Disclosure Conflict of Interest

Conflict of interest in scientific publications may arise during drafting or writing the manuscript, sharing the results, agreement with the funding authorities, peer review, and editorial decision making. Relationships between any of the authors of the manuscript (or their institutions) and reviewer, editor(s) or funding authorities, can contribute to an inappropriate influence (bias)in any of the actions at any steps of the production of the manuscript - hence may raise the concern of Conflict of Interest.. These relationships vary from those with negligible potential to those with great potential to influence judgement, and not all relationships represent true conflict of interest.

The potential for conflict of interest can exist whether or not an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgement and production of the manuscript. While financial relationships are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion.

It is expected that all actors of BJM (i.e., authors, editors, reviewers, any other member of the Editorial team) will act without having any conflict of interest or by declaring the conflict of interest, if there is any. Authors are encouraged to use guidelines/forms on the potential disclosure of conflict of interest provided by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME).