Peer Review History
Original SubmissionMay 13, 2020 |
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PONE-D-20-14153 Assessing the impact of professional lactation support frequency, duration and delivery form on exclusive breastfeeding in Lebanese mothers PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Nabulsi, 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. In addition to addressing the issues raised by the two reviewers please address the following: Page 9 Line 175 Please identify in the description of the outcome variable whether the WHO definition was used to define EBF. If not please clarify how EBF was defined. World Health Organization (2008) Indicators for assessing infant and young child feeding practices. Geneva: World Health Organization. https://www.unicef.org/nutrition/files/IYCF_updated_indicators_2008_part_1_definitions.pdf Page 11 The content analysis is very loosely described and does not appear to be informed by a theoretical model. Bengtsson M (2016) How to plan and perform a qualitative study using content analysis. NursingPlus Open 2, 8-14. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 27 2020 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 plosone@plos.org. When you're 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Jane Anne Scott, PhD, MPH Grad Dip Dietetics, BSc Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. 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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 2. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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: Partly Reviewer #2: Partly ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: I Don't Know ********** 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: No Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 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 ********** 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: Assessing the impact of professional lactation support frequency, duration and delivery form on exclusive breastfeeding in Lebanese mothers PONE-D-20-14153 Introduction [Page 4, Lines 62-36] BF associated lowered risks in mother or child, clarify? Please add references. What do you mean by “intelligence quotient”? Please add references to statements in lines 69-72, providing some studies with these findings. [Page 6 Line 124-125] Please remove statements with personal opinions. Methods: I seem to miss how attitudes were measured? Please state how attitudes were measured and if this extraction method described in the methodology is reliable and unbiased? Results [Page 16, Lines 269-274] You need to provide more details on how attitudes differed between those participants who completer EBF for six months and those who stopped earlier, as it is your main outcome according to objective 2. I don’t know how maternal and infant nutrition, sleep and technical problems, sickness, fit into your objectives? Please clarify in your introduction and methods. Reviewer #2: Review Thank you for the opportunity to review this interesting paper. Breastfeeding is an important public health topic and any research that improves our understanding of how to improve support for women is to be welcomed. In particular, there is a dearth of research from the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region. The manuscript is well written and provides secondary analysis of data from a randomised controlled trial. Some revisions are needed before it is acceptable for publication. The analysis is described correctly as an observational study but it is not a cohort study. As I understand it, the two groups were selected on the basis of an outcome i.e. exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months or not. The analysis addressed exposure to different levels of breastfeeding support from IBCLCs. Thus it is a retrospective case control study with women who breastfed exclusively for 6 months as the cases and those who did not are the controls. The methods section needs to be revised to make the groups clearer, particularly in the description of the sample. The content analysis was based on logs kept by the IBCLCs. The way the findings are reported suggests that there has been some comparison of the two groups but it is not clear how this was undertaken or measured. For example, in Line 280-1 you state that women who discontinued EBF before 6 months were more concerned about their figure and their own diet - but how did you measure this? A clearer description of the methods and a more cautious presentation of the findings is needed. In addition, the findings and the discussion give the impression that this data came from women themselves rather than from the IBCLCs. Again this needs to be clearer. The discussion should use statements such as According to IBCLCs..... rather than statements about what women do and don't do. This also should be highlighted as a limitation of the study. Is it possible that there may be (conscious or unconscious) bias in the IBCLCs accounts? Especially as you suggest that the IBCLCs described some women as 'uncooperative'. The interpretation of the findings therefore needs to be more cautious Other minor revisions needed: Abstract The findings not very informative as they don’t state what frequency, duration etc are associated with the outcome. Introduction Line 77: Please use the correct name for the International Code i.e. International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes and it should be capitalized. Lines 90-96 are confusing - what is the difference between participants in the multi-component arm and participant in all 3 intervention components? And what does ‘most engaged with’ mean? Please clarify in the paper. For clarity please refer to breastfeeding mothers (not nursing mothers) throughout the paper. Materials and methods Line 122 – please change artificial milk to either BMS or infant formula (and throughout the paper) Line 123 – this is an ambiguous sentence – due you mean there are few IBCLCs who work in private practices and that most work in hospitals? Please clarify. Lines 150-1 I am not sure these can be described as cultural misconceptions – many women all over the world experience breastfeeding as painful and tiring; and as shameful because of the reaction of others. Please reword to reflect this. Lines 220-1 – the categories not mutually exclusive - in which category does 3 months belong? Results In Table 1 It is unclear what the gestational age row refers to? As it is 17 weeks it can't be at birth - is it at recruitment? Please clarify. You use terms face-to-face and home visits - are these the same? Please explain your use of the terms. Discussion Lines 344-6 – this seems to be speculation – is there other evidence you can provide to support your claims? Line 365-7; It could also be that women feel more comfortable to discuss breastfeeding with female obstetricians. ********** 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. 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: Alison McFadden [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. |
Revision 1 |
Assessing the impact of professional lactation support frequency, duration and delivery form on exclusive breastfeeding in Lebanese mothers PONE-D-20-14153R1 Dear Dr. Nabulsi, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. 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 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 onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Jane Anne Scott, PhD, MPH Grad Dip Dietetics, BSc Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-20-14153R1 Assessing the impact of professional lactation support frequency, duration and delivery form on exclusive breastfeeding in Lebanese mothers Dear Dr. Nabulsi: I'm 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 let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Jane Anne Scott Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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