Enlightenment on oscillatory properties of 23 class B notifiable infectious diseases in the mainland of China from 2004 to 2020

Chuanliang Han; Meijia Li; Naem Haihambo; Yu Cao; Xixi Zhao

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0252803

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 4, 2021
3 Mar 2021 Decision Letter - Nicholas S. Duesbery, Editor PONE-D-21-03876 Enlightenment on oscillatory properties of 23 class B notifiable infectious diseases in the mainland of China from 2004 to 2020 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Han, 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. Of greatest concern are reviewer #1's comments that the article is not presented in an intelligible fashion and is not written in standard English and reviewer #2's observations that the statistics and other analyses are not described in sufficient detail. Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 17 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, Nicholas S. Duesbery, 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 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. [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: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: 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 ****** 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: No Reviewer #2: 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: I set out to review this submitted draft from a statistical perspective. However, the manuscript will first require substantial review and improvement to the grammar and wording. In its current form, the main text as well as figures/tables are somewhat difficult to follow. A few example include: (1) Line 172 -- both components labeled "multiplication mechanism" (2) Figure 3(C) -- is the Y-axis months of the year? What do the bars represent? (3) Results section restates, word-for-word, descriptions from the methods section (e.g., paragraph starting at line 232) (4) Table 1 -- make clear what is in last 2 columns (change in mean from first 8 years to second 8 years of study?) These are only a small sample of the issues regarding intelligible writing. There are grammar and wording issues throughout the body of the manuscript not highlighted in this review. The authors should seek a colleague or external source with expertise in technical/scientific writing to review the manuscript prior to resubmission. Additionally, the length of the manuscript could be reduced by concisely discussing the main purposes and findings of the analysis. Focus should be on the general findings across the 23 identified diseases. Describing characteristics of specific diseases becomes confusing for the reader, as the authors jump from disease to disease in the figures and results section. I recommend including disease-specific findings in Table 1 and in the supplementary figures only. The results section and main figures should present and describe the results of the analysis of trends across the included diseases. Reviewer #2: This was a very interesting paper to review, and was quite thought provoking. Introduction: Methods: To the understanding of this reviewer, spectral analysis of epidemiological phenomena is relatively uncommon. Seasonal decomposition, ARIMA modelling, and other methods are far more prevalent in the cited literature. A quick sampling of the bibliography yielded only a few studies employing this method and those appeared to focus on Maximal Entropy. For reproducibility, and ease of understanding for readers, I would recommend the authors describe the methods in more detail. For example, the calculation for power ratio is not given. Seeing this formula originates in electrophysiological research, it may difficult for an epidemiological reader to understand. Lines 170 - 173: There appears to be a typo, both addition and multiplication result in the multiplication mechanism? Results: Line 238: Why was 0.5 selected as the cutoff? Line 246: A non-parametric correlation coefficient would be more appropriate given the data distribution Line 263-264: For readers not familiar with the interventions of the Chinese Government, this conclusion appears speculative. Please remove or reinforce with specific interventions. Figure 3C is difficult to glean specific months from. Also, I feel there is a missed opportunity to colour the bars the corresponding disease classification (Type I, II, or III). This can provide more context. Lines 308-316: This is difficult to follow. Are you concluding that simulated data with Gaussian noise following a hybrid model is similar to the observed data, thus proving the hybrid model? Why not calculate residuals or goodness of fit? Is that not a more plausible approach to validating the hybrid hypothesis? Conclusion/Discussion: Line 387: please reword Overall Comments: From the perspective of this reviewer, this appears to be a unique approach to assessing epidemiological time series. It was very interesting to read. However, at times the methods seem so similar to standard time series analysis (Seasonal Decomposition, Exponential Smoothing, etc) that I feel an explanation is needed as to why these more standard methods were not applied, or at least contrasted against. ****** 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 [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252803.r001
Revision 1
7 Apr 2021 Author Response Dear editor, We would like to extend our utmost gratitude for your consideration, for securing 2 reviews for our manuscript and giving us this opportunity to revise our paper. We appreciate the comments and helpful suggestions from all reviewers. Based on these thoughtful suggestions, we have made substantial revisions for all parts of the paper. Addressing the comments has improved and clarified the communication of the findings we reported in our manuscript. We hope that our responses and revision are satisfactory, and hope this version will be more apt in addressing the requirements of the journal. Thank you so much for your time and consideration. Below, we have humbly given point-by-point responses (in bold letters) to your comments (in italics and underlined). The changes in the manuscript were tracked for easy identification. Sincerely, Chuanliang On behalf of all authors Editor 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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf We have checked that our manuscript meets PLOS ONE's 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. The minimal dataset underlying the results described in our manuscript can be found https://github.com/Stellapros/Dataset-of-infectious-disease Reviewer #1: I set out to review this submitted draft from a statistical perspective. However, the manuscript will first require substantial review and improvement to the grammar and wording. In its current form, the main text as well as figures/tables are somewhat difficult to follow. We apologized for the grammar and wording issues, and a native speaker has helped proofread the paper and revised this manuscript. A few example include: (1) Line 172 -- both components labeled "multiplication mechanism" Thanks for your careful reading. We have modified it. (Please see line 175-180) (2) Figure 3(C) -- is the Y-axis months of the year? What do the bars represent? The Y-axis is the preferred month for each infectious disease, which is represented by the bars (The higher the bar, the closer to December, the smaller the bar, the closer to January) (Please see Fig S5). We have also clarified this in the manuscript. (3) Results section restates, word-for-word, descriptions from the methods section (e.g., paragraph starting at line 232) Thankk you for your careful reading, we have modified this section. (Please see line 236-241) (4) Table 1 -- make clear what is in last 2 columns (change in mean from first 8 years to second 8 years of study?) We have modified the title of the last 2 columns. Now it is ´Change in mean from first 8 years to second 8 years of study´ (Please see table 1). These are only a small sample of the issues regarding intelligible writing. There are grammar and wording issues throughout the body of the manuscript not highlighted in this review. The authors should seek a colleague or external source with expertise in technical/scientific writing to review the manuscript prior to resubmission. Thank you for this kind suggestion. Upon further reading, we acknowledge this problem. A native speaker has proofread the paper and revised this manuscript. Additionally, the length of the manuscript could be reduced by concisely discussing the main purposes and findings of the analysis. Focus should be on the general findings across the 23 identified diseases. Describing characteristics of specific diseases becomes confusing for the reader, as the authors jump from disease to disease in the figures and results section. I recommend including disease-specific findings in Table 1 and in the supplementary figures only. The results section and main figures should present and describe the results of the analysis of trends across the included diseases. We really appreciate your suggestion and it makes the manuscript much clearer than before. We have reorganized the results and figures to focus on the general findings across the 23 identified diseases. The description of characteristics of specific diseases has been put into the supplementary section to avoid confusing of readers. (Please see results section) Reviewer #2: This was a very interesting paper to review, and was quite thought provoking. Thank you for the positive comment! It is very encouraging and we are happy to consider and address any issues you have. Introduction: Methods: To the understanding of this reviewer, spectral analysis of epidemiological phenomena is relatively uncommon. Seasonal decomposition, ARIMA modelling, and other methods are far more prevalent in the cited literature. A quick sampling of the bibliography yielded only a few studies employing this method and those appeared to focus on Maximal Entropy. For reproducibility, and ease of understanding for readers, I would recommend the authors describe the methods in more detail. For example, the calculation for power ratio is not given. Seeing this formula originates in electrophysiological research, it may difficult for an epidemiological reader to understand. Thank you for your comments! We agree that perhaps more detail was needed. Additionally, we would like to add that the method of spectrum analysis has been used in a number of classic and modern studies in the field of infectious diseases to capture oscillatory strength[1–5]. This analysis is not limited to the electrophysiological research, but has a wider application to a variety of biological signals. We have described the methods in more detail (e.g., the calculation for power ratio) (Please see line 123-129，145-147) Lines 170 - 173: There appears to be a typo, both addition and multiplication result in the multiplication mechanism? Thanks for your careful reading, we have modified it. (Please see line 175-180) Results: Line 238: Why was 0.5 selected as the cutoff? Thank you for this thought-provoking observation. After reflective consideration, we realized that the setting of this 0.5 is too subjective, so, we decided not to set a threshold to classify selectivity. Nonetheless, this cutoff does not affect the main results of this paper. Line 246: A non-parametric correlation coefficient would be more appropriate given the data distribution Thank you for this great suggestion! We have conducted a non-parametric correlation analysis and the significance is very similar compared with the parametric correlation coefficient (Please see line 243). Line 263-264: For readers not familiar with the interventions of the Chinese Government, this conclusion appears speculative. Please remove or reinforce with specific interventions. Thanks for your suggestion! We have removed these speculative words. Figure 3C is difficult to glean specific months from. Also, I feel there is a missed opportunity to colour the bars the corresponding disease classification (Type I, II, or III). This can provide more context. Thanks for your suggestion! Based on the suggestion of reviewer #1, we moved the original fig. 3 to the supplementary figures (Please see fig. S5). We have replaced the numbers with the name of each month for better presentation. We also colored the bars by the corresponding disease classification for better visualisation. Lines 308-316: This is difficult to follow. Are you concluding that simulated data with Gaussian noise following a hybrid model is similar to the observed data, thus proving the hybrid model? Why not calculate residuals or goodness of fit? Is that not a more plausible approach to validating the hybrid hypothesis? We apologize for the unclear statement on the simulation part and thank you for your great suggestions. The simulated data based on Gaussian noise following the hybrid model is more similar to the observed data compared with the two other models. We realised that this is not enough to come to a conclusion, so, we fit the observed data using the three models (addition, multiplication, and hybrid) (Fig. 5). We found that the goodness of fit for the hybrid model is significantly larger than that of the other two models, which supports the hybrid hypothesis. (Please see line 186-201, 302-307) Conclusion/Discussion: Line 387: please reword We appreciate this suggestion and have reworded. (Please see line 375-378) Overall Comments: From the perspective of this reviewer, this appears to be a unique approach to assessing epidemiological time series. It was very interesting to read. Thank you for the positive comment! However, at times the methods seem so similar to standard time series analysis (Seasonal Decomposition, Exponential Smoothing, etc) that I feel an explanation is needed as to why these more standard methods were not applied, or at least contrasted against. The aim of this work is to investigate the oscillatory property of infectious diseases. We considered that spectrum analysis is a more appropriate and more direct way of investigating these properties compared to methods on the time series analysis. The calculation of the power spectrum in each disease is based on the Fourier transform, which assumes that any time series can be represented as the summation of many periodical functions like trigonometric function (sin or cos). Using this method, we could directly investigate the frequency of the oscillations and the possibility of multiple oscillatory peaks in a disease. This differs from the idea of the standard time series analysis like seasonal decomposition. To give readers a clearer understanding of this analysis, we have added more descriptions in the manuscript. Reference: 1. Anderson RM, Grenfell BT, May RM. Oscillatory fluctuations in the incidence of infectious disease and the impact of vaccination: Time series analysis. J Hyg (Lond). 1984;93: 587–608. doi:10.1017/S0022172400065177 2. Broutin H, Guégan JF, Elguero E, Simondon F, Cazelles B. Large-scale comparative analysis of pertussis population dynamics: Periodicity, synchrony, and impact of vaccination. Am J Epidemiol. 2005;161: 1159–1167. doi:10.1093/aje/kwi141 3. Sumi A, Kamo KI, Ohtomo N, Kobayashi N. Study of the effect of vaccination on periodic structures of measles epidemics in Japan. Microbiol Immunol. 2007;51: 805–814. doi:10.1111/j.1348-0421.2007.tb03976.x 4. Greer M, Saha R, Gogliettino A, Yu C, Zollo-Venecek K. Emergence of oscillations in a simple epidemic model with demographic data. R Soc Open Sci. 2020;7. doi:10.1098/rsos.191187 5. Pons-Salort M, Grassly NC. Serotype-specific immunity explains the incidence of diseases caused by human enteroviruses. Science (80- ). 2018;361: 800–803. doi:10.1126/science.aat6777 Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252803.r002
12 May 2021 Decision Letter - Nicholas S. Duesbery, Editor PONE-D-21-03876R1 Enlightenment on oscillatory properties of 23 class B notifiable infectious diseases in the mainland of China from 2004 to 2020 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Han, 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. Specifically, we ask that you address the minor revisions suggested by reviewer #2. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 26 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. 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, Nicholas S. Duesbery, PhD 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.] 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 #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 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 #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes 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 #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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 #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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 #1: Thank you for responding to all reviewer comments and editing the manuscript accordingly. I find the manuscript now fit for publication. Reviewer #2: This reviewer acknowledges and appreciates the revisions made to manuscript by the authors. Upon reading the section on goodness of fit, a small typo was noticed (Line 198-200). The line should perhaps be read as: "The goodness of fit for the above models is defined in Eq. 4." In addition, the authors go into detail about each component in equations 1,2, and 3; it would be useful for the reader to have the same level of exposition outlining the goodness of fit equation provided. The remaining revisions are satisfactory, thank you for your contributions. ****** 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 #1: No 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.] 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252803.r003
Revision 2
13 May 2021 Author Response Dear editor, We deeply appreciate the positive feedback from the reviewers! Addressed the comment from #2. Thank you so much for your time and consideration in making our manuscript the best it can be and we are delighted at the acceptance for publication. Below are our point-by-point responses (in bold letters) to the reviewers’ comments (in italics and underlined). Sincerely, Chuanliang On behalf of all authors Reviewer #1: Thank you for responding to all reviewer comments and editing the manuscript accordingly. I find the manuscript now fit for publication. Thanks for your support! Reviewer #2: This reviewer acknowledges and appreciates the revisions made to manuscript by the authors. Upon reading the section on goodness of fit, a small typo was noticed (Line 198-200). The line should perhaps be read as: "The goodness of fit for the above models is defined in Eq. 4." In addition, the authors go into detail about each component in equations 1,2, and 3; it would be useful for the reader to have the same level of exposition outlining the goodness of fit equation provided. Thank you for your careful reading and helpful suggestions! We have modified the typo (Please see line 197 in the Manuscript file) and added descriptions of the parameters and variables in Eq. 4 for a better reading (Please see line 201-203 in the Manuscript file). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252803.r004
24 May 2021 Decision Letter - Nicholas S. Duesbery, Editor Enlightenment on oscillatory properties of 23 class B notifiable infectious diseases in the mainland of China from 2004 to 2020 PONE-D-21-03876R2 Dear Dr. Han, 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, Nicholas S. Duesbery, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252803.r005
Formally Accepted
28 May 2021 Acceptance Letter - Nicholas S. Duesbery, Editor PONE-D-21-03876R2 Enlightenment on oscillatory properties of 23 class B notifiable infectious diseases in the mainland of China from 2004 to 2020 Dear Dr. Han: 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. Nicholas S. Duesbery Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252803.r006

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .