Conflict of Interest Policy

The principle

A competing interest exists where a person involved in publishing a manuscript has a relationship or commitment that a reasonable reader might think could have influenced their judgement — whether or not it actually did.

The test is deliberately set at appearance rather than effect. Nobody can demonstrate that their own judgement was unaffected, and asking them to try is the wrong question. The journal’s position is therefore simple: declare it and let the reader weigh it.

Having an interest rarely stops a manuscript being published or a review being accepted. Most declared interests are recorded and the work proceeds normally. What triggers action is concealment.

What counts as a competing interest

Interests are financial and non-financial. In the social sciences the non-financial ones are usually the more consequential, and are the ones most often overlooked.

Where you are unsure whether something qualifies, declare it. An unnecessary declaration costs nothing; an omitted one can cost a published article.

Disclosure by authors

Every author declares their own interests at submission. The corresponding author collects these and confirms they are complete — but each author remains responsible for the accuracy of their own.

Declarations cover the period of the work and the three years preceding submission. They belong in a competing-interests statement in the manuscript, which is published with the article. Where there are none, the statement says so explicitly: “The authors declare no competing interests.” A missing statement is not read as an absence of interests, and the manuscript is returned for one.

An interest arising after submission — a new post, a new grant — must be reported to the editorial office as it arises, not left until publication.

Funding

All funding is declared, naming the funder and the grant or award number, together with a statement of the funder’s role in the design, conduct, analysis, or decision to publish. Where the funder had no such role, say so.

The journal will not publish work where a funder holds a right of veto over publication, or where publication was conditional on the findings. A contractual right to review a draft before submission is acceptable only if it carries no right to require changes, and the arrangement is disclosed.

Research that is unfunded is declared as unfunded, which is a meaningful piece of information rather than a gap to leave blank.

Disclosure by reviewers

A reviewer assesses their position before accepting an invitation, on the basis of the manuscript title and abstract. They must decline where they have a competing interest of the kinds listed above, and in particular where they have, within three years, co-authored with an author, worked at the same institution, or held a supervisory relationship.

Under double-blind review a reviewer may not know who the authors are. Where they come to recognise the authorship during review and a competing interest follows from it, they must stop and tell the handling editor rather than complete the report. The full set of obligations is in the peer reviewer ethics policy.

A lesser interest — knowing the field closely, or having published a contrary view — is disclosed to the editor rather than treated as disqualifying. The editor decides whether it affects the weight given to the report.

Disclosure by editors

Editors and editorial board members disclose their interests to the Editor-in-Chief on appointment and update the disclosure annually.

A handling editor with a competing interest in a specific submission transfers it to another editor immediately, takes no part in reviewer selection or the decision, and has no access to the reviewer identities. The transfer is recorded. Where the Editor-in-Chief is the interested party, another member of the editorial board takes the decision.

Submissions from editors

Editors and board members may submit their own work to the journal, and it is assessed on the same terms as anyone else’s. Three safeguards apply:

• The submission is handled by an editor with no reporting relationship to the author, and the author has no access to any part of its record;
• Reviewers are selected by that handling editor alone, and are independent of the author’s institution;
• The published article states that an author is a member of the editorial team and that they were excluded from the decision.

The journal monitors the proportion of published work authored by its own editorial team, and reports it in the annual editorial statement. See editorial independence.

What readers see

The competing-interests statement and the funding statement are published with every article, whether or not anything was declared. Where an author is a member of the editorial team, that is stated too.

Reviewer and editor disclosures are held by the editorial office and are not published, because publishing them under a double-blind model would identify the reviewers.

Undisclosed interests

Where an undisclosed interest comes to light, the journal establishes the facts and asks the person concerned to explain, following the procedure in the publication ethics policy. The response is proportionate:

• Before publication — the statement is corrected, and where the interest is material the manuscript may be reassessed or reviewed afresh by different reviewers.
• After publication — a correction is published amending the statement. Where the interest is serious enough that readers would have judged the work differently, an expression of concern or a retraction may follow under the retraction and correction policy.
• Reviewers and editors — a report from a reviewer with a concealed interest is discarded and the manuscript re-reviewed. An editor who concealed one is removed from the manuscript, and, where deliberate, from the editorial team.

Questions about whether something needs declaring can be sent to the editorial office at ceoborjss@gmail.com before submission. Asking is never held against an author.