• Employment, consultancy, honoraria, ownership interests, patents, or commercial benefits relevant to the work.
• Funding, paid expert roles, institutional commitments, or sponsor involvement that may affect interpretation.
• Close personal relationships, supervisory relationships, collaboration, or professional disputes relevant to impartial assessment.
• Editorial appointments or other relationships with the journal that require independent handling.

Ordinary scholarly disagreement is not automatically a disqualifying conflict. When uncertain, disclose the circumstances to the responsible editor.

Each author must disclose relevant financial and non-financial interests. The corresponding author coordinates a manuscript statement identifying author-specific interests where applicable. If none exist, include an explicit declaration that the authors have no relevant competing interests.

Provide a separate Funding statement identifying financial and in-kind support, funder names, and grant identifiers where applicable. Describe any funder role in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, writing, or the decision to submit. State where the funder had no such role. If there was no specific funding, say so.

Funding disclosure does not replace the competing-interest statement. Update both when relevant circumstances change. Manuscript Preparation explains placement, and Submission Requirements explains confidential disclosure during anonymous review.

Editors and reviewers must disclose relevant interests before accepting an assignment and promptly report interests identified later. A non-conflicted editorial authority determines whether safeguards are sufficient or reassignment is necessary.

Editors must not assess or decide their own manuscripts or other submissions for which impartiality is compromised. Reviewers with disqualifying conflicts must decline or cease the review. Assignment procedures are provided in Editorial Roles and Reviewer Selection.

Disclosed interests are assessed for relevance and potential effect. Appropriate action may include publication of an author disclosure, additional independent assessment, or replacement of an editor or reviewer.

Missing or inaccurate declarations are evaluated in context rather than treated as automatic grounds for retraction. Material concerns follow Allegations of Misconduct and Integrity Investigations. Necessary published updates follow Corrections.