Conflicts & AI Policy

Conflicts of Interest & AI Policy

Conflicts of interest

All authors, editors and reviewers must declare any actual or potential conflicts of interest that could be perceived to influence the work.

Examples of declarable conflicts

  • Financial relationships (employment, consultancy, grants, stock ownership) with organisations related to the research subject
  • Personal relationships (family, close friendships, recent collaborations)
  • Intellectual or ideological commitments that may bias the analysis
  • Institutional affiliations that may be perceived as biasing

Disclosure procedure

  • A conflict-of-interest statement is required in the manuscript before submission
  • If no conflicts exist, the authors must state: "The authors declare no conflicts of interest"
  • Reviewers and editors recuse themselves where conflicts arise

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools

The conference follows current international guidance (WAME, COPE, ICMJE) on the use of generative AI in scholarly work.

Permitted uses

  • Language editing and proofreading assistance
  • Suggestions for clarity, grammar and style
  • Literature search and reference discovery (results must be verified by the author)
  • Statistical software automation under author supervision

Prohibited uses

  • Listing AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Llama) as authors
  • Use of AI to generate fabricated data, references or results
  • Use of AI to compose substantial portions of original research analysis without disclosure
  • Use of AI to evade plagiarism detection

Disclosure of AI use

If generative AI tools were used in any aspect of the manuscript preparation beyond minor language editing, authors must:

  • Disclose the tool name, version and date used
  • Describe the specific task it was used for
  • Confirm human review and verification of all AI-generated output

The disclosure must appear in the Methods section or in a dedicated "Use of Generative AI" statement.

Reviewer use of AI

Reviewers are not permitted to upload manuscripts or any part of them to external AI systems, as this would breach the confidentiality of the peer review process.