Conflicts of Interest / Competing Interests Policy

Policy Statement

Jurnal Pertahanan dan Bela Negara is committed to ensuring transparency, objectivity, and academic integrity in all published research. A conflict of interest (also referred to as a competing interest) arises when personal, financial, professional, political, or institutional relationships could influence, or reasonably be perceived to influence, the conduct, evaluation, or publication of scholarly work.

To preserve public trust and scientific integrity, all participants in the publication process—including authors, peer reviewers, editors, and editorial staff—must declare any actual, potential, or perceived conflicts of interest.

1. Requirements for Authors

All authors must explicitly disclose any financial or non-financial relationships that could bias their research or findings:

• Financial Conflicts: Research funding, grants, honoraria, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, expert testimony, or patent applications/registrations related to the topic of the manuscript.
• Non-Financial Conflicts: Personal or professional relationships, political affiliations, institutional memberships, or strong ideological commitments that may influence the interpretation of results.
• Funding Statement: Authors must declare all sources of funding and briefly state the funder's role in the study design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or manuscript preparation.
• Declaration Location: Authors must include a formal Conflict of Interest Statement before the Reference section of their manuscript.

Example (If no conflicts exist):
"The authors declare that they have no competing financial or non-financial interests that could have influenced the work reported in this paper."

2. Requirements for Peer Reviewers

Peer reviewers play a critical role in maintaining editorial rigor and must uphold strict impartiality:

• Reviewers must decline review invitations if they have a known financial, institutional, personal, or collaborative relationship with any of the authors.
• Reviewers must notify the handling editor immediately if a conflict of interest becomes apparent during the review process.
• Reviewers must not use unpublished information or insights gained from reviewing a manuscript for personal advantage or to disadvantage the authors.

3. Requirements for Editors and Board Members

Editors and editorial board members must maintain strict independence and recuse themselves from decisions where conflicts exist:

• Recusal: An editor who has a personal, institutional, financial, or academic relationship with an author or subject matter must recuse themselves from handling the manuscript.
• Editor-Authored Submissions: Submissions by editors, Editorial Board members, or guest editors are assigned to an Independent Handling Editor. Conflicted editors are completely recused from the review workflow and editorial decision-making.
• A transparent statement detailing the independent editorial process will be published alongside any accepted editor-authored paper.

4. Post-Publication Undisclosed Conflicts

If an undisclosed conflict of interest is identified after an article has been published, the journal will investigate the matter using relevant COPE flowcharts. If the undisclosed conflict is