Conflict of interest in scientific publications
We often speak of conflicts of interest in the rules of publishers, but we do not cite the following case.
If the author and the reviewer are specialized in the same field and the author proposes a new method better than that of the reviewer (who, as the author himself published another method before), the reviewer will have an interest in refusing the article that competes with his. This situation can happen because the editor generally chooses the reviewer with a scientific profile close to the author. How can the author defend himself in such a situation?
Editors should avoid selecting external peer reviewers with obvious potential conflicts of interest, for example, those who work in the same department or institution as any of the authors. Authors often provide editors with the names of persons they feel should not be asked to review a manuscript because of potential conflicts of interest, usually professional. Where possible, authors should be asked to explain or justify their concerns - this information is important to editors in deciding whether to honor such requests.
https://www.elsevier.com/editors/perk/reviewer-bias-or-competitive-harmful-acts-by-reviewers
Yes I think it is very clear from the article"Reviewer bias or competitive harmful acts by reviewers" referred by @Manal Hadi Kanaan
I do not know how often it occurs. When I review material from professional sources, potential conflicts of interest are often not cited.
Rich
Dear Mr Kensinger
Neither editors, nor reviewers, nor authors are angels. Sometimes the reviewer has really bad intentions. This shows in the formatting of the report and has vague and fallacious arguments intended to convince more the editor than the author, whereas normally he must attack the author on precise points of his work.
In other words, he takes advantage of the fact that the editor is not a specialist in the field to "convince" the editor to refuse the article.
In Elsevier's rules, it is mentioned that the reviewer must not be from the same institution as one of the authors. I will not classify this as a conflict of interest but as a possible complicity in order to "get" the paper.
There is also question of the misappropriation of the author's work by the reviewer. This is not a matter of conflict of interest but of simple theft. To protect yourself from this kind of problem, you just have to put the publication in arXiv.
No, the conflict of interest lies above all in the fact that a publication can call into question other publications including those of reviewers-authors or even those of working groups. The argument that this kind of situation is rare means in fact that nothing can be done against that.
There is already a conflict of interest between the author and the journal when submitting an article. Some journals allow a lot of time (up to 6 months or more before making a decision) that goes against the interests of the author. During this time they oblige the author not to submit elsewhere whereas normally after a period of 2 months this convention should not be valid any more. So we can say that there is a conflict of interest between 2 parties if:
1) One party decides the fate of the other.
2) If the 2 parties have opposing interests during a decision or a process.
I think that reviewer must provide solids arguments to its comment, especially when the latter go against the methodology or the principal results
Conflict of interest is a common phenomenon. You can always opt for your papers no to be sent to reviewers having conflict of interest.
Dear Tapas Chakrabarty,
Generally we don't know the reviewer when we submit a paper.
That's why there is always the option in good journals either to provide names of potential reviewers as well as not to be sent for review to xyz..
The problem is that when you submit names of reviewers, one could think that these reviewers can be "your accomplices" and that the review will not be very "neutral".
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