POLICY ON CONFLICT OF INTEREST
"Le Infezioni in Medicina" (Official Journal of the Italian Society of Infectious and Tropical Diseases) is committed to making transparent the journal’s policies on Conflict of Interest as they relate to authors, reviewers, and editors.
An actual or potential conflict regarding publication occurs when a competing interest may influence the writing, review, or editorial decisions inherent in publication. Conflicts of interest are considered relationships within two years prior to the authoring, reviewing, or editing activities on a particular manuscript. Specifically, these relationships may include employment, consultancies, honoraria, or options (other than mutual funds), expert testimony, grants received and pending, patents received and pending, royalties, and in‐kind rewards. "Le Infezioni in Medicina" sponsored supplement manuscripts are subject to the same scrutiny and process for protecting readers from bias as are all other submitted manuscripts. Content in sponsored supplements is accepted solely on the basis of academic merit and interest to readers.
Authors
At submission all authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. There is a potential conflict of interest when anyone involved in the publication process has a financial or other beneficial interest in the products or concepts mentioned in a submitted manuscript or in competing products that might bias his or her judgment.
Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. As part of the online submission process, corresponding authors are required to confirm whether they or their co-authors have any conflicts of interest to declare, and to provide details of these.
If there are no conflicts of interest, then please state this: 'Conflicts of interest: none'.
Reviewers
Recusal is the cornerstone of preventing bias from entering the assessment of the validity and value of the results of scientific research. When individuals are invited to review manuscripts, they must recuse themselves should they have any conflict of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions involved with the manuscript. If an invited reviewer believes that he or she does have a potential conflict of interest associated with a particular manuscript, he or she informs the journal, which then secures a different reviewer. If an Editor or Associate Editor is not satisfied that a submitted review is without bias due to Conflict of Interest, further review will be undertaken, in order to ensure the unbiased assessment of the manuscript.
Editors and Associate Editors
Associate Editors recuse themselves from handling a manuscript if they have or might have a conflict of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or (in some cases) institutions connected to the manuscript. When an Editor recuses himself, a Co‐editor, is asked to consider the manuscript.