Editors' declaration of their own conflicts of interest

Abstract

Editors of high-impact biomedical journals have indicated that it is unacceptable for editors to have financial interests in commercial companies,3 and a few editorials have described journal policies regarding editors' conflicts of interests.4^,5^,6 However, editorial conflicts of interest can operate on many levels beyond financial interest: editors may entertain a dislike for certain authors; an author's work may compete with or contradict an editor's own work in the same field; or an editor, having decided not to publish a particular author's submission, may be tempted to pursue the same idea with others deemed to be more capable.