Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest exists when professional judgment about the validity of research, or about a manuscript, may be influenced by a secondary interest. JACOBS requires full disclosure from authors, reviewers, and editors so that readers and decision-makers can assess the work with complete information.

Types of Conflict of Interest

• Financial: employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership, paid expert testimony, patents, grants, or royalties related to the research.
• Intellectual and professional: evaluating an intervention, training program, or instrument that the authors developed, sell, or receive income from. This is particularly relevant in psychology, where authors may hold the rights to tests, modules, or therapy protocols.
• Personal: close family or personal relationships, or personal rivalries, with people involved in the research or its review.
• Institutional: interests of the institution where the research was conducted or of the organization that funded it.
• Ideological or religious: strongly held beliefs that may influence how the work is designed, reported, or judged.

Authors

All authors must disclose any interest that could be perceived as influencing the research, its interpretation, or its presentation. The disclosure appears in the declarations section of the published article. A conflict of interest does not necessarily prevent publication, but failure to disclose one may lead to rejection, correction, or retraction.

Reviewers

Reviewers must decline an invitation or inform the editor when they:

• Work at the same institution as any author, or have collaborated or published with any author in the past three years;
• Have a close personal relationship or known rivalry with any author;
• Have a financial interest in the outcome;
• Are reviewing a manuscript that competes directly with their own work in progress;
• Recognize the authors' identity and feel unable to remain objective.

Editors and Editorial Board Members

Editors do not handle manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest; these are assigned to another editor. Manuscripts submitted by the Editor-in-Chief, editors, or board members are handled by an independent editor and reviewed by external reviewers under double-blind review. The editor-author has no access to the review or the identities of the reviewers. To protect the journal's independence, articles authored by members of the editorial team should not exceed 20% of the articles in any issue.

Disclosure Statements

Authors must include one of the following statements, or a specific description of their interests: