Conflicts of Interest

A conflict of interest exists when a personal, professional, financial, political, or institutional relationship could influence, or could reasonably appear to influence, the judgment of an author, reviewer, or editor. The appearance of a conflict matters almost as much as an actual conflict, because both can erode trust. Informasi handles conflicts of interest in line with the COPE Core Practices.

Types of conflict. Conflicts may be financial (employment, research funding received or pending, shares, patents, consultancies, paid lectures or travel) or non-financial (personal relationships, academic competition or collaboration, institutional ties, or political and religious beliefs).
1. Authors
  • Authors disclose any financial or non-financial interest that could be seen as influencing their research, together with all sources of funding.
  • From Vol. 56 No. 2 (December 2026), every article includes a Declaration of Competing Interest and a Funding statement. If there is no conflict, authors state: “The authors declare no competing interests.”
  • This applies to all authors listed on the manuscript, not only the corresponding author.
2. Suggesting Reviewers

The corresponding author may suggest up to three potential reviewers. The editors are not bound by these suggestions. Suggested reviewers must not:

  • be co-authors of the manuscript, or have read or commented on it or an earlier version;
  • work at the same institution as any of the authors;
  • be current or recent collaborators or co-authors of any of the authors;
  • have a close personal relationship with any of the authors.
3. Reviewers
  • Reviewers decline an invitation, or inform the editor, if they recognise the authors or have a competing, collaborative, or institutional relationship with them.
  • Reviewers from Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta are not assigned manuscripts by authors from the same institution.
  • Reviewers do not use information from a manuscript under review for their own advantage, and do not ask authors to cite their own work without good scholarly reason.
4. Editors and Editorial Board Members
  • Editors step aside from any manuscript in which they have a conflict of interest, and the manuscript is handled by another editor.
  • Editors and editorial board members may submit their own work to the journal. Such manuscripts follow the same double-anonymous review, are handled by an editor with no conflict of interest, and the author has no access to the review records.
  • All members of the editorial team declare their conflicts of interest each year.
5. Undisclosed Conflicts

If an undisclosed conflict of interest comes to light, the journal follows the COPE flowcharts. Depending on the case, it may restart the review with new reviewers, publish a correction, or retract the article, as described in the R-W-C Policy. Questions about possible conflicts can be sent to the Editor-in-Chief through the Contact page.