CONFLICT OF INTEREST POLICY

The Journal of Psychology and Political Science (JPPS) requires all parties involved in the publication process authors, peer reviewers, and editors to disclose any potential conflict of interest that may bias or be perceived to bias their work.

Definition

A conflict of interest exists when an individual's professional judgment or objectivity could be compromised by a secondary interest, such as financial gain, personal relationships, institutional affiliations, or academic competition.

Obligations for Authors

  • All authors must declare any financial, personal, or professional relationships that could be seen as a potential conflict of interest at the time of submission.
  • This includes employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, patents, and paid expert testimonies.
  • Funding sources for the research must be disclosed in the Acknowledgements or a dedicated Funding Statement.
  • If no conflict of interest exists, authors must include the statement: "The authors declare no conflict of interest."

Obligations for Peer Reviewers

  • Reviewers must decline to review any manuscript where a conflict of interest exists, including manuscripts submitted by former supervisors, students, close colleagues, or collaborators within the past three years.
  • Reviewers must not use knowledge of unpublished work for their own benefit.
  • Reviewers must declare any conflict of interest to the Editor-in-Chief before reviewing.

Obligations for Editors

  • Editors must recuse themselves from all editorial decisions regarding manuscripts submitted by their institution, close collaborators, family members, or anyone with whom they have a competing interest.
  • In such cases, the Editor-in-Chief will assign a handling editor with no conflict.

Handling Undisclosed Conflicts

If an undisclosed conflict of interest is identified after publication, JPPS reserves the right to issue a notice of concern, correction, or retraction as appropriate, following COPE guidelines.

This policy is aligned with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on conflicts of interest.