Conflict of Interest statement for journal submission Does anyone know what "Conflict of Interest" is? I am submitting a paper to a journal, and they ask me to attach a Conflict of Interest. Is it the same as Cover Letter?

Thanks in advance for any help!
A conflict of interest statement is revealing that you have some relationship with the journal, or, for example, its editors. It can also be a statement in which you reveal a relationship to some company or product that you discuss, analyze, or recommend in the paper. 

Some papers are written as propaganda on behalf of individuals or products, for example. They want a statement that you aren't doing that, of if you have such a "conflict", exactly what is its nature. 

A serious enough conflict can lead to rejection. But if your Mom is the lead editor of the journal, it is still a conflict, though it can be resolved by assigning the paper to someone else. 

Anyway, there are a variety of things, but they mostly come down to the question of whether a careful reader would question your conclusions based on external factors other than what is actually written in the paper. 

A cover letter  is just for introducing yourself and your paper to the managing editor with a bit of information that will help to assign the paper to an appropriate editor. Quite different.