Conflict of Interest and Disclosure Policy

Virosa Publishing, is committed to maintaining the highest standards of integrity, transparency, and accountability in scholarly publishing. To ensure trust in the scientific process, all stakeholders (authors, reviewers, editors, and publishers) are required to disclose any potential conflicts of interest.

1. Definition of Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest exists when an individual’s personal, financial, professional, or academic relationships could inappropriately influence (or be perceived to influence) their work, judgment, or decision-making.

Conflicts may be:

  1. Financial: Employment, consultancy, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, research funding, or other financial benefits.
  2. Academic/Professional: Competition, collaboration, or rivalry between authors, reviewers, or editors.
  3. Personal: Relationships that could bias judgment (e.g., close friendships, family, adversarial relations).

2. Author Responsibilities

  1. Authors must declare all relevant conflicts of interest at the time of submission, including funding sources, institutional or corporate support, and any financial or non-financial relationships.
  2. A Funding Statement must be included in every article, specifying sources of research support.
  3. If no conflicts exist, authors must include a statement such as: “The authors declare no conflict of interest.”

3. Reviewer Responsibilities

  1. Authors must declare all relevant conflicts of interest at the time of submission, including funding sources, institutional or corporate support, and any financial or non-financial relationships.
  2. If a conflict exists, reviewers should decline the review request..
  3. Reviewers must not use any unpublished information from a manuscript for personal advantage.

4. Editorial Responsibilities

  1. Editors may not make decisions on papers authored by themselves, colleagues from the same institution, or collaborators.
  2. Editors and editorial board members must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest.
  3. Editorial decisions must always be based solely on the scholarly merit of the work, independent of authors’ personal or financial interests.

5. Publisher Responsibilities

  1. Virosa ensures that conflict of interest disclosures are collected, verified and published transparently.
  2. The publisher commits to independent editorial decision making free from commercial or financial influence.

6. Handling Undisclosed Conflicts

  1. If an undisclosed conflict of interest is identified after submission or publication, the journal will investigate in accordance with COPE guidelines.
  2. Depending on the severity, actions may include: Publishing a correction or disclosure statement, Re-evaluating the peer review process and Retraction of the article if necessary.

7. Statement in Published Articles

Every published article will include:

  1. A Conflict of Interest Declaration provided by the authors.
  2. A Funding Statement, where applicable.