Conflicts of Interest and Funding

Authors must disclose any financial or non-financial conflicts of interest that could be perceived as influencing the work. Examples include employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership, paid expert testimony, patents or personal relationships. If there are no conflicts to declare, authors should explicitly state that there are no conflicts of interest.

Sources of funding must be fully disclosed, including the name of the funding body, grant numbers where applicable and the role of the funder in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, writing of the manuscript and decision to submit for publication. If the funder had no role, this should be stated clearly.