Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest exists when a financial, professional, or personal relationship could influence, or appear to influence, a person's judgment.

• Authors must disclose all funding sources and any relationship that could be seen as influencing the work, in the Declarations section of the manuscript.
• Reviewers must decline to review a manuscript if they have a close collaboration, competition, or personal relationship with any of the authors, or if they can identify the authors.
• Editors must not handle manuscripts written by themselves, their family members, or close collaborators. Manuscripts submitted by members of the editorial team are handled by another editor and go through the same double-blind review.