procedure, he or she must inform the journal’s editorial office of the fact.

Editors and Journal Staff as Authors

In the circumstances where Editors or editorial staff of the journal submit their own studies to the journal, they shall not be involved in the reviewing process, and the review process must be made transparently and rigorously. Submissions authored by editors or editorial staff of the journal will be handled by another editor who has least COIs with the authors to minimize the bias.