All authors, reviewers and editors must declare any interests that could compromise, conflict or influence the validity of the publication.

Competing interests can encompass both financial and non-financial relationships. Declaring any of these relationships will help us uphold academic rigour and prevent publication being accused of bias or misinformation.

Examples of competing interests:

• Authorship including one of the editorial team/board members*
• Financial e.g. receipt of payments or grants/ownership of shares/financial gifts from a related organisation membership of relevant boards
• Related patents/applied for patents
• Gifts
• Known relationships that will negate impartiality (e.g. colleagues, family, mentor, previous supervisor/student).
• Political, religious, ideological interests
• Commercial

Competing interests are normally looked at within the previous 5 years - e.g., if a reviewer supervised the author's PhD then (and if they feel comfortable reviewing the work) their professional relationship should have ended over 5 years ago. This is a minimum requirement, and we still ask that previous relationships are declared.

For authors

If you’re satisfied there are no competing interests, please could we ask you to add the statement below :

“The authors declare that they have no competing interests”

*If the submitting author is also an editor they must declare this and ensure they do not contribute to the editorial process