Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest arises when the Editor, an Action Editor, or a reviewer is an author on the submitted manuscript. Additionally, a conflict may exist if they have any of the following connections to an author on the submitted paper:

• Has collaborated on a project or grant proposal.
• Has published together in the last three years.
• Has a personal relationship (e.g., spouse, parent, sibling, etc.).
• Has been a mentor/mentee (e.g., PhD or postdoctoral supervisor/mentor).

Selection of Action Editors and invitation of reviewers must avoid such conflicts of interest. This constraint may be relaxed for papers published by large consortia with tens or hundreds of authors if unavoidable to secure sufficiently qualified reviewers.

Commercial Interests

A conflict of interest also arises when the Editor, an Action Editor, reviewer, or author has any commercial interest in any of the work described in the submitted manuscript (e.g., the study uses a questionnaire instrument published by a company in which the individual has shares, or from which they receive royalty payments). Selection of Action Editors and invitation of reviewers must avoid such conflicts.

Author Responsibility

• If an author has any commercial interest in any of the work described in the submitted manuscript, they must include a declaration of conflict of interest statement in the manuscript.
• Such a statement is not required if no conflict of interest exists.
• Any conflict of interest identified after publication of the manuscript should be raised using the allegations of misconduct procedure.