The presence of competing interests cannot be the reason for manuscript rejection, but the participants in the manuscript preparation for publication (author, editor, peer-reviewer, publisher) should inform the Editorial Office about the potential reasons for conflict of interest. Authors should disclose financial or other existing competing interests that might be construed as affecting the presented results and/or conclusions.

The authors have the right to indicate in the cover letter the names of those experts, who, in their opinion, should not be sent the manuscript for review due to a potential conflict of interest. This information is strictly confidential and is taken into account by the editors when organizing the review.

Any peer-reviewer or editor who has conflict of interest must decline to review this manuscript.

The editors consider any received signal about a violation of publication ethics and draw up a reasoned decision based on interaction with all participants in the preparation and publication of this work either on the signal fallacy, or on the measures on prompt elimination of this violation, up to retraction of the published article.