At the point of submission, each author should reveal any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated – including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition. When considering whether you should declare a conflicting interest or connection please consider the conflict of interest test: Is there any arrangement that would embarrass you or any of your co-authors if it was to emerge after publication and you had not declared it?

As part of the online submission process, corresponding authors are required to confirm whether they or their co-authors have any conflicts of interest to declare, and in the case of an existing conflict of interest that this is fully declared.

Authors should also include a Conflict of Interest statement in their submitted manuscript.

If the manuscript is published, Conflict of Interest information, including if none was declared, will be communicated in a statement in the published paper.