Nursing students’ attitude on the practice of e-learning: A cross-sectional survey amid COVID-19 in Nepal

Pratima Thapa; Suman Lata Bhandari; Sharada Pathak

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0253651

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 7, 2021
18 Feb 2021 Decision Letter - Jenny Wilkinson, Editor PONE-D-21-00551 Nursing students’ attitude on the practice of e-learning: A Cross-sectional survey amid Covid 19 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Thapa, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 03 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, Jenny Wilkinson, 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. Thank you for submitting the above manuscript to PLOS ONE. During our internal evaluation of the manuscript, we found significant text overlap between your submission and the following previously published works, some of which you are an author. Introduction section: - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342501833_The_impact_of_COVID-19_on_Education_in_Ghana - https://www.jelsciences.com/articles/jbres1151.php - http://www.pjms.org.pk/index.php/pjms/article/view/2766 Results & Discussion sections: - https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Attitude-of-nursing-students-towards-e-learning-Ali-Jamil/6349db2f9f5bb9e1fcb06b7a84b423b47c713c13?p2df - https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-41178/v1 - https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/irrodl/2016-v17-n5-irrodl04876/1064708ar.pdf - https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-020-02257-4 We would like to make you aware that copying extracts from previous publications, especially outside the methods section, word-for-word is unacceptable. In addition, the reproduction of text from published reports has implications for the copyright that may apply to the publications. Please revise the manuscript to rephrase the duplicated text, cite your sources, and provide details as to how the current manuscript advances on previous work. Please note that further consideration is dependent on the submission of a manuscript that addresses these concerns about the overlap in text with published work. We will carefully review your manuscript upon resubmission, so please ensure that your revision is thorough. 3. Please include additional information regarding the survey or questionnaire used in the study and ensure that you have provided sufficient details that others could replicate the analyses. For instance, if you developed the survey or questionnaire as part of this study and it is not under a copyright more restrictive than CC-BY, please include a copy, in both the original language and English, as Supporting Information. If the questionnaire is published, please provide a citation to the (i) questionnaire and/or (ii) original publication associated with the questionnaire. 4. 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 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 identifying or sensitive patient information) 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. Please see http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c181.long for guidelines on how to de-identify and prepare clinical data for publication. 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. 5. We note you have included ten tables to which you do not refer in the text of your manuscript. We also note that there are 8 table numbers in titles and table no.s 6 and 7 are duplicated in table titles. Please ensure that you refer to all Tables in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to each Table. 5. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please delete it from any other section. Additional Editor Comments: Thank you for your submission. Reviewer comments are provided for you and I now invite you to revise your work in response to these comments. One of the reviewers has noted that there is high similarity to published works and I ask that you ensure that appropriate attribution is used and that the work is in your own words. You may wish to seek additional help for English language to help improve the presentation of your work as some parts are awkwardly worded or have grammatical errors. [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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: No ****** 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 ****** 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: Dear Authors thank you for the time you have taken for undertaking both this study and the committment to writing the manuscript. I think the paper could add to the body of literature around e-learning challenges during COVID however this study needs to be situated in the Nepalese context and the international literature. The methods section requires more work to meet the PLOS guidelines of "which focus on the technical aspects of a study rather than more subjective evaluations of issues like 'impact' or 'interest level' and I have made comments in the word document about this.Please review the attached documents that may assist you to strengthen the paper. I wish you well in publishing your work. Reviewer #2: Although the manuscript describes a technically sound piece of scientific research with data which support the conclusions, the research methodology is too simplistic and the weak descriptive findings reported in the manuscript contribute little to existing knowledge. Many similar research studies (e.g. Regmi & Regmi, 2010) have been conducted. Regmi, K. R., & Regmi, S. (2010). Medical and nursing students attitudes towards interprofessional education in Nepal. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 24(2), 150–167. https://doi.org/10.3109/13561820903362254. A similarity test reported an index of 43%. The author is suggested to ensure this manuscript is free from any issues of plagiarism. In addition to providing descriptive statistics and identifying statistical relationships between the five attitudinal dimensions and demographic variables, the author can consider exploring the statistical relationships among the five dimensions and overall attitudes. Statistical tests such as correlations, multiple regression, ANOVA and MANOVER can be considered. Overall, the manuscript suffers from a lack of contribution of the research study reported and the simplistic research method. ****** 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. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Review.docx Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-00551_reviewer.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253651.r001
Revision 1
24 Mar 2021 Author Response The responses to the reviewers’ comments are set below Comments for authors 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 Resonse: We are very grateful for the academic editor’s suggestions. The manuscript has been modified as per the PLOS One’s style requirement, including for the file naming. The template has been followed. 2. Thank you for submitting the above manuscript to PLOS ONE. During our internal evaluation of the manuscript, we found significant text overlap between your submission and the following previously published works, some of which you are an author. Introduction section: - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342501833_The_impact_of_COVID-19_on_Education_in_Ghana - https://www.jelsciences.com/articles/jbres1151.php - http://www.pjms.org.pk/index.php/pjms/article/view/2766 Results & Discussion sections: - https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Attitude-of-nursing-students-towards-e-learning-Ali-Jamil/6349db2f9f5bb9e1fcb06b7a84b423b47c713c13?p2df - https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-41178/v1 - https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/irrodl/2016-v17-n5-irrodl04876/1064708ar.pdf - https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-020-02257-4 We would like to make you aware that copying extracts from previous publications, especially outside the methods section, word-for-word is unacceptable. In addition, the reproduction of text from published reports has implications for the copyright that may apply to the publications. Please revise the manuscript to rephrase the duplicated text, cite your sources, and provide details as to how the current manuscript advances on previous work. Please note that further consideration is dependent on the submission of a manuscript that addresses these concerns about the overlap in text with published work. We will carefully review your manuscript upon resubmission, so please ensure that your revision is thorough. Response: Manuscript has been revised and cited for the sources. Rationale for the conduction of the research has also been revised. 3. Please include additional information regarding the survey or questionnaire used in the study and ensure that you have provided sufficient details that others could replicate the analyses. For instance, if you developed the survey or questionnaire as part of this study and it is not under a copyright more restrictive than CC-BY, please include a copy, in both the original language and English, as Supporting Information. If the questionnaire is published, please provide a citation to the (i) questionnaire and/or (ii) original publication associated with the questionnaire. Response: Additional information regarding the survey and questionnaire has been provided. The question has four parts. Part 1, 2 and 3 was developed by the authors themselves, and part 4 was obtained from previous study. Necessary permission was obtained from the author of the previous study to use the questionnaire in part 4 from the authors. Citation has been provided in the manuscript. The questionnaire has been provided as a separate file as supporting information. 4. 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 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 identifying or sensitive patient information) 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. Please see http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c181.long for guidelines on how to de-identify and prepare clinical data for publication. 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. Response: Data file has been made available in the supporting information files. 5. We note you have included ten tables to which you do not refer in the text of your manuscript. We also note that there are 8 table numbers in titles and table no.s 6 and 7 are duplicated in table titles. Please ensure that you refer to all Tables in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to each Table. Response: The table number has been corrected and all tables has been referred in the text. 5. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please delete it from any other section. Response: Ethics statement from other section has been removed. Additional Editor Comments 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 ________________________________________ Manuscript has been modified as per the given suggestions and feedbacks. 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: No ________________________________________ Statistical portion has been changed. 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 ________________________________________ Data has been provided as supporting information files. 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 ________________________________________ Language has been corrected. 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: Dear Authors thank you for the time you have taken for undertaking both this study and the committment to writing the manuscript. I think the paper could add to the body of literature around e-learning challenges during COVID however this study needs to be situated in the Nepalese context and the international literature. The methods section requires more work to meet the PLOS guidelines of "which focus on the technical aspects of a study rather than more subjective evaluations of issues like 'impact' or 'interest level' and I have made comments in the word document about this. Please review the attached documents that may assist you to strengthen the paper. I wish you well in publishing your work. Response: Thank you for your constructive feedback. The revision has been done as per the comments below. Page 2 – suggest using cessation or another word instead of shutting down, please edit throughout. Shutting down word has been edited with other words throughout the manuscript Page 3 please remove etc from the paper entirely and list the extra problems Etc has been removed Page 3 there appears to be different fonts used at times? Fonts has been made uniform. Font styles are used as per the guidelines of plos one. Page 3 suggest editing this sentence please So, based on this the research team researcher was is interested in carrying out a study regarding the attitude of the nursing students’ attitudes towards e-learning Edit has been done as per the suggestion. Page 3 I understand English may not be the author’s first language and you are to be congratulated for writing this paper fully in English, that must be difficult at times. However the readership will expect correct English grammar and punctuation. Could you have someone go over the paper please and correct statements such as this was never been tried before resubmitting. I will not comment any further on grammar and punctuation however I have highlighted some in the attached PDF. Thank you for the feedback. I have tried my best to correct English grammar in the revised manuscript. Methods – please reference and provide more information on the study method chosen, the validity testing and reporting of the statistical analysis of the survey in some more depth. Using the equator website is recommended and the tools there will assist you to include relevant information in the paper. For cross-sectional studies you could use the STROBE tool. It has been revised. Please remove all abbreviations such as B.Sc. Removed all abbreviations. Page 4 the phases of the study could be moved into a table. I don’t think Ethical consideration: should be included please write this in a full sentence. Ethical consideration has been written in full sentence. The results section has a lot of tables and data reported is not discussed in the discussion section. I would reconsider the important or new or interesting results and present and report only on them. Important and new findings are discussed in the discussion. The discussion also has some paragraphs that would be better placed in the background section for example the two that begin In a study conducted in Iraq…… Background section has been provided with the data. This paragraph is repetitive of the results section and should not be in the discussion The mean scores for perceived usefulness, intention to adopt, and distant use of e-learning were 3.06, 3.07, and 3.82 which is much more in comparison to ease and there are other paragraphs similar to this one. This has been removed. The conclusion in the paper is very short and seems to generalise the paper in the international data. For example there are many nursing education providers that do and have shown effective, reliable and efficient use of e-learning and virtual learning experiences. I think overall a wider literature review and a more honed problem statements is needed for this paper to progress to publication. Conclusion has been re-written. Also regarding the referencing the numbers need to be super script like so 1 The references are made as per the feedback. There does appear to be some inconsistencies in the reference list such as some doi included and different presentations of the doi. Also see number 24 I am not aware of using cited as in the reference list, however I am not an expert on Vancouver style so I stand corrected if this is normal practice. Vancouver style referencing list has been corrected. Reviewer #2: Although the manuscript describes a technically sound piece of scientific research with data which support the conclusions, the research methodology is too simplistic and the weak descriptive findings reported in the manuscript contribute little to existing knowledge. Many similar research studies (e.g. Regmi & Regmi, 2010) have been conducted. Regmi, K. R., & Regmi, S. (2010). Medical and nursing students attitudes towards interprofessional education in Nepal. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 24(2), 150–167. https://doi.org/10.3109/13561820903362254. A similarity test reported an index of 43%. The author is suggested to ensure this manuscript is free from any issues of plagiarism. In addition to providing descriptive statistics and identifying statistical relationships between the five attitudinal dimensions and demographic variables, the author can consider exploring the statistical relationships among the five dimensions and overall attitudes. Statistical tests such as correlations, multiple regression, ANOVA and MANOVER can be considered. Overall, the manuscript suffers from a lack of contribution of the research study reported and the simplistic research method. ________________________________________ Correlation has been established between the domains and also with the overall attitude regarding e-learning. 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. Yes, the figures have been done as per the guidelines. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-00551-R2R.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253651.r002
30 Mar 2021 Decision Letter - Jenny Wilkinson, Editor PONE-D-21-00551R1 Nursing students’ attitude on the practice of e-learning: A Cross-sectional survey amid Covid 19 in Nepal PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Thapa, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by May 14 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, Jenny Wilkinson, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (if provided): Thank you for the revisions and responses to reviewer comments. 1. There are a number of grammatical and other language issues in the work and I strongly recommend that the work is reviewed by a native English writer or by a professional editing service. 2. In the new text describing the sample size from 4 institutions is stated as 482; this seems rather small. Please confirm that this is the total number of students studying nursing at these 4 institutions; if not then please provide clarification what the number refers to. 3. In this same section (sample size) the distribution of survey invitations via mail (should this be e-mail), WhatsApp etc is stated however it is unclear how the authors determined the overall sample size to calculate response rate or what database was used to generate the invitations to participate. 4. Please provide details of the pre-testing of the instrument 5. Numerical data should be given to a consistent number of decimal places, for example in the first paragraph of the section ‘Sociodemographic data’ some data is given to 1 decimal place while others (for the same parameter) is given to 2 decimal places. 6. For in text citation do not include the author initial [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253651.r003
Revision 2
14 Apr 2021 Author Response Additional Editor Comments (if provided): Thank you for the revisions and responses to reviewer comments. 1. There are a number of grammatical and other language issues in the work and I strongly recommend that the work is reviewed by a native English writer or by a professional editing service. Response: The work has been reviewed by an English teacher. 2. In the new text describing the sample size from 4 institutions is stated as 482; this seems rather small. Please confirm that this is the total number of students studying nursing at these 4 institutions; if not then please provide clarification what the number refers to. Response: Yes, the total number of the students in 4 selected colleges was 482. 3. In this same section (sample size) the distribution of survey invitations via mail (should this be e-mail), WhatsApp etc is stated however it is unclear how the authors determined the overall sample size to calculate response rate or what database was used to generate the invitations to participate. Response:Total enumerative sampling method was used. So, all the students were enrolled in the study with sample size of 482. 4. Please provide details of the pre-testing of the instrument Response: The validity of the instrument was maintained by extensive literature review and consultation from subject experts. The instrument was translated to native language and then again translated to English version. The reliability of the instrument was examined for internal consistency by pre-testing the instrument in 10% (48 nursing students) of a similar type of estimated population in a similar setting. Necessary modification in the questionnaire was done as per the results obtained. The reliability score for the instrument for part 2 and 3 was found to be 0.98 on pretesting. 5. Numerical data should be given to a consistent number of decimal places, for example in the first paragraph of the section ‘Sociodemographic data’ some data is given to 1 decimal place while others (for the same parameter) is given to 2 decimal places. Response:All numerical data has consistent number of decimal after correction. 6. For in text citation do not include the author initial Response: Author initials has been removed from the text citation. As per the suggestion the figure from the manuscript file has been removed. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253651.r004
26 Apr 2021 Decision Letter - Jenny Wilkinson, Editor PONE-D-21-00551R2 Nursing students’ attitude on the practice of e-learning: A Cross-sectional survey amid COVID-19 in Nepal PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Thapa, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 10 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, Jenny Wilkinson, 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. Additional Editor Comments (if provided): Thank you for your revisions, unfortunately there are still a number of language and grammatical issues that need attention. I strongly recommend use of either a professional editing service or someone who has extensive experience in writing for publication. [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253651.r005
Revision 3
5 May 2021 Author Response 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. Response: Referencing has been corrected. There are no any references from retracted papers. Thank you for your revisions, unfortunately there are still a number of language and grammatical issues that need attention. I strongly recommend use of either a professional editing service or someone who has extensive experience in writing for publication. Response: Professional editing service was used in editing language and grammatical issues. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253651.r006
10 Jun 2021 Decision Letter - Jenny Wilkinson, Editor Nursing students’ attitude on the practice of e-learning: A Cross-sectional survey amid COVID-19 in Nepal PONE-D-21-00551R3 Dear Dr. Thapa, 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, Jenny Wilkinson, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253651.r007
Formally Accepted
15 Jun 2021 Acceptance Letter - Jenny Wilkinson, Editor PONE-D-21-00551R3 Nursing students’ attitude on the practice of e-learning: A Cross-sectional survey amid COVID-19 in Nepal. Dear Dr. Thapa: 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 Jenny Wilkinson Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253651.r008

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