Conflict of Interest Policy

When carrying out their journal duties, the Editor in Chief (EIC), Area Editors (ArEd), and Associate Editors (AEs) may receive submissions from authors with whom they have close relationships. Similarly, reviewers may inadvertently be asked to review papers from others with whom they have close relationships. This includes, for example, former students, recent collaborators, and colleagues from the same department. In these situations, a potential conflict of interest arises. The journal recognizes that the EIC and the ArEds are senior people in the field with many collaborators and former Ph.D. students. If every former collaborator is a potential conflict of interest, the journal will soon run out of reviewers for a particular paper. Thus, our objective is to ensure that a potential conflict of interest is well managed without sacrificing the quality of the review process or significantly increasing its complexity.

Potential conflict of interest occurs when an Editor (either the EIC or an ArEd) receives a submission from (or when an AE or reviewer is assigned a paper from):

• Authors who collaborated with the Editor (or AE/ reviewer) in the three years prior to submission.
• Current or former Ph.D. students who were advised by the Editor (or AE/reviewer) and who graduated within the past five years.
• Colleagues from their own department or school.
• Other authors whose relationship to the Editor (or AE/reviewer) could reasonably be expected to prevent the Editor (or AE/reviewer) from judging the paper fairly.

The EIC and ArEds will attempt to assign papers to AEs to avoid any potential conflict of interest. However, due to limited awareness of relationships, occasionally assignments will occur for which there is a potential conflict of interest for an AE or reviewer. In such cases, the AE should notify the Area Editor who will decide the most appropriate action. This would typically entail reassigning the paper to a different AE or possibly handling the paper directly.

Whenever there is a potential conflict of interest for the EIC or ArEd, the EIC will ask an experienced ArEd from the editorial board to serve as the proxy ArEd or EIC for this submission. The proxy editor will then handle the entire review process; select an AE, receive reports and recommendations from the AE, and then make a decision and communicate this back directly to the authors. The proxy editor would continue to manage the review process for any revisions until the paper is accepted, rejected, or withdrawn.

To the extent possible, AEs should also attempt to avoid potential conflicts of interest in selecting referees but if a conflict of interest exists, they must consult with their ArEd for the appropriate course of action.