1. What counts as a conflict of interest
A conflict of interest exists where a secondary interest could reasonably be thought to influence judgement about the work — whether or not it actually does. The test is not whether the person feels impartial, but whether an informed reader would want to know about the interest.
Financial interests
- Employment, consultancy, honoraria, speaker or training fees, expert-witness fees, or paid advisory roles.
- Research funding, grants and contracts, including funding that paid for part of the fieldwork, the survey, the enumerators, or the transcription.
- Commissioned and contract research. Where the study evaluates a programme, policy, institution or company that commissioned or paid for the work, this must be declared whatever the finding, together with whether the commissioning body had any right of review over the manuscript.
- Funding from a ministry, provincial or district government, agency, or donor whose own programme or policy is the object of the study.
- Ownership of, or a financial interest in, a company, consultancy, survey firm, school, training provider, cooperative or foundation that stands to benefit from the findings.
- Payment for writing, editorial, statistical, translation or language assistance, and any involvement of a writing agency.
Non-financial interests
- Unpaid positions: office in a professional association, political party, campaign, religious body, trade union, NGO, community organisation, or a government advisory board relevant to the subject.
- Dual roles in the field. Studying an organisation, programme or community in which the author is an employee, official, member, consultant, or has a position of authority — a teacher studying their own students, a manager studying their own staff, an official evaluating their own unit. The relationship and the safeguards adopted must be described.
- Conditions attached to field access: an agreement with a gatekeeper, community leader, agency, or institution that limits what may be asked, recorded, or published.
- A publicly declared position on a contested social, political, religious or policy question that the manuscript addresses.
- Academic competition or a theoretical commitment that the manuscript defends or attacks, and rivalry with the authors of work under discussion.
- Institutional interest, including pressure to produce a favourable evaluation of a local government programme, a flagship institutional project, or a funder’s initiative.
- Personal, family or close professional relationships with the authors, reviewers or editors concerned.
2. The period to be declared
Declare every relevant interest held during the conduct of the work and in the 36 months before submission, following the ICMJE recommendation. Interests arising while the manuscript is under consideration must be reported as soon as they arise. An interest that predates that period but remains material — a continuing advisory role, an equity holding, an unexpired contract — is declared regardless of when it began.
3. Obligations of authors
- Every author completes a declaration at submission, in the manuscript and in the cover letter. The corresponding author collects the declarations of all co-authors and confirms that each has been consulted.
- A nil declaration is still a declaration. Where no author has anything to declare, the manuscript states: “The authors declare no conflict of interest.” Silence is not accepted.
- All funding is named: funder, programme, and grant or contract number, or a statement that the work received no external funding. Where the funder has an interest in the subject, state its role — or lack of role — in design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, writing, and the decision to submit, and state whether it had any right to review or approve the manuscript.
- Where the authors hold a dual role in the setting studied, describe it and the safeguards used: who collected the data, how voluntary participation was protected where a power relationship existed, and how the analysis guarded against the authors’ own interest in the outcome.
- Authors are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the declaration published with the article. Where there is doubt, declare it and let the editor decide; no manuscript has ever been declined for declaring too much.
4. Obligations of reviewers
- A reviewer examines the manuscript for conflicts before accepting the invitation and declines where an interest exists that would make the assessment, or its appearance, unsound.
- Grounds for declining include: work in direct competition on the same question, population or field site; a current or recent collaboration, co-authorship, supervisory relationship or shared institution with any author; a role in the organisation, programme or policy being evaluated; a financial interest in the outcome; and any personal relationship that would make a dispassionate reading difficult.
- Where an interest is real but may be manageable, the reviewer discloses it to the editor and lets the editor decide, rather than deciding alone.
- A reviewer must not use the manuscript, its data, its instrument, its coding frame or its field site for any purpose of their own, and must not delay a review to gain advantage for competing work.
- Reviewers do not contact the authors directly about the manuscript and do not use the review to press for citation of their own work. Coercive citation is itself misconduct; see Plagiarism Policy.
5. Obligations of editors and the editorial board
- An editor with any interest in a manuscript recuses from it entirely: the Editor-in-Chief reassigns it to an editor with no interest, and the recused editor has no access to the reviewer identities, the reports, or the decision.
- Editors do not handle manuscripts from their own institution, their current or recent collaborators, their students or supervisors, or their family members, nor manuscripts concerning a body in which they hold office or an advisory role.
- Editors may not use information obtained while handling a manuscript — unpublished data, an instrument, a field site, a hypothesis — in their own work, or share it with anyone.
- Editors and board members declare their own interests to the journal on appointment and update the declaration when it changes.
- Editorial decisions rest on scholarly and ethical grounds alone. Neither the publisher, nor the collaborating institution, nor APC revenue, nor any sponsor influences a decision; see Ownership and Management Information.
6. Submissions from editors, board members and reviewers
Members of the editorial team and the reviewer panel may submit their own work to OAIJSS, and it is assessed by the same standard as any other manuscript. The following safeguards apply and are recorded in the submission file:
- The submission is assigned to an editor independent of the author, who was not involved in appointing them.
- The Editor-in-Chief’s own submissions are handled in full by another senior editor, who takes the final decision.
- Reviewers are selected from outside the author’s institution and immediate collaborative circle.
- The author has no access, at any point, to the reviewers’ identities or to the editorial correspondence concerning their manuscript.
7. Publication of declarations
The conflict-of-interest statement and the funding statement are published in every article, in full, as part of the version of record. A reader who finds a declaration unclear or incomplete may write to indonesiajournalsocialsciences@gmail.com; the journal will seek clarification from the authors and, where necessary, publish a correction.
8. Undeclared interests
An interest that emerges after submission, acceptance or publication is examined under the procedure in the Publication Ethics policy, following the applicable COPE flowchart. The authors are asked for an explanation and given the opportunity to respond before any finding is recorded. Depending on the evidence and the stage, the journal may require the declaration to be completed before the manuscript proceeds; decline the manuscript; publish a correction amending the declaration, which is the ordinary outcome where the omission was an oversight; publish an expression of concern while an institutional inquiry is unresolved; retract the article where the undeclared interest is material to the findings; or notify the authors’ institution and funder and decline further submissions from those responsible.
The response is proportionate. An honest omission is corrected; deliberate concealment of a material interest is not treated as an oversight.
9. Standards followed
This policy applies the ICMJE Recommendations on disclosure of financial and non-financial relationships, the COPE Core Practices, and the requirements of Indonesian national journal accreditation. It is reviewed at least once a year.
Read together with Publication Ethics, Authorship, Peer Review Process, Plagiarism Policy, AI Policy and Ownership and Management Information.