In The Ethics of Science, David Resnik describes conflict of interest in the following way: "A conflict of interest occurs when a person's personal or financial interests conflict with their [sic] professional or institutional obligations."

In the context of peer review, a conflict of interest may arise when a decision made in the peer review process could influence grant activities related the reviewers or their associates. Clearly, reviewers would not be asked by a federal granting agency to review a grant proposal on which their names or those of close colleagues appear. It is, however, the reviewers' responsibility to identify their colleagues, and, to some extent, it is the granting agency's responsibility to help sort out which colleagues are close enough that there may be cause for concern.

A conflict of interest may arise indirectly in the case of very limited funding sources. Suppose Mary Smith is asked to review five grant proposals out of a pool of thirty, and she is aware that the pool of thirty contains an application submitted by a close colleague. Even if that reviewer is not reviewing her colleague's application, she can still improve her colleague's chances at success by judging very harshly the applications she is responsible for. If her interest in promoting her colleague's career is especially strong, then she will have a conflict of interest in reviewing these five proposals even though they were not submitted by herself or her colleague.

Peer review is based on the assumption that experts in a given field are in the best position to evaluate the merits of proposals and papers in that field. At the same time, it is generally recognized that once individuals have become sufficiently well established that they are asked to be reviewers, they will also have developed relationships (both collegial and, possibly, competitive) with many others in the same field. It is not realistic to expect reviewers to have no direct or indirect connections to the authors of the proposals and papers they review. Therefore, rather than setting the goal to avoid all conflicts of interest, it is better to try to manage the conflicts in an appropriate way.

The first step in conflict of interest management is disclosure: it is important to disclose any relationship the reviewers may have that could either create a conflict of interest or create the appearance of a conflict of interest. If reviewers feel their objectivity may be compromised, then they should indicate that explicitly. Some agencies and journals will still want to see the reviews even if a conflict exists, but they will not rely as much on the conclusions drawn by those reviewers. If the reviewers do not believe their objectivity will be compromised, it is up to the person administering the review process to decide whether anything else needs to be done to manage the conflict.

EMU RCR Conflict of Interest Module