Conflict of Interest Policy

JCARME requires authors, reviewers, editors, and Editorial Board members to disclose any relationship or circumstance that could reasonably be perceived as influencing their judgment.

Conflicts of interest may include, but are not limited to:

• current or recent institutional affiliation;
• close personal or professional relationships;
• recent collaboration or co-authorship;
• financial interests;
• research competition;
• supervisory relationships;
• patents or commercial interests;
• funding relationships;
• other circumstances that could compromise impartiality.

Authors

Authors must disclose relevant conflicts of interest during submission.

If no conflict exists, authors should explicitly state that there are no conflicts of interest to declare.

Editors

Editors must not participate in editorial decisions concerning manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest.

If the Editor-in-Chief, an Associate Editor, a member of the Editorial Board, the Director-in-Charge, or another person directly involved in editorial decision-making is an author of a submitted manuscript, that individual will be excluded from the editorial decision-making process for that manuscript.

The manuscript will be handled through an independent editorial process.

Reviewers

Reviewers must decline to review manuscripts when a conflict of interest could reasonably affect their impartiality.

Editorial Independence

Disclosure of a conflict of interest does not necessarily mean that a manuscript will be rejected. The journal evaluates whether appropriate measures can be taken to preserve an independent and fair editorial process.

Editors and reviewers must disclose any circumstances that could compromise their impartiality in handling or reviewing a manuscript. An editor should not handle a manuscript when there is a significant conflict of interest, including a close personal or professional relationship with one or more of the authors, a recent collaboration, or a direct institutional conflict. In such cases, the manuscript will be assigned to another qualified editor. The JCARME will follow COPE’s guidelines.