Conflict of Interest

Many Elsevier journals, and those we publish on behalf of learned societies, already have a policy on Conflicts of Interest for their authors. In the next few months Elsevier will be implementing a policy across all of its remaining journals, requiring journal author's to make a declaration about potential conflicts of interest. These declarations will appear in the body of the published article.  Elsevier will also be inviting the Societies with whom they work with to adopt the policy for their journals.

Your publishing contact will be in touch with you shortly with more details of the implementation schedule and the practical implications of the policy for you and the journal you edit. You do not need to take any action at this point, but for your information here is the text of the policy.

Elsevier Guidelines with regard to Conflict of Interest

Glossary of Terms

All editors have an obligation to understand issues of publication ethics, to develop appropriate policies for their journals, and to be able to explain these to authors, reviewers and other editors. Faith McLellan, North American Senior Editor for The Lancet, who has studied medical humanities and ethics, is co-editor of,   Ethical Issues in Biomedical Publication  (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), and has just completed a year as President of the Council of Science Editors, has compiled a glossary of terms to assist Editors in their understanding of the terminology. 

Publication Ethics Glossary

Ethics in Publishing

Authors making new submissions to EES are required to accept Elsevier’s guidelines concerning ethics in publishing. The author is requested to read the guidelines in a pop-up window and needs to tick a checkbox to accept these instructions. This means Editors no longer have to check if authors have agreed to these guidelines – only authors who have agreed to the guidelines will be able to submit papers.

Ethics in Publishing