A competing interest exists when professional judgement about a piece of work could be influenced — or could reasonably be seen to be influenced — by a secondary interest, financial or non-financial. Having a competing interest is not wrong in itself; failing to declare it is. International Journal of Advances in Interdisciplinary Research follows the guidance of COPE and the ICMJE.
Types of competing interest
- Financial: employment, consultancy, grants, honoraria, stock or shares, patents or patent applications, paid expert testimony related to the work.
- Non-financial: close personal relationships, academic rivalry, membership of advocacy groups, political, religious or ideological beliefs relevant to the work.
- Institutional: working at the same institution as, or having recently collaborated with, the authors of a manuscript.
Authors
- All authors must declare competing interests during online submission. The declaration is published with the article. If there are none, the article states “The authors declare no competing interests.”
- All sources of funding must be declared, together with the role of the funder in the study design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.
- Authors may ask that specific reviewers be excluded, with a reason. The editor will normally respect reasonable requests.
Reviewers
- Reviewers must decline, or tell the editor, if they: work at the same institution as any author; have collaborated or published with any author in the last three years; have a close personal relationship or known rivalry with any author; have a financial interest in the outcome; or have reviewed the same manuscript for another journal and have concerns about impartiality.
- Reviewers confirm that they have no conflict of interest before they can access a manuscript. The editorial system also flags possible conflicts (same institution or email domain as an author) automatically.
- Reviewers must not use information from a manuscript for their own advantage.
Editors and board members
- Editors do not handle manuscripts in which they have a competing interest. Such manuscripts are assigned to another editor or board member, and the conflicted editor takes no part in their handling or decision.
- Manuscripts submitted by the Editor-in-Chief, by members of the editorial board or by guest editors are welcome, but they go through the same double-blind peer review and are handled by an editor with no conflict. The Editor-in-Chief takes no part in decisions on their own manuscripts or those of their own institution or close collaborators; these are decided by a senior board member.
- Board members are expected to declare relevant interests to the editorial office and to update them when they change.
Publisher
The journal is owned by OriGene Biosolutions (see Ownership & Management). The publisher has no role in decisions on individual manuscripts. Payment, or non-payment, of the article processing charge has no bearing on editorial decisions; payment information is not visible to editors or reviewers.
Undeclared conflicts
If an undeclared competing interest comes to light, the journal will act according to COPE guidance. This may include publishing a correction to the declaration, an expression of concern or, where the conflict undermines the reliability of the work, a retraction. See Complaints & Appeals.