Why Should Authors Disclose Conflicts of Interest?

The majority of the journals require authors to disclose conflicts of interest whether by inserting their disclosures in their manuscripts or by signing conflicts of interest forms.

What Is the Definition of a Conflict of Interest?

A conflict of interest is a situation in which you may be influenced by a direct or indirect interest or relationship. Conflicts of interest in research can arise when obtaining grants, donations, or other forms of financial assistance. Also, working for a competitor, exploiting a firm’s resources, time, or equipment for personal benefit, using intellectual property (patents, copyrights, royalties), owning stock in a company that may be impacted by your article, and so on are all examples to conflicts of interest.

Why Is It Necessary to Disclose Conflicts of Interest?

It’s fine and acceptable to have a conflict of interest as long as it is disclosed. This allows readers to evaluate if the conflict of interest has any influence on the paper’s findings and conclusions.

Editors and peer-reviewers should have all the necessary information so that they can assess the quality of the research. Therefore, it is an ethical requirement to be transparent and reveal any potential conflicts of interest that could affect the reviewers’ judgment.

Why Should Authors Disclose Conflicts of Interest?

Conflicts of interest must be declared in order to protect the integrity of the professional editorial evaluations of publications. If a publisher finds out that possible conflicts of interest have not been disclosed by the authors, it will raise a red flag that there may be hidden misconduct in the paper. Even if the article has already been published, unrevealed potential conflicts of interest may cause the journal to re-evaluate it with the peer-reviewers which may lead to publishing a corrigendum or retracting the published article.

So, the best practice for the authors is to reveal any potential conflicts of interest and for the journals is to have a clear policy regarding conflicts of interest.

If you have no conflicts of interest to declare, you may simply write “Authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.”

Resources

• https://publicationethics.org/case/undeclared-competing-interests
• https://www.rasayely.com/what-is-conflict-of-interest-how-to-declare-it-and-why/