Conflict of Interest

Authors must declare any potential conflicts of interest, including financial conflicts (in particular, information related to venture capital, patent applications, or equity in start-up companies) and non-financial conflicts, to ensure the objectivity of the research. Authors should make every effort to avoid entering into any agreements with research sponsors (for-profit or non-profit) that would, for example, prevent them from accessing research data, analyzing or interpreting data, or publishing manuscripts independently according to their own wishes.

ARSL also requires reviewers and editors to declare any (potential) non-financial conflicts of interest and any unpaid positions or relationships that could influence decisions regarding manuscript publication. These include, but are not limited to: unpaid positions in government or non-governmental organizations, unpaid positions in advocacy or lobbying organizations, and unpaid advisory roles in commercial organizations.

In addition, reviewers and editors must disclose any relationships that could create a conflict of interest with respect to the manuscript. For example, having a personal or professional relationship with an author, or being included on the author’s exclusion list.