Conflict of Interest Policy

Authors, editors, and reviewers must disclose financial, personal, professional, institutional, or academic relationships that could reasonably influence their work or judgment.

Authors

Authors must disclose relevant financial and non-financial interests when submitting the manuscript and must update the disclosure if circumstances change. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that disclosures from all authors are complete. The existence of an interest does not automatically prevent publication, but it must be declared transparently and assessed editorially.

Reviewers

Reviewers must decline an invitation when impartial assessment is not possible. Relevant conflicts may include recent collaboration, shared institutional affiliation, supervisory or close professional relationships, direct competition, financial interests, personal relationships, or prior involvement with the manuscript. When uncertain, the reviewer must disclose the circumstances to the handling editor before accepting.

Editors

Editors must not handle manuscripts where they are an author or have a relationship that could reasonably affect, or appear to affect, impartial judgment. A conflicted editor must recuse themselves from reviewer selection, editorial correspondence, deliberation, and the publication decision. The submission must be assigned to an independent editor, and the recusal and reassignment must be recorded in OJS.

The handling editor must not simultaneously serve as an anonymous reviewer for the same manuscript. Scientific or methodological comments supplied by the handling editor must be clearly identified as editorial comments. An editor may review a manuscript managed and decided by another independent editor when the reviewing editor has no conflict of interest and the role is recorded transparently in the editorial system.

Editor-authored submissions

Submissions authored by an editor, editorial board member, or journal leader receive the same editorial screening and external peer review as other scholarly submissions. They are handled by an independent editor, and the author-editor has no access to confidential reviewer identities, reviewer selection, deliberation, or the editorial decision beyond the access available to any author.

Publisher and commercial interests

Editorial decisions are independent of the publisher's commercial interests, publication charges, waivers, sponsorship, institutional relationships, and advertising. Anyone involved in a decision must disclose a relevant interest and withdraw when impartial participation is not possible.

Undisclosed conflicts

Suspected undisclosed conflicts may be raised before or after publication. The journal will document the concern, give the affected person an opportunity to respond, and take proportionate action. Outcomes may include reassignment, additional independent review, correction of a disclosure statement, expression of concern, retraction, or another action required to protect the scholarly record.