Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

A conflict of interest may exist when an author (or the author's institution or employer) has financial or personal relationships or affiliations that could influence the author's decisions or work on the manuscript. All sources of financial support should be disclosed. All authors are required to identify all relevant financial interests and relationships or financial conflicts (e.g., employment/affiliation, grants or funding, consultancies, stock ownership or options, royalties, or patents filed, received, or pending), particularly those present at the time the research was conducted and through publication, as well as other financial interests that represent potential future financial gain.

The disclosure of funding should be indicated in the Acknowledgments section within the manuscript.

The ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form should be filled in and submitted by corresponding author to disclose a potential conflict of interest. The journal's Editorial Board determines cases of a potential conflict of interest of the editors, authors, or reviewers within the scope of COPE and ICMJE guidelines.

Financial relations are the most easily identified conflicts of interest, and it is inevitable that they will undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and the science. These conflicts can be caused by individual relations, academic competition, or intellectual approaches. The authors should refrain as much as possible from making agreements with sponsors in the opinion of gaining profit or any other advantage that restrict their ability to access all data of the study or analyze, interpret, prepare, and publish their articles. Editors should refrain from bringing together those who may have any relationship between them during the evaluation of the studies. The editors, who make the final decision about the articles, should not have any personal, professional, or financial ties with any of the issues they are going to decide. Authors should inform the editorial board concerning potential conflicts of interest to ensure that their articles will be evaluated within the framework of ethical principles through an independent assessment process.

If one of the editors is an author in any manuscript, the editor is excluded from the manuscript evaluation process. In order to prevent any conflict of interest, the article evaluation process is carried out as double-blinded. Because of the double-blinded evaluation process, except for the Editor-in-Chief, none of the editorial board members, international advisory board members, or reviewers is informed about the authors of the manuscript or institutions of the authors.

Conflict of Interest
The declaration of the conflict of interest between authors, institutions, acknowledgement of any financial or material support, aid is mandatory for authors submitting a manuscript, and the statement should appear at the end of the manuscript. Reviewers are required to report if any potential conflict of interest exists between the reviewer and authors, institutions.