Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 17, 2019
Decision Letter - Anayda Portela, Editor

PONE-D-19-34522

Towards a better understanding of risk selection in maternal and newborn care: a systematic scoping review

PLOS ONE

Dear Ms Goodarzi,

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.

Before sending for peer review, I would like to ask you to expand the information included in Supplementary File S3. Reviewers will not be able to assess how the authors have arrived at their results (the different dimensions and themes), based on the limited information included in the file S3. As a minimum, I would suggest additions to the table of characteristics of the included studies: a) a column that indicates the document type – in this way, from the scoping the reader can understand the literature included - from the inclusion and exclusion criteria we can only determine that the document are research papers – it would be good to have additional detail, for example, if it was qualitative, quantitative; and, more importantly; b) key themes and categories extracted from each paper – relating to the dimensions and themes you have highlighted. Please discuss among your team and decide what information would be useful to include in the table that would facilitate for readers a link to what was in the primary studies and your summary.  You may subsequently decide to modify your findings and discussion section, based on this additional information.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Anayda Portela

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Revision 1

Dear Dr. Portela,

Thank you for considering our manuscript for publication in PLOS ONE. We appreciate your feedback.

We have discussed your feedback among our team and seriously considered your comments, which has resulted in revisions of the manuscript.

We agree that additional details about the included papers and our analysis can provide the reviewers and the readers further insight into how we arrived at our results. Therefore, following your advice, we have extended the S3 table (now S4) with further details of the papers, including information about papers’ study objective and study design, and the identified main category. We, furthermore, have added a list of identified themes and categories (now S3).

We look forward to your reply.

Yours sincerely, also on behalf of the rest of the research team,

Bahareh Goodarzi

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Scop Rev Risk Selec - Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Russell Kabir, Editor

Towards a better understanding of risk selection in maternal and newborn care: a systematic scoping review

PONE-D-19-34522R1

Dear Dr. Goodarzi,

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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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,

Russell Kabir, PhD

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript, which provides a comprehensive overview of current approaches to risk selection in maternity care. I did not provide the initial review of this manuscript but have reviewed carefully the authors' responses to the comments made in the initial review. These comments were relatively minor but addressing them has strengthened the manuscript. The addition of further information to (the now) table S4 provides the reader with a clearer picture of the studies reviewed and further supports the scoping review. The coding frame in S3 is also a helpful addition that adds to the transparency of the analysis.

The term "small minority" may be more accurate than "vast minority" (line 321) to describe the 14 of 210 studies that take a woman-focused perspective.

Reviewer #2: I thank authors for addressing the comments of the reviewer. I recommend to accept the paper for the publication.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Russell Kabir, Editor

PONE-D-19-34522R1

Towards a better understanding of risk selection in maternal and newborn care: a systematic scoping review

Dear Dr. Goodarzi:

I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. 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.

For any other questions or concerns, please email plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE.

With kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Russell Kabir

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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