Ethical Disclosure

Conflict of Interest

Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose any actual, potential, or perceived conflicts of interest that could influence the research, its interpretation, the peer-review process, or editorial decisions. Conflicts may arise from financial relationships such as employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership, patents, research funding, or other relevant interests; personal or family relationships; academic competition; or institutional affiliations that may bias judgment.

Authors are required to include a clear Conflict of Interest statement in their manuscript, explicitly declaring all financial and non-financial relationships, including funding sources, employment affiliations, and patent holdings. Authors must explicitly state if no conflicts exist. Reviewers must disclose any personal, financial, academic, or institutional conflicts that may affect their objectivity and must decline to evaluate manuscripts when such relationships could compromise their impartiality. Editors must recuse themselves from handling submissions when conflicts may affect their independence and ensure that any manuscript in which they have a potential conflict of interest is reassigned to an independent, qualified editor.

All disclosed conflicts must be transparently reported to maintain the integrity of the publication process.

Funding Disclosure

Authors must clearly disclose all sources of financial support for their research, including the names of funding organizations, grant numbers, and any role funders played in the study design, data collection, analysis, or publication. If funders had no role in the research, this should be explicitly stated. Sources of funding, along with institutional or organizational support and other non-author contributions, should be appropriately disclosed in the Acknowledgments section.

Permissions and Acknowledgements

Authors must ensure proper acknowledgment of all sources and obtain necessary permissions for any reused materials, including figures, tables, images, and datasets from previously published works. Any third-party content must be properly cited, and copyright permissions must be documented and submitted with the manuscript where required.