Failure to disclose competitive interests☆☆☆

For new papers accepted after July 1, 1999, the policy of the Journal of Vascular Surgery requires all authors to declare potential financial competitive interests in relationship to their manuscript (J Vasc Surg 1999;30:200-2). Establishing such a policy also deserves a statement regarding what action will be taken in the event of failure to comply with this requirement. The following is the Journal's position on failure to disclose competitive interests.

If an author ignores the requirement for disclosure, there may be several possible explanations. (1) The individual may not have been aware of the policies of the Journal. (2) The administrative practice of the office of the Journal may not have followed our clearly established routine of requesting the corresponding author to provide full disclosure for all authors. (3) The author may have mistakenly overlooked important financial support. (4) There may be self-deception (ie, the author may have believed that the financial interest had not influenced the opinions in the paper and therefore that the financial interests did not need to be disclosed). (5) The competitive interest may have been deliberately concealed.

Deliberately concealing a conflict of interest implies an intention to deceive, thus violating the trust of the reader and scientific community in the reliability of the journal. The reputation of the journal and those that rely on it may be harmed by breaching this trust.

If it is brought to the editors' attention that an author may have failed to make an appropriate disclosure, the editors will give the author the opportunity to explain. If a satisfactory explanation is not forthcoming, the editors will bring the issue to the attention of the author's institution for clarification. If the oversight can be explained as an honest mistake, as in the first three explanations above, a simple notation of the error will be published. If there was either self-deception or a deliberate attempt to conceal a significant financial competitive interest, the editors will conclude that this may represent an attempt to deceive and may be a violation of public and professional trust. The editors will publish a notation that the paper may be unreliable because the author did not meet the standards of honest disclosure of competitive interests required by the Journal.