All authors listed must declare competing interests relevant to the article or considered relevant to the article. If the authors (or their employers, sponsors, family and friends) have financial, commercial, legal or professional ties with other organizations, or the people involved in them, competing interests may occur and may affect the research or interpretation of the results.
Competing interests can be of financial or non-financial nature. In order to ensure transparency, all associations perceived by others as competitive interests must also be declared.
Examples of financial competing interests include (but are not limited to):
- Employment or voluntary participation
- Collaboration with advocacy groups on the content of the article
- Grants from an entity paid to the author or organization
- Personal fees received by the author as honorary, royalties, consulting fees, lectures, testimony, etc. Patents owned or under investigation by the authors, their institutions or funding organizations or licensed to an entity, whether earning royalties or not
- Royalties are received by the authors or their institutions
- Stock or share ownership
- Benefits related to the development of products as a result of the work
Examples of non-financial competing interests include (but are not limited to):
- An entity that may benefit financially or reputationally from the results published may receive drugs, equipment or data access.
- Having a position on the boards of directors of industry bodies or private companies that could benefit financially or reputationally from the published results.
- Assistance in writing or administrative support from individuals or organizations who may benefit or an advantage from the results of publication.
- Personal, political, religious, ideological, academic and intellectual competing interests identified as related to the published content.
- Participation in legal proceedings related to work.
All authors of manuscripts submitted to any journal of Red Flower Publications must complete a declaration of competing interests, which will be listed at the end of the article. If an author is unsure whether to disclose a competing interest, he or she should consult with an institution or a journal editor who can advise him or her on the appropriate action.
If there are no competing interests, the following statements will be added to the article: “The author declares that there are no competing interests.”
Sponsorship of clinical trials
Authors employed by pharmaceutical companies and other organizations sponsoring clinical trials must declare this to be a competing interest.
Authors should adhere to the Good Publication Practice guidelines for pharmaceutical companies (GPP3), which provide guidelines to ensure that responsible and ethical standards are maintained.
The Red Flower Publications journals will not publish articles promoting commercial products.
Editor recusal policy
Under the COPE recommendations on ethical editing for new Editors, editors will assign to members of the editorial committee or guest editors any article they do not handle (e.g. if they are the authors of articles submitted to their own journals).
