Conflicting Interests Policy

In order to avoid cases of violation of publication ethics, a conflict of interest of all parties involved in the process of publishing a manuscript should be excluded. A conflict of interest arises when an author, a reviewer, or an editorial board member has financial, scholarly, or personal relationships that may affect their actions. Such relationships are called “ambivalent obligations”, “competing interests” or “competing loyalties”.

To submit an article to the journal, all authors have are required to sign a cover letter indicating the presence of financial or any other substantial conflicts of interest that could be considered to have affected the results of the research or its interpretation. All sources of financial support for the work described are to be specified.

In order to prevent any conflict of interest and in accordance with the accepted ethical standards of the journal, each party has the following responsibilities,

Authors are required to

- list all known and potential sources of any conflict of interest;

- indicate the place of his/her work and the source of research financial support in the article;

- report on the absence of a conflict of interest in the cover letter (see section: FOR AUTHORS).

Editorial team is required to

- transfer the manuscript for consideration to another reviewer, if the originally assigned one has a conflict of interest with the author of the manuscript;

- request the information on the possibility of competing interests from all participants of the manuscript publishing;

- make a decision on the publication of the information specified in the author’s letter concerning a conflict of scientific and/or financial interest, if it is not confidential and may influence the evaluation of the published work by a reader or a scientific community;

- ensure the publication of amendments, if the information on a conflict of interest was received after the article was published.

Reviewers are required to

- inform the editor-in-chief about any conflicts of interest (ambivalent obligations, competing interests);

- disqualify themselves from reviewing a manuscript that is the subject of a conflict of interest.