A potential conflict of interest occurs when there are some financial, personal or professional conditions that may affect to the scientific judgment of the reviewer or the editor and, as a consequence, the decision of the editorial board regarding the publication of the article.
The journal assumes that by submitting the article to the editorial board the author states that:
- the text of the article lists all the sources of the research funding;
- there are no commercial, financial, personal and professional factors that could create a conflict of interest in relation to submitted article.
If there is a conflict of interest the author may ask the editor to exclude any specific reviewer from the consideration of his/her article.
Editors and reviewers must declare a potential conflict of interest that may affect the editorial board decision.
If there is a conflict of interest between the editor or reviewer and the author of the article, the article should be transferred to another reviewer respectively.
Assessment of the article should not be biased. The presence of conflict of interest alleged by any of the participants in the review process and the review itself should not lead to rejection as the most important criterion for evaluation of a manuscript is its scientific quality.