CYIL vol. 14 (2023)

HELENA VAN BEERSEL KREJČÍKOVÁ CYIL 14 (2023) of interest ). According to the Czech Science Foundation, a potential conflict of interest of an individual researcher might be considered either as ethical misconduct, which should be managed by the employer of the researcher, or – if severe enough, e.g., in the case of duplicate financing from another source – a criminal offence (subvention fraud under S. 212 of Act No. 40/2009 Coll, Criminal Code ). According to the information obtained upon request from the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, which provides funding for research projects where collaboration between the researchers’ institution and commercial subjects (research guarantors) with interest in the research topic is anticipated and required, other external interests of researchers applying for and participating in research projects seem not to be specifically inspected by the Agency. Nevertheless, some of the information might be collected piece by piece incidentally via several interspersed parts of the General Application documentation. On the other hand, the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic has a document, available internally, defining conflict of interest and bias (whilst applying its rules to both situations without any discrimination). 107 Despite primarily targeting employees of the Agency or other people involved in the process of assessing the research application, the document secondarily affects to some extent the applicants of the research project, as it as a result prohibits the specific relationships of the applicants, researchers, and research guarantors as well. a duplicate role as a participant in the research project, incl. the application preparation, and a member of the committee for admission and the established expert bodies for evaluation of the application is prohibited. Furthermore, an institution with a certain relationship 108 to a member of an established expert body is ineligible to apply for a research project, both as a primary applicant, or as an additional one. Conclusion Strategies towards conflicts of interest in medical research and their management can vary significantly, as was shown in the US and the EU regulations. Firstly, there is no universally shared understanding regarding which types of interests constitute conflicts of interest. Thus, in the US, the focus is on regulating financial conflicts of interest, while, on the EU level, other types of interests might also be considered as competing with the primary duty of a researcher (to conduct the clinical trial in accordance with research integrity). In addition, within the context of financial interests, some regulations set up financial thresholds (e.g., 5 000 or 10 000 US dollars), whilst other do not. Furthermore, the level of delegation of the powers to manage conflicts of interest can differ largely – in some cases, all the conflict-of interest management is exclusively conducted by the organization which adopts the conflict of-interest policy (e.g., FDA). In other cases, the conflict-of-interest management is to some 107 F-435 Jednotná definice střetu zájmů . [Unified definition of conflict of interest]. Obtained upon a request via email on July 14, 2023. 108 Under Art. 3 of the internal document of the Technological Agency of the Czech Republic, an institution (and also its researcher) is excluded from the research application process if a member of the expert body for evaluation of the application is: full time/part time employed at the institution, has an agreement to completing a job and agreement to perform a job for the institution, provides consultancy or other services to the institution, is a member of the governing body of the institution, has a close personal relationship with either the institution or any of the researchers, has at least a 25 % share in the institution, is in debt to the institution, etc.

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