PONE-D-19-24922

Methodological Quality of cohort study on rheumatic diseases in China

PLOS ONE

Dear Prof Wu,

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.

The manuscript needs English editing by a native English speaker to improve the quality of language.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Hua Zhou, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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2. During our internal evaluation of your manuscript, we noticed several typos. For instances, line 37: Englishstudies, line 38: selectionofstatistical, line 176:Table 2.t. Please note that PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so please ensure the language in submitted articles is clear, correct, and unambiguous.

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

The manuscript needs English editing by a native English speaker to improve the quality of language.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. 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

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?

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. 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

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: Clinical research started late in China, and has been widely valued in recent years. However, there is still a certain gap with international standards in protocol design, data collection, data analysis and research report of the randomized controlled study or cohort study. In this paper, the author makes a systematic analysis of the cohort study of rheumatic diseases, and puts forward better suggestions for the future cohort study of rheumatic diseases, which basically achieve the research purpose of this paper.

In this paper, the author used standard evidence-based medicine research methods to retrieve, screen and extract the literature of rheumatic disease-related cohort studies in China, and evaluated the quality of the literature with NOS scale. On this basis, the author described the data profile of the cohort study, and compared the quality of literature through data analysis.

The data provided in this paper is sufficient, the statistical method is appropriate and the conclusion is reliable. According to the evaluation of English literature and Chinese literature respectively, the NOS scores show similar conclusions in " adequacy of follow up of cohorts " and are consistent with the clinical research practice in China.

In general, this paper reflects the current literature level of rheumatic disease-related cohort studies in China, and puts forward a number of reasonable suggestions, which basically achieve the purpose of the author's research.

Reviewer #2: This study collected the literature on rheumatism cohort researches conducted in China, and provided very important information about research quality comparision between Chinese and English publications. This is very good, especially in these days there are voices encouraging to publish paper in China Journal.

Some minor grammatical errors need to be revised before publication.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: YaFeng Wang

Reviewer #2: Yes: Runyue Huang

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Methodological Quality of cohort study on rheumatic diseases in China:  A Systematic Review

PONE-D-19-24922R1

Dear Dr. Wu,

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.

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With kind regards,

Hua Zhou, Ph.D.

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

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: 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: Same as the last recommendation， I think this paper meets the standards for publishing in PLOS ONE.

In this paper, the researchers used standard evidence-based medicine research methods to retrieve, screen and extract the literature of rheumatic disease-related cohort studies in China, and evaluated the quality of the literature with NOS scale. On this basis, the data profile of queue research is formed by data description, and the quality of literature is compared by data analysis.

The data provided in this paper is sufficient, the statistical method is appropriate. Whether published in English or in Chinese, the relevant NOS scores show similar conclusions in " adequacy of follow up of cohorts " and are consistent with the clinical research practice in China.

Reviewer #2: This is a good literature study to compare the quality between Chinese and English papers about Rheumatic diseases cohort. As the reasons addressed above, I suggest to accept this research article.

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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.

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: Yes: Runyue Huang