Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionNovember 26, 2020 |
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PONE-D-20-34638 Dog visits in nursing homes – increase complexity or keep it simple? A randomised controlled study PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Thodberg, 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. Comments of the external reviewers are listed below. Please would you give especial consideration to discussing the limitations of your study and its practical relevance in managing residents in nursing homes. I think the text is clear and easily understood throughout, but nevertheless you might consider asking a native English speaker to polish it. Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 21 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:
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, Antony Bayer 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 indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. 3. Please amend either the title on the online submission form (via Edit Submission) or the title in the manuscript so that they are identical. 4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information [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 Reviewer #2: Partly Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: I Don't Know Reviewer #3: 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 Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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 Reviewer #3: 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 is a very well-written paper and undertaken, detailed study. -In fact, the paper seems very much detailed at times, and may even seem repetitive. I would not suggest changing it in response to this comment, but I would suggest reading it through with this in mind in case there are places it can be streamlined. -Lines 153-155 (; balancing). Awkward and unclear sentence. -Throughout the paper could benefit from a read through for English grammar use. -It would be helpful to share upfront that these visiting dogs are from an organization that tests dogs for such visits. -Related, I am not clear if this organization also trains dogs? I am curious because the dogs are being involved in several activities (e.g., doing tricks with the dice roll game). Also, the dogs must be quite well trained to go off with a stranger and not their regular handler to do a visit of this type. I think this needs to be identified clearly for the reader. -And related again, this raises the question of animal welfare and more specific information needs to be included. Was an animal research ethics board application undertaken? For example, if the dogs was standing or near the individual for 80% of the time I am assuming they were trained to do this and not physically forced to do so because of a short leash, for example. I am also assuming they are very well trained because seniors are typically accompanied with a lot of bodily and medication scents of dogs’ interest and this did not get mentioned in terms of how the dogs interacted with the individuals. -Overall, I would like to see some attention, if even in the limitations, acknowledging that animals are not tools but sentient beings. So ‘something’ may be going on between the participant and dog that is not being accounted for here; the human-animal bond. And it is fine that it is not being accounted for, but this needs to be shared with the reader. -And last, I think more attention needs to be placed on who the individuals were doing the visits. I find it interesting and would like to know how they worked with the dogs in the visits in place of the handler. Visiting dog teams typically come together as a unit, so what impact did separating this visiting unit have, if any? Reviewer #2: Important note: This review pertains only to ‘statistical aspects’ of the study and so ‘clinical aspects’ [like medical importance, relevance of the study, ‘clinical significance and implication(s)’ of the whole study, etc.] are to be evaluated [should be assessed] separately/independently. Further please note that any ‘statistical review’ is generally done under the assumption that (such) study specific methodological [as well as execution] issues are perfectly taken care of by the investigator(s). This review is not an exception to that and so does not cover clinical aspects {however, seldom comments are made only if those issues are intimately / scientifically related & intermingle with ‘statistical aspects’ of the study}. Agreed that ‘statistical methods’ are used as just tools here, however, they are vital part of methodology [and so should be given due importance]. COMMENTS: Actually, your ABSTRACT is well drafted but assay type. Please note that it is preferable [refer to item 1b of CONSORT checklist 2010: Structured summary of trial design, methods, results, and conclusions] to divide the ABSTRACT with small sections like ‘Objective(s)’, ‘Methods’, ‘Results’, ‘Conclusions’, etc. which is an accepted practice of most of the good/standard journals [including this one]. It will definitely be more informative then, I guess, whatever the article type may be. I agree with what Friedman et al. (2019) reported according to authors of this article that [lines 97-98] ‘no association between impairment level, and recorded behaviour during dog visits’. Important factor not taken care of here is ‘whether subject [dementia case] like the pets?’ In my experience, there are many people who do not like pets {I am not very sure about situation in Europe (though I had been there several times and stayed), but I am very much sure about situation in my country}. This factor could be a ‘confounder’ and needs to be adjusted for, [or may totally exclude such cases], in my opinion. Because of the above and authors aimed to study whether enhancing the possibility for interaction with the dog during dog visits is beneficial for all [as said in lines 109-10], this review may be ‘biased’, I think. Although one of the exclusion criteria {line 144} is ‘fear of dogs’, I guess, not liking pets/dogs is not exactly same as ‘fear of dogs’. Mention in line 194/195 of the fact that ‘disapproved of contact with the animal’ implies there were at least few of this type. Information given regarding estimation of ‘Sample size required’ (lines 164-6) is inadequate. Is it assumed that 12 (each) different activities listed in table 1 & 2 are of the same type/intensity? Is it correct to impute/substitute the values of the missed items with the median [of this item across participants]? In back-drop of ‘level of measurement’ {and/or type of variables} of ‘Behaviour variables’ [all measurements], ‘Non-parametric models’ are more sensible it seems. Many other things are analysed and discussed. Most of them appears alright [statistically], however, ‘clinical aspects’ [like medical importance, relevance of the study, ‘clinical significance and implication(s)’ of the whole study, etc.] are to be evaluated [should be assessed] separately/independently, I feel. Reviewer #3: The manuscript is clear in every part. The description of the activities carried out in the meetings with the patients allows to better specify the results, which represented an interesting starting point for further development of studies on this topic ********** 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: No Reviewer #3: 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.
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| Revision 1 |
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PONE-D-20-34638R1 Dog visits in nursing homes – increase complexity or keep it simple? A randomised controlled study PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Thodberg, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE and for your careful attention to addressing the reviewers' comments. An outstanding issue is your statement concerning sample size that remains inadequate. It should include all the specific numerical details that will allow the reader to reproduce your calculation - rather than the current broad description ("behavioural data from our previous studies").Therefore your paper does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands and we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised. Please submit your revised manuscript by May 21 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:
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. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Antony Bayer Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] [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 2 |
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Dog visits in nursing homes – increase complexity or keep it simple? A randomised controlled study PONE-D-20-34638R2 Dear Dr. Thodberg, Thank you for your most recent manuscript. The sample size calculation is now clear. Therefore 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, Antony Bayer Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-20-34638R2 Dog visits in nursing homes – increase complexity or keep it simple? A randomised controlled study Dear Dr. Thodberg: 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 Professor Antony Bayer Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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