Alignment Journal

Editorial policy

Conflict of interest

Last updated: 22 October 2026

This policy is adapted from NeurIPS and JMLR.

Editors

Editors (including action editors and senior editors) are responsible for recusing themselves from decisions when they have a conflict of interest, or where a reasonable third party would conclude one likely exists.

  • A conflicted editor should not act as a senior or action editor for the relevant submission.
  • Likewise, editors should recuse themselves from board decisions and appeals for which they are conflicted.

Conflicted editors may provide factual background if asked by non-conflicted editors.

Reviewers

Because they are not decision makers, reviewers must only declare conflicts of interest to the editor. The editor then can decide whether or not to enlist the reviewer’s help with this conflict in mind.

Advisory board

Members of the advisory board hold no decision-making role nor do they see review discussions to which they are uninvited, so a relationship between an advisor and an author does not, by itself, require any recusal or disqualify a submission or invitation. An advisor with a conflict should declare it when suggesting, endorsing, or commenting on a paper, and should not contact the paper's editors or reviewers in an attempt to apply informal pressure, which would be a breach of this policy. If an advisor acts as a reviewer, they declare conflicts like any other reviewer.

Criteria

The editors and reviewers must ultimately use good judgement, but as guidance a conflict of interest can arise from all of these:

  • Personal relationships
  • Professional incentives
  • Financial incentives

The following qualify as personal relationships that constitute a conflict of interest:

  • Family or close friend
  • Graduate advisee/advisor
  • Any other substantial collaboration in the past three years

If an editor or reviewer could plausibly receive benefits or face repercussions from their employer due to the outcome of (or their participation in) a journal decision, this constitutes a conflict of interest.

Co-authoring a paper with many authors (more than ten, as a rough guide) does not by itself count as substantial collaboration, but it does count if both people were lead or core authors.