Competing interest.

priority topic in many areas of professional and public life. It is also an important source of potential bias in the publication of scientific papers. A competing interest can have an effect at various stages of the decision making process, from the author to the peer reviewer or the editorial staff. According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors conflict of interest occurs ‘when a participant in the peer review and publication process—author, reviewer, or editor—has ties to activities that could inappropriately influence his or her judgment, whether or not judgment is in fact affected’.1,2 An important concept in this definition is that someone with a potential competing interest is not best placed to judge whether or not the competing interest has affected his or her judgement. In the production of a scientific journal it is therefore important to make declaring a potential competing interest an open process. This will develop and maintain public trust in the credibility of the outcomes of published papers. Failure to ensure this could ultimately lead to the promotion of clinical management that may not be in the best interest of patients. Discovery of an undisclosed potential competing interest could have a detrimental affect on the reputations of institutions, individual professionals, journal staff and the journal itself. With this in mind the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal made it a priority to establish a policy for the management of competing interest by the Journal. The Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) decided to adopt the term ‘competing interest’ as it avoids any implication of wrongdoing. A small working party was established to prepare a working paper on competing interest. From this