1. What counts as a conflict of interest

A conflict of interest exists when a secondary interest could reasonably be thought to influence judgement about the work — whether or not it actually does. The test is not whether the person feels impartial, but whether an informed reader would want to know about the interest.

Financial interests

• Employment, consultancy, honoraria, speaker fees, expert-witness fees, or paid advisory roles.
• Research funding, grants, or contracts, including funding that paid for part of the study.
• Supply in kind from a party with a commercial interest in the material studied — donated plant material, standardised extracts, isolated compounds, finished herbal preparations, supplements, reference standards, reagents, test kits, or analytical services.
• Ownership of shares, options, or any equity in a company that produces, distributes, cultivates, or sells the plant, extract, preparation, or product examined, or a competing one.
• Patents, patent applications, plant-variety protection, or royalties relating to an extract, formulation, isolation or extraction method, dosage form, or indication reported in the manuscript.
• Ownership of or a financial interest in a pharmacy, dispensary, clinic, herbal-medicine practice, plantation, or manufacturing facility that stands to benefit from the findings.
• Payment for writing, editorial, statistical, language, or translation assistance, and any involvement of a medical-writing agency.

Non-financial interests

• Unpaid roles: membership of an advisory board, association, professional body, regulator, standards committee, or herbal pharmacopoeia committee relevant to the subject.
• Personal, family, or close professional relationships with the authors, reviewers, or editors concerned.
• Academic competition: work in direct competition on the same plant, compound, or indication, or a published position the manuscript supports or contradicts.
• Institutional interest, including pressure to demonstrate the value of a local commodity, a regional plant, a flagship product, or an institutional patent.
• Strongly held commitments for or against a therapeutic tradition, a regulatory position, or a product class, where these could colour the assessment.
• Obligations arising from access to traditional knowledge or genetic resources, including benefit-sharing arrangements and agreements with a community or knowledge holder.

2. The period to be declared

Declare every relevant interest held during the conduct of the work and in the 36 months before submission, following the ICMJE recommendation. Interests that arise while the manuscript is under consideration must be reported as soon as they arise. Where an interest predates that period but is still material — a patent still in force, continuing royalties, an equity holding — it must be declared regardless of when it began.

3. Obligations of authors

• Every author completes a declaration at submission, in the manuscript and in the cover letter. The corresponding author is responsible for collecting the declarations of all co-authors and confirms that each has been consulted.
• A nil declaration is still a declaration. Where no author has any interest to declare, the manuscript states: “The authors declare no conflict of interest.” Silence is not accepted.
• All funding is named: funder, programme, and grant or contract number, or a statement that the work received no external funding. Where a funder has a commercial interest in the material studied, state the role it had — or did not have — in design, conduct, analysis, interpretation, writing, and the decision to submit.
• The declaration published with the article is the one the authors supply. Authors are responsible for its accuracy and completeness.
• Where the authors are uncertain whether something must be declared, declare it and let the editor decide. No manuscript has ever been declined for declaring too much.

4. Obligations of reviewers

• A reviewer must examine the manuscript for conflicts before accepting the invitation and must decline where an interest exists that would make the assessment, or its appearance, unsound.
• Grounds for declining include: work in direct competition on the same plant, extract, compound, or indication; a current or recent collaboration, co-authorship, supervisory relationship, or shared institution with any author; a financial interest in a product or a competitor; and any personal relationship that would make a dispassionate reading difficult.
• Where an interest is real but may be manageable, the reviewer discloses it to the editor and lets the editor decide, rather than deciding alone.
• A reviewer must not use the manuscript, its data, its plant material, or its methods for any purpose of their own, and must not delay a review to gain advantage for competing work.
• Reviewers do not contact the authors directly about the manuscript, and do not use the review to press for citation of their own work. Coercive citation is treated as misconduct under the Research Misconduct policy.

5. Obligations of editors and the editorial board

• An editor who has any interest in a manuscript recuses from it entirely: the Editor-in-Chief reassigns the manuscript to an editor with no interest, and the recused editor has no access to the reviewer identities, the reports, or the decision.
• Editors do not handle manuscripts from their own institution, their current or recent collaborators, their students or supervisors, or their family members.
• Editors may not use information obtained while handling a manuscript — unpublished data, a plant source, an analytical method, a hypothesis — in their own work or share it with anyone.
• Editors and board members declare their own interests to the journal on appointment and update the declaration when it changes.
• Editorial decisions are made on scholarly and ethical grounds alone. Neither the publisher, nor the collaborating institution, nor APC revenue, nor any sponsor influences a decision; see Publisher and Editorial Governance.

6. Submissions from editors, board members, and reviewers

Members of the editorial team and the reviewer panel may submit their own work to EHI, and it is assessed by the same standard as any other manuscript. The following safeguards apply and are recorded in the submission file:

• The submission is assigned to an editor who is independent of the author and who was not involved in appointing them.
• The Editor-in-Chief’s own submissions are handled in full by another senior editor, who takes the final decision.
• Reviewers are selected from outside the author’s institution and outside their immediate collaborative circle.
• The author has no access, at any point, to the identity of the reviewers or to the editorial correspondence concerning their manuscript.

7. Publication of declarations

The conflict-of-interest statement and the funding statement are published in every article, in full and without editing for presentation. They are part of the version of record. A reader who finds a declaration unclear or incomplete may write to eureka.herba.indonesia@gmail.com, and the journal will seek clarification from the authors and, where necessary, publish a correction.

8. Undeclared interests

An interest that emerges after submission, acceptance, or publication is examined under the procedure in the Publication Ethics policy, following the applicable COPE flowchart. The authors are asked for an explanation and given the opportunity to respond before any finding is recorded. Depending on the evidence and the stage, the journal may:

• require the declaration to be completed before the manuscript proceeds;
• decline the manuscript;
• publish a correction amending the declaration — the ordinary outcome where the omission was an oversight;
• publish an expression of concern while an institutional inquiry is unresolved, or retract the article where the undeclared interest is material to the findings;
• notify the authors’ institution and the funder, and decline further submissions from those responsible.

The response is proportionate. An honest omission is corrected; deliberate concealment of a material interest is not treated as an oversight.

9. Standards followed

This policy applies the ICMJE Recommendations on disclosure of financial and non-financial relationships, the COPE Core Practices, and the requirements of Indonesian national journal accreditation.

Dibaca bersama Publication Ethics, Authorship, Peer Review and Editorial Process, Research Misconduct, Article Processing Charges, dan Ownership and Management Information. Kebijakan ini ditinjau sekurang-kurangnya sekali setahun.