General
Authors are required to disclose all sources of institutional, private, and corporate financial support for their study. Donors of materials (e.g. chemicals, products, or services, for free or at a discount from current rates) should be named in the source of funding, and their location (town, state/county, country) included.

Other donors will be identified in the text. If no funding has been available other than that of the author’s institution, this should be specified upon submission. Authors are also required to disclose any potential conflict of interest. These include financial interests (for example patent, ownership, stock ownership, consultancies, speaker’s fee,) or provision of study materials by their manufacturer for free or at a discount from current rates.

Author’s conflict of interest (or information specifying the absence of conflicts of interest) and the sources of funding for the research if any will be published under a separate heading entitled “Conflict of Interest and Sources of Funding Statement”.

Authors
When authors submit a manuscript of any type or format they are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that might bias or be seen to bias their work.
Appropriate disclosures are made in three distinct sections of a manuscript:

Acknowledgments, Funding, and Disclosures. The distinctions between these sections are described below.

All sources of funding for the research reported, including direct and indirect financial support, the supply of equipment or materials, in-kind support (e.g., optical design/manufacturing), and other support (such as specialist statistical or writing assistance) should be disclosed in the manuscript. Specific sources of government, foundation, or commercial grants or awards, including identifiers if available, should be listed in a separate Funding section for each author. Other sources of relevant research funding may be listed in an Acknowledgments section.

All relevant commercial relationships which occurred or extended within 12 months preceding submission, and which relate to the content of the manuscript, should be disclosed for any authors who have such relationships. This should be done using the Commercial Relationships Disclosure Codes below, in a separate Disclosures section. Authors should list in the Disclosures section any additional conflicts of interest, financial or non-financial, dealing with the subject matter of the manuscript that editors, reviewers, or readers might reasonably expect to know or might otherwise affect the interpretation of the findings.
If there are no conflicts, the Disclosures section should include the following statement:

“The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest related to this article.”

It is the responsibility of the First or Corresponding Author to assure that each Co-author is aware of this Policy and to ensure that all required funding and disclosure information is included for all authors. Authors are expected to submit a Correction if a previously unrecognized conflict of interest is discovered after publication.