Conflict of Interest Policy

The OFP requires all participants in the peer review and publication process to disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest. Editors may use information disclosed in a conflict of interest and financial interest statements as a basis for editorial decisions.

Please refer to the OFP Policy Statement on Duality of Interest and submit the relevant conflict of interest statements with OFP’s mandatory Manuscript Submission Form.

In addition, for all manuscript submissions, regardless of article type, all authors should include conflict of interest statements in both the comments to the editors at the time of submission and within the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript itself. If authors have no relevant conflicts of interest to disclose, this should also be indicated in both sections. Examples of potential conflict of interest include:

  • Employment, membership on the board of directors, or any fiduciary relationship with a third party entity engaged in the development, manufacture, or sale of pharmaceutical or medical devices, supplies, or information;
  • Ownership of stock or receipt of honoraria, travel or meeting expenses, or consulting or review fees from a third-party entity, as described above;
  • Holding patents or receiving royalties related to the development of pharmaceutical or medical devices, supplies, or information;
  • Receipt of writing assistance, medicines, equipment, or administrative support from a third-party entity, as described above;
  • Membership on a scientific advisory panel or other standing scientific/medical committee; or
  • Receipt of payment or honoraria for author contributions or author designation.

Any other relationships that readers could perceive to have influenced, or that give the appearance of potentially influencing, the content of the submitted work.

Investigators must disclose potential conflicts of interest to study participants and should state in the manuscript whether they have done so.

If the study was sponsored by a third party, authors should describe the role of the study sponsor in study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing the report; and the decision to submit the report for publication. If the supporting source had no such involvement, the authors should so state. At the time of submission, OFP requires that the submitting author of a study funded by an agency with a proprietary or financial interest indicate that she/he had full access to all of the data in the study and takes complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. This author, unless otherwise specified, will be listed in the published version of the article as the "guarantor" of the study.

Please note that the editors may request a statistical analysis of all data by an independent biostatistician, and will decline to consider an article if a sponsor has asserted control over the authors’ right to publish.

Peer reviewers for OFP publications are required to disclose to editors any conflicts of interest that could bias their opinions of the manuscript. Likewise, the Editor and Associate Editors are required to recuse themselves of any final decision on manuscripts for which they may have personal or professional biases. In such cases, a different member of the Editorial Team, or an "Ad Hoc Editor" (e.g., a previous Editor-in-Chief of the journal), will be appointed to adjudicate the review of the manuscript and render a decision on the manuscript.

Authors are encouraged to provide editors with the names of people they feel should not be asked to review a manuscript because of potential conflicts of interest. Authors should explain their concerns in their comments to the editor at the time of submission; the editors will consider this information when determining who to invite to review the manuscript.