Conflict of Interest

1. General Principles

INISTA is committed to maintaining transparency, impartiality, and integrity throughout the scholarly publication process.

A conflict of interest (COI), also known as a competing interest, arises when financial, personal, professional, academic, or institutional relationships may influence, or reasonably be perceived to influence, research activities, manuscript evaluation, or editorial decisions.

Conflicts of interest may be actual, potential, or perceived. Their existence does not necessarily constitute misconduct or invalidate research findings. However, relevant interests must be disclosed and appropriately managed.

This policy applies to authors, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, journal staff, and the publisher.

2. Types of Conflicts of Interest

Relevant conflicts may include:

Financial Interests: Research grants, consultancy payments, employment, equity ownership, patents, royalties, or commercial interests related to the research.

Personal and Professional Relationships: Family relationships, close personal relationships, research collaborations, supervisory relationships, and professional rivalries that could compromise impartiality.

Institutional Interests: Institutional relationships, contractual obligations, or administrative responsibilities that could influence research reporting or editorial decisions.

Academic and Intellectual Interests: Direct involvement in competing research or strongly held interests that could reasonably compromise independent scientific judgment.

Institutional affiliation or academic disagreement alone does not automatically establish a disqualifying conflict. The nature and significance of the relationship must be evaluated.

3. Responsibilities of Authors

All authors must disclose relevant financial and non-financial interests that could influence, or appear to influence, their research and its interpretation.

Authors must:

  1. Provide a Conflict of Interest declaration during submission.

  2. Disclose relevant commercial, professional, institutional, and personal relationships.

  3. Declare all research funding and describe the funder's role, where applicable.

  4. Ensure that the declaration accurately represents the interests of all co-authors.

  5. Promptly inform the editorial office when new competing interests arise.

The corresponding author is responsible for coordinating the disclosure process.

Funding must be declared even when it does not create a conflict of interest.

The disclosure of a competing interest does not automatically disqualify a manuscript.

4. Responsibilities of Reviewers

Reviewers must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflict before accepting a review invitation.

Relevant circumstances include recent or ongoing collaboration, close personal or supervisory relationships, direct financial interests, and other relationships that could compromise impartiality.

Reviewers must decline or withdraw from assignments when they cannot provide an independent and objective evaluation.

If a potential conflict is uncertain, the reviewer must consult the handling editor before proceeding.

Reviewers must maintain confidentiality and must not use unpublished manuscript information for personal, academic, or commercial advantage.

5. Responsibilities of Editors and Editorial Board Members

Editors must assess manuscripts independently and make decisions based on originality, scientific quality, methodological rigor, relevance, and publication ethics.

Editors must disclose relevant competing interests and recuse themselves when those interests may compromise impartiality.

When a handling editor has a relevant conflict, the manuscript must be reassigned to an independent editor.

Manuscripts submitted by the Editor-in-Chief, editorial board members, or journal management personnel must be evaluated through an independent editorial process.

Conflicted individuals must not influence reviewer selection, peer-review evaluation, or final editorial decisions.

6. Institutional and Publisher Interests

INISTA maintains editorial independence from inappropriate institutional, financial, commercial, and administrative influence.

The publisher and sponsoring institutions must not interfere with editorial decisions based on scholarly merit.

Where institutional relationships create a significant risk of bias, appropriate safeguards must be implemented, including independent editorial handling and reviewer selection.

7. Editorial Management

The editorial team evaluates disclosed interests and determines appropriate safeguards.

Potential measures include requesting clarification, assigning an independent editor, replacing a reviewer, obtaining additional independent assessments, or documenting management decisions.

Disclosures and related editorial records must be handled confidentially and made available only to authorized individuals.

8. Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest

Suspected undisclosed conflicts will be assessed fairly and proportionately.

The individuals concerned must have an opportunity to provide clarification or supporting information.

Appropriate editorial actions may include correcting declarations, re-evaluating the manuscript, publishing a correction or expression of concern, or pursuing further investigation.

Retraction may be considered when the available evidence establishes that serious misconduct or unreliable findings warrant such action under the journal's Retraction Policy.

An undisclosed conflict alone does not automatically justify rejection or retraction.

9. Commitment to Transparency

INISTA is committed to identifying, disclosing, and appropriately managing competing interests throughout the publication process.

This policy is informed by the publication ethics principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), IEEE, and internationally recognized scholarly publishing standards.

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