Configure the Conflict of Interest File Designation in Author Portal

Configure the Conflict of Interest file designation in your journal configuration to reflect how submitters should provide the required information.

About this task

When creating a new journal configuration, the Conflict of Interest file designation is included by default.

Previously, to prompt submitters to disclose a conflict of interest during submission, you had to add the relevant additional information question in Edit journal > Additional Information. This additional information question has been removed from Author Portal and replaced with the relevant file designation.

Note: Journal configurations that were published prior to the above change have been automatically migrated so that they now include the conflict of interest as a file designation and not an additional information question. Journal configurations that were in draft state when the change occurred will need to be manually updated.

Procedure

  1. In the Edit journal > File Designations tab, click Edit for the Conflict of Interest file designation.
  2. In the File type restrictions (instruction) field, specify the instruction text that will inform submitters of the allowed conflict of interest file types for the journal.
    Note: This field specifies only the text displayed to the submitter. It does not configure Author Portal to validate the types of the submitted files. Author Portal supports all file types for the conflict of interest. For example, if you specify in this field that the journal accepts conflict of interest files only in MS Word and RTF formats, the submitter will be able to upload a PDF without error.
  3. Under Conflict of Interest configuration, specify how submitters should provide conflict of interest information in regard to the following options:
    • Whether the submitter should provide a single conflict of interest file per submission, or, if applicable, one file per author.
    • Whether the journal requires a conflict of interest statement to be provided with every submission, or only for those where this is a conflict of interest to disclose.
    • Whether, in addition to the conflict of interest file, authors should also include a conflict of interest section in their manuscript file.
    Author Portal will automatically update the Instruction text based on the selected configuration.
  4. Click Save.

Results

When the journal configuration is published, submitters will be prompted to upload one or more conflict of interest files, depending on your selected configuration, during the Upload Manuscript > Required Files stage of the submission process.