Competing Interests

This journal's publisher, the Open Library of Humanities (OLH), is committed to transparent and bias-free research (see the Publisher Policies). To ensure that all publications are as open as possible, all authors, reviewers, and editors are required to declare any interests that could appear to compromise, conflict, or influence the validity of the publication. This process is designed to reinforce readers' trust in the research data.

Please declare any competing interests that you have at the point of submission. A conflict of interest must be declared if there is any reason why the information or the interpretation of information being produced may be influenced by a personal or financial relationship with other organizations or individuals, or if these relationships could be reasonably perceived by other people as influencing objective data or decision-making. Everyone involved in the submission, editorial processing, peer review, and publication should declare any competing interests that they may have as early as possible.

Competing interests can take the form of both financial and nonfinancial relationships. The declaration of such relationships helps to ensure that academic rigor is maintained and that publications cannot be accused of undue bias or misinformation.

Examples of competing interests:

  • receipt of payment, in any form, from an organization or individual related to the subject matter;
  • ownership of stocks or shares in organizations directly related to the subject matter;
  • receipt of grants or funding;
  • membership of relevant boards;
  • related patents/applied-for patents;
  • gifts;
  • known relationships that will hinder impartiality (e.g., colleague, family, mentor, previous supervisor/student);
  • political, religious, ideological interests;
  • commercial interests.

Competing interests covering at least the previous five years should generally be declared. For example, if a reviewer supervised the author's PhD (and if they feel comfortable reviewing the work), then their professional relationship should have ended over five years ago. This is a minimum requirement, and individuals must declare if they have had a previous relationship with someone/an organization relevant to the submission that could be deemed to influence decision-making.

For authors:

Please place the Competing Interests section at the end of the manuscript, immediately before the bibliography. The authors' initials should be used to denote differing competing interests. For example:

"XX completed paid consultancy work for [company name] as part of the data acquisition for this study. YY has minority shares in [company name], which part-funded the research grant for this project. ZZ is a member of the editorial board of [journal name] on a voluntary basis. All other authors have no competing interests."

If there are no competing interests, please add the statement below:

"The authors declare that they have no competing interests."

For reviewers:

If you have any competing interests, please list them in the text box available on your reviewer page. For example:

"I was previously employed by the laboratory that collected this data."

If you have no competing interests, please add the statement below:

"I have no competing interests to declare."