Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 9, 2020
Decision Letter - Christian Stamov Roßnagel, Editor

PONE-D-20-08828

Transforming Students’ Attitudes Towards Learning Through the Use of Successful Educational Actions

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Diez-Palomar,

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 revision is truly a minor one: according to the PLOS ONE data reporting policy, authors are required to indicate where the study data may be found. Therefore, please add to your indication that “the data used in this article comes (sic) from the research project SEAs4All – Schools as Learning Communities in Europe” the URLs, accession numbers or DOIs if your data are held or will be held in a public repository. If that does not apply but you are able to provide details of access elsewhere, with or without limitations, please do so. For details, please see the journal’s data reporting guidelines at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-data-reporting.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 13 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revision, 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.

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  • A rebuttal letter. You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
  • 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'.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Christian Stamov Roßnagel

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

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2.In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability.

Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized.

Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.

We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter.

3. We note you have included a table to which you do not refer in the text of your manuscript. Please ensure that you refer to Table 1, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the Table.

4. Your ethics statement must appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please also ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics section of your online submission will not be published alongside your manuscript.

[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: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: The paper has a sound theoretical introduction later discussed and enriched with empirical quantitative data. It is remarkable that the authors clearly explain what was already known about the two educational actions explored and which is the specific contribution of this article. Data is collected in three different schools (in UK and Italy), whose contexts are sufficiently explained. The detailed description of the methodology and results is one of the strengths of the paper.

The authors confirm that all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript are fully available without restriction, but they should specify where the data can be found.

Reviewer #3: This research supposes an advance for the educative field, it also enables the improvement of concrete practical education. In order to know about the impact of interactive groups (IG) and dialogic literary gatherings (DLG) in relation to attitudes and academic achievement, this research is original and unpublished.

The research also shows to be well documented, both theoretically and with the latest research carried out. The article has consistency in all sections, which provides coherence and reliability of the study.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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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

Dear Editor,

Here we attach the article “Transforming Students’ Attitudes Towards Learning Through the Use of Successful Educational Actions” for your consideration, responding to requests that you sent us by July 30th, 2020.

In your message, you requested us to include / check / review the following aspects:

(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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf”

We have edited the whole article, according to the PLOS ONE style requirements.

(2) “In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability.

Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized.

Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.

We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter.”

We added the following sentence in the methodological section: “The dataset has been submitted to this journal as supporting data for public use.” In addition, we are attaching a file named S2 File 2 containing the dataset in SPSS format.

(3) “We note you have included a table to which you do not refer in the text of your manuscript. Please ensure that you refer to Table 1, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the Table.”

All tables have been reviewed and referred along the main text of the article. Additional / further explanations have been added when needed:

• (line 397-398) Table 7 shows that the most explanatory factor of the variance is the first factor. On the other hand, factors 2, 3 and 4 are less important since their weights are almost irrelevant.

• (line 437-438) suggesting that the subscale 2 works better than the first one to characterize the components explaining the results obtained within the IGs.

• (line 459-461) According to data show in Tables 16 and 17, the subscale 3 works better when component #10 is removed from the model (increasing Cronbach’s alpha from 0,820 to 0,829). This result suggest that self-confidence is not a relevant component for attitudes towards participating in DLGs.

(4) “Your ethics statement must appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please also ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics section of your online submission will not be published alongside your manuscript.”

The ethics statement has been placed in a section besides the methodology, right after that.

We would like to thank you very much all the comments that have improved significantly the quality of this article.

Sincerely,

Javier Díez-Palomar, Rocío García-Carrión, Linda Hargreaves and María Vieites

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: rebuttal letter_2.docx
Decision Letter - Christian Stamov Roßnagel, Editor

Transforming Students’ Attitudes Towards Learning Through the Use of Successful Educational Actions

PONE-D-20-08828R1

Dear Dr. Diez-Palomar,

Thank you for your careful revision of your manuscript.

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.

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Kind regards,

Christian Stamov Roßnagel

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Christian Stamov Roßnagel, Editor

PONE-D-20-08828R1

Transforming Students’ Attitudes Towards Learning Through the Use of Successful Educational Actions

Dear Dr. Díez-Palomar:

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

Mr Christian Stamov Roßnagel

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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