PCOMPBIOL-D-24-02043

Modular data science education, tightly scoped for biomedicine, improves learners’ technical abilities: A study of the Data and Analytics for Research Training (DART) Program

PLOS Computational Biology

Dear Dr. Hartman,

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

Both reviewers agree on the manuscript's methodological soundness and its contribution to data science education for biomedical researchers. The reliance on self-reported outcomes for skill improvement is a limitation that should be better acknowledged. Authors also need to address the high participant attrition (nearly half not completing both pre- and post-tests) as this introduces potential bias and should be discussed more thoroughly.

Please submit your revised manuscript within 30 days Mar 14 2025 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 ploscompbiol@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pcompbiol/ 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'. This file does not need to include responses to formatting updates and technical items listed in the 'Journal Requirements' section below.

* 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'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, competing interests statement, or data availability statement, please make these updates within the submission form at the time of resubmission. 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,

BF Francis Ouellette

Section Editor

PLOS Computational Biology 

Patricia M Palagi

Section Editor

PLOS Computational Biology 

Journal Requirements:

1) Please upload all main figures as separate Figure files in .tif or .eps format. For more information about how to convert and format your figure files please see our guidelines: 

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

2) Please amend your detailed Financial Disclosure statement. This is published with the article. It must therefore be completed in full sentences and contain the exact wording you wish to be published.

1) Please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Authors:

Please note that one of the reviews is uploaded as an attachment.

Reviewer #1: the review is uploaded.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper. It is well-written and methodologically sound and is a useful addition to the literature on data science education for biomedical researchers. My concern about the methodology and discussion of results is that the authors do not discuss the fact that a significant number of participants in both waves, nearly half, didn't complete both the pre and post test. This may introduce bias into the results, in a similar way to when patients are lost to follow up in a clinical trial. We can't know for sure anything about the experience of the people who didn't respond to the post test. Did they find the training useful but just not get around to the post test, or did they stop participating because they didn't see value in the training? It seems reasonable to expect that the participants who did take the time to complete the post test may be different from those who did not in how useful they found the training, and this potential bias should at the very least be addressed in the discussion of limitations.

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Have the authors made all data and (if applicable) computational code underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data and code underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data and code 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 or code —e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes:  Lisa Federer

[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.]

Figure resubmission:

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Reproducibility:

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that authors of applicable studies deposit laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option to publish peer-reviewed clinical study protocols. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Reviewer Rec - NT Msweli.pdf

PCOMPBIOL-D-24-02043R1

Modular data science education, tightly scoped for biomedicine, improves learners’ technical abilities: A study of the Data and Analytics for Research Training (DART) Program

PLOS Computational Biology

Dear Dr. Hartman,

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

Please submit your revised manuscript within 30 days Jun 10 2025 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 ploscompbiol@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pcompbiol/ 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'. This file does not need to include responses to formatting updates and technical items listed in the 'Journal Requirements' section below.

* 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'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, competing interests statement, or data availability statement, please make these updates within the submission form at the time of resubmission. 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,

@bffo

B.F. Francis Ouellette

Section Editor

PLOS Computational Biology

Additional Editor Comments :

I fully support the reviewer’s thoughtful suggestions. Implementing these small but important changes — by refining the title, adding examples of high-quality educational options, and rebalancing the discussion to better showcase the study’s strengths — will further enhance the clarity and impact of this already valuable contribution.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Reviewer #1: While the study title is proper and descriptive, authors should consider shortening the title.

The authors mentions "There are many examples of high-quality data science educational options." it would be nice if they can provide these examples.

The discussion section needs revision. Currently, it places too much emphasis on limitations, which overshadows the core purpose of this section — that is, to interpret, contextualize, and critically analyze the findings of the study.

Reviewer #2: I appreciate the authors' response to the reviewer suggestions and feel that all of my concerns have been addressed.

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Have the authors made all data and (if applicable) computational code underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data and code underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data and code 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 or code —e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy .

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

[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.]

Figure resubmission:

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. If there are other versions of figure files still present in your submission file inventory at resubmission, please replace them with the PACE-processed versions.

Reproducibility:

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that authors of applicable studies deposit laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option to publish peer-reviewed clinical study protocols. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols

Dear Dr. Hartman,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Modular, focused data science education improves biomedical learners’ abilities: A study of the Data and Analytics for Research Training (DART) Program' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Computational Biology.

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.

Should you, your institution's press office or the journal office choose to press release your paper, you will automatically be opted out of early publication. We ask that you notify us now if you or your institution is planning to press release the article. All press must be co-ordinated with PLOS.

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

Best regards,

@bffo

--

BF Francis Ouellette & Patricia M Palagi

Section Editors

PLOS Computational Biology

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Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Authors:

Please note here if the review is uploaded as an attachment.

Reviewer #1: No further comments. All previous comments and recommendations have been addressed

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the thoughtful revisions.

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Have the authors made all data and (if applicable) computational code underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data and code underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data and code 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 or code —e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: None

**********

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.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy .

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No