Characterising researchers’ relationships with nicotine, tobacco and vaping organisations

Despite significant transformation in the commercial nicotine and tobacco landscape, existing “conflict of interest” frameworks have not kept pace, leaving disclosure practices inconsistent and incomplete across journals and institutions. This talk presents a structured framework for classifying what are more precisely termed potentially competing interests — developed collaboratively with researchers and research users. It defines key entities, including products, organisations, and researcher–organisation relationships, and makes explicit the distinction between person-level and company-level interests, a distinction that is widely understood yet rarely formally articulated.