Conflict of Interest

Conflict of interest as defined by COPE "Conflicts of interest comprise those which may not be fully apparent and which may influence the judgement of author, reviewers, and editors. They have been described as those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived" (COPE, 2000)

Authors are asked to declare any potential conflicts of interest to the editor during the submission process. If a conflict of interest does exist, it will be included in the final published document if the submitted manuscript is accepted for publication. A potential conflict of interest does not mean that a manuscript will be rejected.

Reviewers are asked to declare any potential conflict of interest to the editor when invited to review a manuscript. A conflict of interest does not necessarily disqualify the reviewer nor the review report.

Editors and members of the Editorial Board can submit papers for consideration to Clean Air Journal and would be expected to follow the same policy of conflict of interest for authors. For manuscripts submitted by the editors themselves to the journal, the editor who is the author will not have any input and will not participate in the editorial and review process. Editors will withdraw from the review process of a manuscript if there is a conflict of interest.

Reference: COPE. 2000. Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): guidelines on good publication practice. BJU International (2000), 85, 2-7. Article first published online: 10 DEC 2003 DOI: 10.1046/j.1464-410x.2000.00478.x