Authors will be responsible for recognizing and reporting possible conflicts of personal, academic, political, financial, commercial, and/or associative nature related to the material used in the work or others that may influence them, declaring the existence or absence of such conflicts in the Declaration of authorship and responsibility at the time of submission. Reviewers must also inform the editor of any conflict that may influence or impede their evaluations, as well as editors.

The existence or absence of conflicts of interest will be disclosed at the end of the published article, along with all sources of financial support used for the research.

Following the ethics policy mentioned above, if a conflict of interest is identified during the editorial process, RIAL will proceed as follows:

• Authorship: If a potential conflict of interest is identified during the review phase or after the acceptance of the manuscript, the editorial team will contact the authors for clarification and, if confirmed, will request an update on the existence of the conflict in the Declaration of authorship and responsibility. If there is refusal to disclose or correct a conflict, the manuscript will be rejected.
• Reviewers: If a reviewer fails to declare a conflict of interest, the review of the article will be invalidated, and the reviewer in question may be removed from the journal's reviewer pool for future analyses. In this case, the manuscript will be re-evaluated by another reviewer.
• Editors: If an editor is involved in a conflict of interest, the manuscript will be reassigned to another editor to ensure that the editorial decision is made impartially. The editor involved in the conflict will not take part in the evaluation or final decision regarding the article.

If a relevant conflict of interest is identified after the publication of an article, RIAL will take the following actions:

• If the conflict of interest did not impact the article, the journal will publish an explanatory note regarding the situation.
• If the conflict of interest affected the results or conclusions of the study, the journal will publish a correction and, if necessary, the retraction of the article.

Anyone identifying a possible conflict of interest related to a published article should notify the editorial team of RIAL.