PONE-D-21-04812

Time Trend, Social Vulnerability, and Identification of Risk Areas for Tuberculosis in Brazil: an Ecological Study

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Souza,

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 reviewers have highlighted concerns regarding the spatial analysis results, model validation, and analysis techniques which require addressing for this manuscript to meet our publication criteria.

In particular, for our criteria that the 'Experiments, statistics, and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail' https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/criteria-for-publication#loc-3, please address Reviewer 1's comments regarding: space-time scan statistics and Moran's I, LISA comparisons and weight matrix settings, edge effect, explanatory variables, differential results and comparisons between spatial lag and OLS, and model validation. Please also address Reviewer 2's comments regarding space-time scan statistics

To meet our publication criteria that 'Conclusions are presented in an appropriate fashion and are supported by the data' https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/criteria-for-publication#loc-4, please address Reviewer 2's comments regarding the discussion of the spatial analysis results.

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Associate Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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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: No

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: The authors mainly evaluate the spatial and temporal distribution of TB in Brazil during the period from 2001 to 2017.

0. While I appreciate authors detailed explanations, in my opinion the manuscript is very lengthy, and some explanations are either redundant or can be moved to the supplementary materials. The authors need to shorten the lengths of manuscript to at least half of current length while maintaining the quality of work.

1. The explanations for space-time scan statistics doesn’t contain time component and is more like pure spatial scan statistics. If yes, what’s the difference between Local Moran’s I and this method?

2. Authors need to compare the results of LISA and spatial scan statistics.

3. Explain the settings of weight matrix in LISA such as weight matrix, or settings of space-time scan statistics.

4. How did you address edge effect in the cluster detection techniques.

5. Authors need to justify why they included these explanatory variables in the study.

6. According to Table 7 there are significant differences between the results of spatial lag and OLS which is unusual and makes the results unreliable. Also the authors need to compare the performance of these two models.

7. Modeling without validation is not reliable. The authors need to test the performance of models on an independent (test) dataset.

Reviewer #2: 1. In this paper the spatiotemporal scan statistic has been used and identified spatiotemporal clusters as in Table 2. However, the authors have used the term “spatial clusters” throughout the paper e.g., in Abstract: “22 high-risk spatial clusters were identified”. Also in Figure 4, the title is “Spatial-temporal scan statistics of cases of tuberculosis. Brazil, 2001-2017”, but it doesn’t show time-frame for each cluster according to Table 2.

It seems the aim is to identify spatial clusters. The spatial-temporal scan statistic is invalid for spatial analysis. The spatial scan statistic should be used for spatial analysis.

2. In the discussion section, the results are not specifically discussed e.g., spatial analysis results (moran’s I and Spatial scan statistic) have not been discussed properly. This section includes some details irrelevant to the results (e.g., first 5 paragraphs), These details should be in the introduction section.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Sami Ullah

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Time Trend, Social Vulnerability, and Identification of Risk Areas for Tuberculosis in Brazil: an Ecological Study

PONE-D-21-04812R1

Dear Dr. Souza,

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,

Michele Tizzoni

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

I personally assessed the revised version of the manuscript in light of the comments made by Referee #1 and I believe this version adequately addresses the main issues raised by the Referee regarding the spatial analysis.  

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 #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 #2: Yes

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

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 #2: Yes

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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 #2: Yes

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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 #2: The Introduction and Discussion sections are still very lengthy: comtains unnecessery explanations. it need to be shortened.

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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 #2: Yes: Sami Ullah