PDIG-D-22-00008

The use of technology for social interaction by people with dementia: a scoping review

PLOS Digital Health

Dear Dr. Anderson,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Digital Health. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Digital Health's publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

The review is generally in a good shape. However, the reviewers suggested several clarifications/comments that may help you improve the paper. Please also consider expanding the search to technical repositories, such as IEEE Xplore and ACM Digital Library.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 10 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at digitalhealth@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pdig/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Shlomo Berkovsky

Section Editor

PLOS Digital Health

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Digital Health’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Digital Health does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This is an extensive survey paper to discuss how technology can be used for social interaction by people with dementia.

It would be good to include review comments in the following aspects.

1. Dataset. What will be dataset available (if any) in this area. How to collect data by researchers themselves.

2. Experimental setup and performance metrics. What will be standard protocol to conduct experiments and what metrics should be used for quantitative performance evaluation of various methods.

3. Suggestion for future study. Any insightful suggestions for future research studies?

4. Only two figures are provided in this 70-page paper, it is a bit dry. It would be good to include some figures to provide an overview of this research area.

Reviewer #2: This paper reports a scoping review of technology for increasing interaction for people with dementia, discusses its trends and highlights numerous potential works.

Overall the review is well performed, with a comprehensive review of the current literature. The review is also well written, balanced and clear. This paper identifies an essential gap in the current literature.

One comment:

The review only included articles indexed in medical databases as opposed to purely technical databases such as The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Xplore Digital Library. Considering that the focus of the review is on technology, this omission may weaken the impact of this paper. Please consider justifying within the text the reason for this choice.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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The use of technology for social interaction by people with dementia: a scoping review

PDIG-D-22-00008R1

Dear Dr Anderson,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'The use of technology for social interaction by people with dementia: a scoping review' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Digital Health.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

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Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Digital Health.

Best regards,

Matthew Chua Chin Heng

Academic Editor

PLOS Digital Health

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Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):