Conflict of Interest

The publication aims to maintain transparency and impartiality at every stage of the publishing process. Consequently, it is a mandatory requirement for authors, peer reviewers, and Editorial Board members to declare any circumstances that could be perceived as a potential conflict of interest. This strategy serves to minimise external influence on scientific conclusions and the manuscript approval procedure.

Obligations of Research Authors

When submitting a manuscript, authors must openly declare any factors that could trigger a conflict of interest. This encompasses two categories:

• Financial component: receipt of salaries, honoraria, share ownership in companies, or the existence of registered patents.
• Non-financial component: family or personal relationships, academic competition, as well as religious or ideological convictions.

The purpose of such disclosure is to provide readers with the opportunity to independently assess the likelihood of bias and its potential impact on the research findings. Every publication concludes with a corresponding remark: if a conflict has been declared, it is described in the “Conflict of Interest” section; if none exists, it is marked as “None”.

Ethics for Reviewers

Individuals involved in evaluating a manuscript must inform the editorial office of any circumstances that prevent them from remaining objective. A reviewer is obliged to immediately notify the editors and recuse themselves from reviewing the material if:

• They are bound by financial obligations or personal relationships with the authors or the organisations that funded the work.
• The manuscript directly competes with the reviewer’s own current research.
• Subjective factors are present (such as friendship, animosity, or rivalry) that hinder an honest analysis.

Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are also subject to requirements regarding the declaration of interests that might impede fair decision-making. An editor must step down from managing the review process of an article under the following conditions:

• The existence of monetary, professional, academic, or private ties with the authors or their institutions.
• Co-authorship of the submitted work or employment at the same institution as the authors.
• Any other situation where their actions could be interpreted as biased.

In such cases, authority over the manuscript is delegated to another member of the Editorial Board or an independent specialist.

The journal strictly adheres to the principle of publicity: information regarding conflicts of interest always appears in the final version of the article. All parties – from authors to editors – must unfailingly comply with these rules to preserve the integrity of scholarly dialogue.