PONE-D-20-11698

Tuberculosis treatment intervention trials in Africa: a cross-sectional bibliographic study and spatial analysis

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hohlfeld,

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.

Two experts in the field reviewed your manuscript. They have substantial concerns that need to be addressed.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 30 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Susan Hepp

Academic 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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: No

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?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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: Comments to Author:

We would like to say thank you for all authors for your work.

Background

1. Background does not indicate what is known and the gap (unknown)

2. Justify the significance of the study

Methods

1. What is meant by cross-sectional study for review of studies? Need justification? I think it is miss used

2. Was there a study protocol?

3. Justify the restrictions placed on for time period (1952 to 2019) and its importance describing 70 years data to gather

4. Present the exact search strategy (for at-least one database), with filters used.

5. How quality is assessed?

6. State eligibility criteria for inclusion of studies in this review briefly

7. State how duplicate studies were removed including any software used.

8. State how screening of studies was undertaken.

9. Describe attempts to seek/clarify data from authors of the included studies (if required).

10. Describe how missing data were tackled and explain how it was addressed (if any).

Result

1. PICO is not briefly describe

Discussion

1. ….. conducted wholly or partly in Africa. What is really done?

2. All what is discussed in the discussion section is not describe in the result section. Try to describe

Reviewer #2: The authors reviewed published TB trials conducted in Africa. The authors found most TB treatment trials focus on drug interventions in adults and less in children, few reports on behavioral interventions to improve TB treatments.

A more detailed analysis and discussion on subgroups such as MDR-TB, TB-HIV co-infection would be necessary.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Moges Agazhe Assemie(MPH)

Reviewer #2: No

[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.]

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PONE-D-20-11698R1

Tuberculosis treatment intervention trials in Africa: a cross-sectional bibliographic study and spatial analysis

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hohlfeld,

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.

Thank you for responding to reviewer comments. I see only minor issues remaining, however they are in the Abstract and I believe you have room to correct and add additional information. The issues are:

1) In the Conclusions, there is a sentence that is a fragment: "By mapping African TB trials,  research gaps."

2) In the Conclusions, there is mention of lead authors from the global north and the lack of child and adolescent participants. However, I cannot see anything in the Results on these topics. Please adjust so that the conclusions have some basis in your findings.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 13 2021 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:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). 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'.

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,

Lisa Susan Wieland

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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[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.

Tuberculosis treatment intervention trials in Africa: a cross-sectional bibliographic study and spatial analysis

PONE-D-20-11698R2

Dear Dr. Hohlfeld,

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,

Lisa Susan Wieland

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: