Journal Policies on Ethics and Conflict of Interest

Ethics

The Society for Risk Analysis and Risk Analysis: An International Journal uphold integrity and ethical standards in our peer-reviewed scholarly publications as well as in the editorial and peer-review process. Through our publisher, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., we support best practices in ethics for scholarly publishing (read more here) and adhere to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Ethical Code. Questions about publication-related ethics should be addressed to the journal Editor-in-Chief, the Managing Editor, or to the immediate Past-President of the Society, who is designated by the SRA By-Laws to serve for one year as Chair of the SRA Publications Committee. Their names and contact information are located elsewhere at this website.

Competing Interests Disclosure Policy

Policy and Process:

Risk Analysis: An International Journal requires all authors of articles to disclose any and all funding sources for the work described in their manuscript and any other competing financial interests. The corresponding author needs to complete a series of questions as part of the online submission process, and should collect the information from all authors needed to respond to these questions prior to beginning the manuscript submission process. The online submission serves as the written certification (electronic signature) that the authors have fully disclosed any conflicts, and authors no longer need to fax signed forms to the Editorial Office. In addition to answering the questions during manuscript submission, the authors should include disclosure information in an acknowledgments section which will appear at the end of the paper, just before the references in final versions of accepted papers. Risk Analysis uses a blind review process in which author names and affiliations are not included on papers when they are submitted and reviewed. To maintain this blind review policy, the acknowledgments section should not be included on the submitted version of the manuscript. In a cover letter, the corresponding author should certify that the information for all authors’ disclosures is summarized in the acknowledgments section. Failure to accurately disclose the information stated on this form might result in a 3-year ban on publication for any author who fails to disclose accurately and a retraction of the article.

Guidance for Authors Answering Disclosure Questions:

The corresponding author must respond to the questions as part of the submission process. The questions relate to the following areas:

• Interest of Funding Source: The potential interest of the funding source should be stated, even if the author believes it is obvious from the listed organization name (e.g., “The ABC Panel is a consortium of manufacturers of Chemical X, which is the subject of this article.”). If the funding source includes contributions from companies, partnerships such as law firms, or other entities that have a potential financial interest in the content of the article, the nature of this potential conflict should be described. Additionally, the name of the funding source should reflect the entity directly affected (or potentially affected) by the contents of the article (e.g., do not reference a parent company only if a subsidiary is the potentially affected entity or vice versa).
• Authors as Employees of Funding Source: Is the author a paid employee of any organization who provided funding for this submission? If so, the author’s affiliations listed on the publication must explicitly identify this relationship. If the potential interest of the entity is not obvious, it should be elaborated upon. For authors who are employed by consulting firms, contract research laboratories, or other types of entities that receive funding from multiple governmental, non-profit, and/or industrial entities, it is not necessary to list all funding sources of your employer, provided that the preparation of the article and underlying work was not directly supported by another entity.
• Partial Funding: If an entity only provided partial funding for the study, the funding source should still be disclosed, although the partial nature of the funding can be noted. As an example, if an entity provided funding for the study, but not the actual production of the journal article, or vice versa, the funding source should still be disclosed.
• Expert Witness Services: If you are an expert witness or anticipate being an expert witness on topics related to the content of your article, you should disclose this by briefly describing the connection of the article with the case(s) in which you are an expert witness or anticipate being an expert witness. If the work was funded directly by an entity with an interest or involvement in litigation, the entity should be explicitly identified as a funding source.
• Human Studies: For research that includes human subjects, you need to note that appropriate approvals were obtained for the ethical use of human subjects.
• Treatment of Animals: For research that includes animal subjects, you need to note that appropriate approvals were obtained for the ethical use of animal subjects.