Conflicts of Interest (Authors, Editors, and Peer Reviewers)
Last updated: 2026-01-04
A conflict of interest exists when secondary interests (financial, personal, professional, or ideological) could reasonably be perceived to influence a primary professional judgment (e.g., research interpretation, peer review, or editorial decisions).
1) What should be disclosed?
Conflicts may be:
- Financial: employment, consultancies, grants, paid expert testimony, honoraria, stock ownership, patents/patent applications, paid travel.
- Non-financial: personal relationships, academic competition, institutional affiliations, strong intellectual commitments, political/religious interests that may affect judgment.
2) Authors: disclosure and publication
- Authors must disclose all relevant competing interests and all funding sources.
- Disclosures should cover relationships that could be perceived as relevant to the submitted work.
- If no competing interests exist, authors must explicitly state this.
- Relevant disclosures may be published with the article to ensure transparency.
3) Peer reviewers: disclosure and recusal
- Reviewers must decline invitations when they have a conflict that could impair impartiality (or be reasonably perceived to do so).
- Examples: recent collaboration with an author, same institution, direct competition, personal relationship or dispute, or financial interest in outcomes.
- If a potential conflict is identified after accepting the review, the reviewer must inform the editor immediately.
4) Editors and editorial board members
- Editors must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts where they have a conflict (e.g., authored by them, family members, close collaborators, same institution, or involving products/services in which they have an interest).
- In such cases, the manuscript will be reassigned to an independent editor, and decision-making will be fully separated from the conflicted editor.
5) Non-disclosure and investigations
- Failure to disclose relevant conflicts may lead to editorial actions, including rejection, correction, or retraction, depending on severity and impact.
- INFEDU may request clarification or supporting information from authors/editors/reviewers when concerns arise.
Contact for disclosure questions: editorial@infedu.lt