IEEE Conflict of Interest Disclosure

IEEE conflict of interest (COI) disclosure refers to the author- and reviewer-facing conflict-of-interest rules IEEE applies across its journals, transactions, magazines, and conferences, set out through IEEE Author Center guidance and the editorial policies of individual IEEE technical societies. It is distinct from a generic conflict-of-interest disclosure in two ways specific to IEEE's editorial process: IEEE defines a conflict along three tiers -- actual, perceived, and potential -- rather than a single financial-interest dollar threshold, and IEEE devolves the operational specifics (what a reviewer must disclose, how far back a prior collaboration counts, how long a mentorship cooling-off period lasts) to the sponsoring technical society or specific journal rather than fixing one uniform disclosure form across all of IEEE, the same way the specific mechanics of IEEE's peer-review model are set at the society level rather than uniformly.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 23 Jul 2026

Worked examples

Is an instance

An author submitting to an IEEE transactions journal discloses consulting income received from a company whose product is evaluated in the manuscript, per that journal's specific instructions for authors.

Is an instance

A reviewer declines an assignment to evaluate a manuscript from a former student they supervised and last co-authored with two years earlier, consistent with the recusal categories IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering (TBME)/EMBS applies to reviewers.

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance

A reviewer shares a broad subfield and a publication venue with a manuscript's author, but has never collaborated with, supervised, or held any personal or financial relationship with that author -- this alone is not a conflict under IEEE's framework, and the reviewer proceeds with the assignment.

IEEE publishes conflict-of-interest guidance for authors, reviewers, and editors through the IEEE Author Center’s Submission and Peer Review Policies (with parallel pages for conferences and magazines) and through the editorial policies of individual IEEE technical societies. This is a narrower, IEEE-specific layer on top of the general concept covered in CASRAI’s Conflict of Interest (COI) in Research entry and the funding-side Significant Financial Interest (SFI) entry — this page is about how IEEE specifically defines and operationalizes COI in its editorial process, not the general research-integrity concept those two entries cover.

What IEEE means by a conflict of interest

IEEE defines a conflict of interest as any situation, transaction, or relationship in which someone’s decisions or actions could materially affect that individual’s professional, personal, financial, or business concerns. IEEE’s guidance recognizes three tiers rather than a single bright-line test: an actual conflict (a direct, present conflict), a perceived conflict (one a reasonable third party could conclude creates a risk of undue influence, whether or not it actually does), and a potential conflict (one that could arise from an individual’s responsibilities to IEEE). This three-tier framing applies to authors, reviewers, and editors alike, though the practical consequence differs by role: authors are expected to disclose, while reviewers and editors with a conflict are expected to recuse themselves from that manuscript’s evaluation entirely.

Author disclosure

For authors, IEEE’s published policy is that a conflict of interest relevant to the submitted work should be disclosed. IEEE’s own Author Center pages set the general disclosure principle but, unlike a funder rule such as 42 CFR Part 50’s fixed dollar threshold, leave the exact submission mechanics (a manuscript-level statement, a cover-letter note, or a field within the ScholarOne Manuscripts submission system many IEEE journals use) to the individual journal, transaction, or conference’s own instructions for authors — a prospective author should check the specific venue’s call for papers or author guidelines rather than assume one uniform IEEE-wide form applies, the same caveat noted on CASRAI’s IEEE Generative AI Policy entry for that policy’s own venue-level variation.

Reviewer and editor recusal

Reviewer and editor conflicts are handled by recusal rather than disclosure-and-management: IEEE guidance states that reviewers and editors with a conflict of interest should recuse themselves from the peer-review process for that article, rather than disclosing the conflict and proceeding. As with author disclosure, the concrete categories a reviewer is asked to screen for are typically operationalized at the society or journal level. Illustrative example (from a specific IEEE-sponsored journal, not an IEEE-wide rule): IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering (TBME), sponsored by the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), asks reviewers to recuse from an assignment involving: a shared institutional affiliation or department with an author; co-authorship, a joint grant, or a joint patent application with an author within the past three years; a supervisory or mentoring relationship with an author, subject to a five-year minimum cooling-off period after that relationship ends; or a close personal, romantic, familial, or financial relationship with an author. A reviewer uncertain whether a given relationship rises to a conflict is directed to raise it with the handling Associate Editor before accepting the assignment, rather than deciding unilaterally.

How this differs from the general COI and SFI concepts

CASRAI’s general Conflict of Interest (COI) in Research entry covers the cross-publisher, cross-funder concept: financial versus non-financial conflicts, individual versus institutional conflicts, and the disclosure-review-management-elimination hierarchy used broadly across funders, institutions, and journals. The Significant Financial Interest (SFI) entry covers the specific, dollar-denominated federal funding-side threshold under 42 CFR Part 50 Subpart F. IEEE’s own policy sits inside that general framework but is distinguished by two things: its three-tier actual/perceived/potential language (rather than a financial-interest threshold), and its society-level, venue-by-venue implementation rather than one centrally issued form — the same decentralization pattern found in IEEE’s peer-review model and in IEEE’s authorship guidelines, both of which are likewise set at the sponsoring-society level rather than uniformly across all of IEEE.

Worked examples

Example 1 — author disclosure. An author submitting to an IEEE transactions journal has received consulting income from a company whose product is evaluated in the submitted manuscript. Following the disclosure principle in IEEE’s Author Center guidance, the author discloses that relationship (per that journal’s specific instructions for authors) rather than omitting it; the handling editor then assesses whether the relationship warrants any further action.

Example 2 — reviewer recusal. An IEEE journal invites a reviewer to evaluate a manuscript from a former doctoral student the reviewer supervised and last co-authored with two years earlier. Under a recusal framework structured like TBME/EMBS’s (three-year co-authorship lookback, five-year post-mentorship cooling-off), this falls inside the conflict window on two independent grounds, and the reviewer declines the assignment rather than completing the review.

Counter-example

A reviewer is asked to evaluate a manuscript from an author working in the same broad subfield, publishing in the same IEEE transactions journal, whom the reviewer has never collaborated with, supervised, or had any personal or financial relationship with, and who is not at the reviewer’s institution. Shared subfield and shared publication venue alone do not constitute a conflict under IEEE’s framework or under the TBME/EMBS categories above — the reviewer proceeds with the assignment.

Related terms

Conflict of Interest (COI) in Research — the general, cross-publisher concept this page narrows to IEEE’s specific policy
Significant Financial Interest (SFI) — the federal funding-side dollar threshold under 42 CFR Part 50
Conflict of Interest Disclosure — the general disclosure obligation across institutions, funders, and journals
IEEE Generative AI Policy — another IEEE editorial policy set at the society/venue level rather than centrally
IEEE Double-Blind Peer Review — IEEE’s peer-review model, also implemented society-by-society
IEEE Authorship Guidelines — IEEE’s 3-part authorship test

References

IEEE Author Center Journals, “Submission and Peer Review Policies” (journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org)
IEEE Author Center Conferences, “Submission Policies” (conferences.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org)
IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering / IEEE EMBS, “Conflict of Interest” (embs.org/tbme/conflict-of-interest)

Use in your systems

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