Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionFebruary 9, 2021 |
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PONE-D-21-04425 Character configuration, major depressive episodes, and suicide-related ideation among Japanese undergraduates PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Mitsui, 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. We are concerned that you did not make clear to the reader that this paper is a reanalysis of the same data that you have previously published with only a minor adjustment of the sample to exclude those with depressive symptoms at T1. Your findings are sound and consistent with extensive prior work. The exclusion of the modest number of students with depression initially is a valuable refinement, but it does not change the overall findings. You will need to cite not only the prior publication in Comprehensive Psychiatry and also that in PLOS ONE (PLoS ONE 13 (7): e0201047. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201047). There are additional issues and recommendations specified clearly in the attached review, so I am returning this to you for major revision in case you want us to consider it further for possible publication. I welcome that revision but of course I cannot be sure that your revision will be adequate until it is reviewed again. Please submit your revised manuscript by April 15, 2021. 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, C. Robert Cloninger, MD, PhD 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) Thank you for stating the following in the Competing Interests section: [Keisuke Takanobu received personal fees from Tsumura & Co. and Otsuka Pharmaceutical. Nobuyuki Mitsui received lecture fees from Mochida Pharmaceutical. Yutaka Fujii received personal fees from Yoshitomiyakuhin, Otsuka Pharmaceutical, Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma, Eisai and Meiji Seika Pharma. Yuki Kako has received honoraria from Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma, Eli Lilly, Otsuka Pharmaceutical, Tanabe Mitsubishi Pharma, and Yoshitomiyakuhin. Satoshi Asakura has received honoraria from Mochida Pharmaceutica and Yoshitomiyakuhin. Ichiro Kusumi has received honoraria from Astellas, Daiichi Sankyo, Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma, Eisai, Eli Lilly, Janssen Pharmaceutical, Kyowa Hakko Kirin, Lundbeck, Meiji Seika Pharma, MSD, Mylan, Novartis Pharma, Ono Pharmaceutical, Otsuka Pharmaceutical, Pfizer, Shionogi, Shire, Taisho Toyama Pharmaceutical, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Tanabe Mitsubishi Pharma, Tsumura, and Yoshitomiyakuhin, and has received research/grant support from Astellas, Daiichi Sankyo, Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma, Eisai, Eli Lilly, Kyowa Hakko Kirin, Mochida Pharmaceutical, MSD, Novartis Pharma, Otsuka Pharmaceutical, Pfizer, Shionogi, and Takeda Pharmaceutical. The other authors do not have any potential competing interests.]. Please confirm that this does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests). If there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared. Please include your updated Competing Interests statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Please know it is PLOS ONE policy for corresponding authors to declare, on behalf of all authors, all potential competing interests for the purposes of transparency. PLOS defines a competing interest as anything that interferes with, or could reasonably be perceived as interfering with, the full and objective presentation, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of research or non-research articles submitted to one of the journals. Competing interests can be financial or non-financial, professional, or personal. Competing interests can arise in relationship to an organization or another person. Please follow this link to our website for more details on competing interests: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests 3) We noticed you have some minor occurrence of overlapping text with the following previous publication(s), which needs to be addressed: - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0201047 In your revision ensure you cite all your sources (including your own works), and quote or rephrase any duplicated text outside the methods section. Further consideration is dependent on these concerns being addressed. [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: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ********** 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 ********** 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 ********** 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: This article describes the findings of data collected from university students in Japan annually over 3 years using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) to measure depression and suicidal ideation and the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) to measure personality characteristics. The main aim was to provide a means of early identification of students at risk for major depressive disorder and suicidal ideation. The manuscript reported that low self-directedness (SD), low cooperativeness (C), and high harm avoidance (HA) at baseline were significant predictors of subsequent depression and suicidal ideation. This is a well-written manuscript with good English language usage. The manuscript noted that numerous other studies have previously reported that low SD, low C, and high HA have been found to be predictive of future depressive episodes and suicidal ideation in university students, including findings from this research team’s prior publications. So what is new and previously unpublished in the overall findings described in this manuscript? It appears that this manuscript simply reports the same findings as the prior articles published from this study with the adjustment of the exclusion of students with depression detected at baseline. It therefore does not seem like this article warrants such lengthy text, as it seems to be merely a replication of prior findings with a repeat analysis of the same data with a slight modification of the sample (6% excluded). The manuscript needs to clarify this clearly front and center in the Introduction, Discussion, and Abstract sections, stating that this study represents a re-analysis of the prior study with this one small methodological difference, and stating why this might be an important analysis to conduct. Were the prior findings simply replicated, and did any new results emerge from this methodological adjustment? There are some methodological issues that need attention. First, only 28% of the university students participated in this study. How were they selected, or did they simply represent a volunteer or convenience sample? Was there some systematic means of recruitment of this 28% of the student population? A related issue is that if the sample recruitment was not randomly or systematically selected, there could be important sampling biases. The limitations part of the Discussion needs to include comments about this issue and how the authors think sampling issues might have affected the study results. Also, how were the research instruments administered to the students? Were they confidentially administered? For students reporting current suicidal ideation, how did the study manage their clinical risk? Another important methodological issue is the use of a self-report symptom scale. The manuscript mentions the excessive burden of instead using a fully diagnostic instrument, especially with such a large sample. Is such a large sample needed, and could studies be designed using smaller sample sizes determined by power estimates that might allow application of diagnostic tools to yield sufficient analysis? It is unfortunate that the Methods and Results sections characterize the PHQ-9 as “diagnostic,” even though it is acknowledged in the limitations section that it is not a diagnostic instrument. Therefore, the use of the term major depressive episode (MDE) throughout the manuscript represents misleading terminology, and a different term for the positive PHQ-9 screening result is needed. Additionally, the item assessing suicidal ideation in the PHQ-9 in this study is overly broad and includes thoughts of self harm that may include contemplation of or engagement in behavior not intended as life-threatening, such as non-lethal self-cutting gestures. This is another limitation that should be acknowledged and discussed in terms of how it might have affected the findings. Finally, given that the main purpose of this study was to provide early identification of students at risk for major depressive disorder and suicidal ideation that could potentially be addressed by clinical interventions, it would seem that there should be some statistics provided about what proportions of students with depression or suicidal ideation were identified, with indicators such as sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values that can confer concrete clinical utility for these purposes. ********** 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 [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 |
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Character configuration, major depressive episodes, and suicide-related ideation among Japanese undergraduates PONE-D-21-04425R1 Dear Dr. Mitsui, 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. Thank you for your thoughtful revision of the original manuscript, which appropriately addressed the initial issues that needed to be clarified. We hope your work helps to improve the screening and management of the high suicide risk for university students in Japan and elsewhere, 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, C. Robert Cloninger, MD, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-21-04425R1 Character configuration, major depressive episodes, and suicide-related ideation among Japanese undergraduates Dear Dr. Mitsui: 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. C. Robert Cloninger Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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