Conflict of Interest Policy

IJICES seeks to ensure that editorial decisions are independent, impartial, and based on scholarly merit.

A conflict of interest is any financial, professional, institutional, personal, or other relationship that could reasonably be perceived as influencing an individual's judgment in the preparation, review, or publication of a manuscript.

Authors

Authors must disclose relevant financial relationships, employment, consultancy, funding, patents, personal relationships, institutional interests, and other circumstances that may affect the interpretation of their research. Where no relevant conflict exists, authors should provide an explicit declaration that no competing interests are reported.

Reviewers

Reviewers must disclose any relationship that could compromise their impartiality. They should decline assignments involving close personal or professional relationships, direct competition, financial interests, or other significant conflicts.

Editors

Editors must disclose relevant conflicts and must not make decisions on manuscripts where their impartiality could reasonably be questioned. Such manuscripts should be assigned to an independent editor.

Handling Disclosures

Conflict-of-interest declarations will be assessed by the editorial team. Where appropriate, relevant declarations will be published with the article.

Failure to disclose a material conflict may result in additional investigation and corrective action, including correction or retraction where justified.

The existence of a disclosed conflict does not automatically prevent publication; the journal evaluates whether the conflict has been appropriately managed.