Any member of the committee (the editor-in-chief, members of the editorial board, peer
reviewers) will withdraw in case of conflict of interest in regards to the author or the content of the
paper submitted. According to COPE, specific types of conflict are the following:

1) Personal Conflicts. No editor can make a decision on manuscripts that are submitted by their
departments, research collaborators or co-authors. In case they submit their own manuscript,
then, a full masking of the process is ensured, meaning that the editor will not be aware of the
identity of the reviewers and that she/he will not have access to the records of the manuscript.
2) Direct of Indirect Financial Conflicts. These include all the cases that the editors/reviewers might
have a direct financial gain or indirect financial gain (e.g. influencing to get an award, biased
judgment due to previous payments by a commercial enterprise).
3) Non Financial conflicts. This type of conflict refers to all the personal, political, academic and
religious conflicts.