Nonfinancial conflict of interest in peer-review: Some notes for discussion

Figures & data

Table 1. Detectability of COIs among authors, editors, and reviewers.

	Authors	Editors	Peer-reviewers	Grant reviewers
Names of involved persons	Names are public	Names are public on a journal’s website although names of handling editors are not always listed alongside each published paper	Names are always known to handling editors, but only in open review to authors	Names are known to the funding administration. The names of panelists, but not reviewers, are sometimes shared with applicants
Disclosure statements	Disclosure statements often public although not necessarily complete	Disclosure statements are often publicly unavailable even for financial COI	Disclosure statements are often available only to editors	Disclosure statements are available only to the funding administration
Who and how can raise COI issues	-> A reader can discover and raise COI issues which if confirmed could lead to published corrections or retractions	-> A reader can discover and raise COI issues. This might lead to the firing of an editor and examination of the peer-review process of some articles (e.g., authored by the editor), but it seems unlikely the journal/publisher will go through all submissions handled by the editor	-> Authors can raise COI issues only if they know who reviewed their papers. However, even then a discussion about COI will be limited as authors cannot publicly reveal the names of reviewers and share the content of their reviews in full	-> The funding administration can search for possible COIs not reported by panelists and reviewers