PGPH-D-22-01479

Mind The Gap: Data availability, accessibility, transparency, and credibility during the COVID-19 pandemic, an international comparative appraisal

PLOS Global Public Health

Dear Dr. Gallo,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Global Public Health. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Global Public 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.

Two reviewers have evaluated your submission and both of them provided their comments below. Please provide your point-by-point responses to all the concerns.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 03 2023 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 globalpubhealth@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pgph/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

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,

Jianhong Zhou

Staff Editor

PLOS Global Public Health

Journal Requirements:

1. Please amend your online Financial Disclosure statement. If you did not receive any funding for this study, please simply state: “The authors received no specific funding for this work.”

2. Please provide separate figure files in .tif or .eps format only and remove any figures embedded in your manuscript file. Please also ensure that all files are under our size limit of 10MB.

For more information about figure files please see our guidelines:

https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/s/figures 

https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/s/figures#loc-file-requirement

3. Please amend your Data Availability Statement and indicate where the data may be found

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Global Public 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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: I don't know

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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)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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

PLOS Global Public 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: Yes

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: 1. L149/150: Reconfirm data availability for partially vaccinated for Nigeria.

2. L155/156: 'the British ones' - Consistency in reporting on the UK. E.g. UK, Britain or England, Scotland and Wales. Or clarify preference at start.

3. L158: Information not always from official sources - This is debatable, not reliable and difficult to compare across countries. What are these other sources? Social media? Where data is not available from official sources can this be regarded as data for the country in context of this paper? This should be addressed. Suggestion is to include only officially available data.

4. L158-160: Nigeria reported on region (states), Number confirmed positive, number admitted, number discharged, number of deaths.

5. Consistency should be maintained in reporting on findings to make easy for reader to follow

6. L184/185: How was credibility of data of official and unofficial sources rated as high?? This is quite subjective thus should be reconsidered.

7. Improved clarity needed in the discussion section. E.g. It is not always clear what was a finding from this study vs reference to another study.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this paper which talks about a timely topic.

Though the paper is written in a clear and structured way, I have a couple of comments:

• Method

- It would be helpful to clarify why the authors chose those nine countries. Was it just random because of who participated in the summer school? The authors should also be consistent in talking about 9 or 12 countries.

- I also wonder whether someone checked the data each student brought to the table. I think the methodology would have been stronger if each country had been researched by one person and checked/reviewed by another person to ensure accuracy. It does not appear to me that a second person reviewed the data (dual control principle). For example, how did you ensure that each student found all relevant data available in the respective country?

- Another big issue is that I haven’t seen a table that lists all links for each country where the authors have their data from. Maybe they submitted this, but I don’t see it in the submitted manuscript, and I cannot trust the figures without knowing the link/data sources from the different countries.

• Focus on disparities based on ethnicity /inequalities in COVID-19 morbidity

- I think the strength of the paper lies in the focus on the inequalities which can be read from the data. I think the author should mention this earlier on (already in the introduction and abstract) and make this issue the main focus of the paper.

• Data sharing versus privacy protection / surveillance

The authors demand more data sharing, but I believe they should also (at least briefly) discuss what this means for privacy protection/surveillance in addition to the trust issue they mentioned.

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6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Mind The Gap: Data availability, accessibility, transparency, and credibility during the COVID-19 pandemic, an international comparative appraisal

PGPH-D-22-01479R1

Dear Dr. Gallo,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Mind The Gap: Data availability, accessibility, transparency, and credibility during the COVID-19 pandemic, an international comparative appraisal' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Global Public 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. A member of our team will be in touch with a set of requests.

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.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact globalpubhealth@plos.org.

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

Best regards,

Julia Robinson

Executive Editor

PLOS Global Public Health

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Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Global Public 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: (No Response)

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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4. 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)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

PLOS Global Public 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 Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: All comment have been addressed. The new supplementary table improved the manuscript and transparency.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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