PONE-D-19-15539

The Uptake of Population Size Estimation Studies for Key Populations in Guiding HIV Responses in Africa

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr Viswasam,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’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 asked you to change the manuscript as it currently is. Please address these for your next iteration. We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Dec 06 2019 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter.

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your 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. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

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

Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Eduard J Beck, PhD, FAFPHM, FFPH, FRCP

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. In your Methods section, please provide additional information regarding the methodology used in your systematic review. We strongly recommend that you complete the relevant items of the PRISMA checklist (http://prisma-statement.org/prismastatement/Checklist.aspx) to strengthen the methodology reporting.

In particular, please address the following points:

a) please describe in more detail how PSE were identified (in Phase 1) in the Global.HIV database (in particular, please report the search string used, or similar)

b) please clarify how the 23 different types of documents used in Phase 2 were selected and researched.

Thank you for your attention to these requests.

3. We note that your article has been submitted as a "Collection Review" article type, but is a research article submitted to the Project SOAR Collection. When resubmitting your manuscript, we ask that you update your article type to "Research Article" in the online submission form. Please note that some fields in the submission form, particularly in the "Additional Information" field, will have been reset with this change, so please go through your submission in full to ensure that all information is accurate and complete when resubmitting your manuscript.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Reviewer #1:

A sound review that I recommend for publication. It might be worth commenting more on the reasons for the findings such as PSE being often donor driven, and producing underestimations that make the validity of the results questionable and not very useful.

Reviewer #2: It was a pleasure to review the article entitled "The Uptake of Population Size Estimation Studies for Key Populations in Guiding HIV Responses in Africa". While I believe the article is an important contribution to filling an existing gap in literature, I would recommend some clarifications and edits prior to publication.

Major Comments:

1) In Line 200, the authored specified that the focus of the review was on PEPFAR and Global Fund investments. It may be beneficial to bring this fact to the forefront earlier (i.e. perhaps even in the abstract) and even include this in the limitations section.

2) The article could benefit from a greater description of the gray literature sources used. There are many programs that conduct PSE for programming purposes but never publish the estimates in peer-reviewed journals. Were annual reports, programmatic study findings, etc. taken into account?

Minor Comments:

1) Line 174-176: It was unclear which types of articles used in this review (i.e. gray and peer-reviewed).

2) Line 267, 280, 287: Were the PSE used to "change" policy or just to inform it? Were there any instances where targets were not changed because estimates were as expected?

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

Reviewers' comments:

[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 to be viewed.]

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 us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

The Uptake of Population Size Estimation Studies for Key Populations in Guiding HIV Responses on the African Continent

PONE-D-19-15539R1

Dear Dr. Viswasam,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication.

Shortly after the formal acceptance letter is sent, an invoice for payment will follow. To ensure an efficient production and billing process, please log into Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, you must inform our press team as soon as possible and 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 onepress@plos.org.

With kind regards,

Eduard J Beck, PhD, FAFPHM, FFPH, FRCP

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

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

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data 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 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

**********

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

PLOS ONE 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

**********

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: The authors have satisfactorily responded to all my observations/suggestions. The article is relevant, concise, clear and informative.

**********

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.

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: Yes: John Waters