Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest exists when a financial, professional or personal relationship could influence, or appear to influence, the objectivity of research, review or editorial decisions. Advance Sustainable Science, Engineering and Technology (ASSET) requires all parties in the publication process to disclose any potential conflict of interest.

Authors

• Authors must declare all financial and non-financial interests that could be seen to influence the work (e.g. funding, employment, consultancy, stock ownership, patents, personal relationships).
• Every manuscript must include a Conflict of Interest (Declaration of Competing Interests) statement before the References. If there is none, write: "The authors declare no conflict of interest."
• All sources of funding must be stated in the Acknowledgements/Funding section.

Reviewers

• Reviewers must decline or inform the Editor if they have a conflict of interest with the manuscript, e.g. a close collaboration, competition, or personal or institutional relationship with the authors.
• Reviewers must not use unpublished information from a manuscript for their own advantage.

Editors

• Editors must not handle manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest, including manuscripts from their own close colleagues or students.
• Manuscripts submitted by members of the editorial team are handled by another editor, and the submitting editor is excluded from all decisions on that manuscript.

Failure to disclose a conflict of interest may be treated as misconduct (see Research Misconduct).