Conflict of Interest Policy

A conflict of interest exists when financial, personal, professional or institutional relationships could influence, or appear to influence, a person's judgement about a manuscript. Having a conflict is not wrong in itself; failing to disclose it is. JSD requires every party to disclose such conflicts.

Types of Conflict of Interest

Type Examples
Financial Employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership, patents, paid expert testimony, research grants
Personal Family relationships, close friendships or personal rivalries with authors
Professional Recent collaboration or co-authorship, supervisor–student relationships, competing research
Institutional Working at the same institution as an author, or institutional interests in the results

Authors

  • Declare all funding sources and any relationship that could be seen as influencing the work in the Conflict of Interest section of the manuscript.
  • State the role of the funders in the study design, data collection, analysis, writing or decision to publish.
  • If none exist, write: "The authors declare no conflict of interest."

Reviewers

Reviewers must decline an invitation, or inform the editor, if they:

  • work at the same institution as any author;
  • have collaborated or co-published with any author in the last [3] years;
  • have a supervisor–student relationship, close personal relationship or rivalry with any author;
  • have a financial interest in the outcome of the research, or are working on a competing study.

Editors and Editorial Board Members

  • Editors must not handle manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest; another editor is assigned instead.
  • Manuscripts submitted by editors or board members go through the same double-blind review without any involvement of the submitting editor, who cannot access the review records.
  • The number of articles by editorial board members is limited to [one per issue] to avoid bias.

Please note: Undisclosed conflicts discovered after publication are handled according to the Correction & Retraction policy and may lead to a correction or retraction.