Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionApril 5, 2021 |
|---|
|
PONE-D-21-11110 Converting from Montreal Cognitive Assessment to Mini-Mental State Examination-2 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. PARK, 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 that are detailed below. Particular issues seem to be the origin of the study population, the order of testing, and the validity of the conversion across the full range of scores (0-30). 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:
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: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 2. Thank you for including your ethics statement: "The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of Korea University Ansan Hospital (2021AS0066) and informed consent was not necessary because of the study’s retrospective design and the de-identified nature of the data." a) Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified what type you obtained (for instance, written or verbal, and if verbal, how it was documented and witnessed). If your study included minors, state whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians. If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information. Once you have amended this/these statement(s) in the Methods section of the manuscript, please add the same text to the “Ethics Statement” field of the submission form (via “Edit Submission”). For additional information about PLOS ONE ethical requirements for human subjects research, please refer to http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-human-subjects-research. 3. 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: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: Yes 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: No 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: Simple methods to convert test scores from commonly administered cognitive screening instruments (CSIs) to approximate MMSE scores is of recognised clinical utility. There are various methods for doing this, including calculation of linear regression equations and, as in this paper, deriving a conversion table of equivalent scores from equipercentile equating with log-linear smoothing. A potential problem with the latter is that it includes all those MMSE items which are recognized to be easy and which are of little value in patient assessment. Queries to address: Introduction P3: “Previous studies have attempted to develop MoCA to MMSE conversion algorithms or equivalent tables”. The authors might also include here Int J Geriatr Psychiatry 2017;32:351-2. Methods P4-5: 303 study participants who attended a clinic. Was this all who attended, or were some patients unable/unwilling to complete bot MoCA and MMSE-2, or other aspects of the diagnostic assessment? P4: “36 subjects with being cognitively unimpaired (CU).”. Were these healthy controls, in which case this is an experimental study, or patients referred to the clinic with subjective memory complaints, in which case you have a pragmatic study? This sentence in the Discussion (P16) “Participants with subjective cognitive decline might have been recruited as subjects with CU.” suggests the former. This point has important implications for the potential generalisability or transferability of the equipercentile equating table. P5: “All participants underwent the MoCA and MMSE-2 examinations on the same day”. Were these performed in a counterbalanced order to avoid bias? Answered in the Discussion at P16. Results: P13: Figure 2 legend implies 3 solid and 2 dotted lines, whereas Figure 2 as presented on P29 has 2 solid and 3 dotted lines. Interpretation not clear. Reviewer #2: PONE-D-21-11110 Converting from Montreal Cognitive Assessment to Mini-Mental State Examination-2 The author add to a growing literature of cross-walks between cognitive screening tests in aging/dementia. The authors implement previously validated methods to compare the MoCA and MMSE-2 in a moderately sized aging sample that included cognitive normal as well as MCI and AD patients. The author report that the MoCA and MMSE-2 can reliably be converted, and, in general, show that the conversion is similar to previous work converting MoCA to MMSE. The authors should address a few concerns to improve the current state the manuscript: General: The manuscript would benefit from thorough copy-editing for grammar. Methods/Results: -The authors should state whether the order of test was consistent. Was MMSE-2 always given before the MoCA? -In the description of the MoCA and MMSE-2 the authors state the MoCA is ‘the most widely used screening test for cognitive dysfunction” and then state that the MMSE-2 is ‘the most commonly used test for the screening of cognitive impairment’: I find it rather difficult to discern the difference between these two claims. Can the authors provide more detail about how these differ? -In my opinion there is no need to include the explanation of the meanings of commonly used stats in terms of relative strength (e.g. Pearson r). -The authors need to provide the robust range of MMSE-2 and MoCA scores in each of the samples. That is, what are the minimum and maximum scores? This is relevant for understanding equipercentile equating and the LOA. It is likely that most of the lower end of the scales (particularly for the MMSE-2) is not observed, thus making scores at the lower range less stable b/c more interpolation is needed in the equating approach. There is not much to overcome this, but should be discussed as a likely contributor to less concordant scores at the lower end of the scales. -What is the benefit or the point in comparing the Pearson r-values between MMSE-2 and MoCA to other studies? Other important factor such as sample size, age, education, etc. cannot be accounted for and could explain these differences. This does not seem to be thoroughly discussed and as such make me question why this analysis was performed and what additional information is gained from this analysis. -The authors should provide more clarity on Table 4 as the methods are not clear. I believe that the authors are using previously published conversion tables on their sample. It should be made clear that other cross-walks are being applied to their sample and that the author are did not recalculate data from the originals sources. Reviewer #3: In this manuscript, the authors present a conversion table from the MoCA to the MMSE-2 using the equipercentile equating method with log-linear smoothing. The manuscript is well-written and the statistical analyses have been properly performed. I have some minor comments: - the sample size is relatively small, especially regarding patients with dementia (n=94). The authors present the conversion table for all MoCA scores (including MoCA = 0). It would be important to mention how many patients had a MoCA 0-5, 5-10, etc. in the sample (which seems low based on figure 2) and discuss whether the conversion is valid at these low scores given the low sample size - A mean MoCA of 17 seems low for patients with MCI. I would expect that some patients with MoCA<15 in this group probably have a functional impairment suggestive of dementia. - authors could provide more detail regarding the cause of cognitive impairment of patients included in the sample. For instance, it is known that the conversion between two cognitive tests is slightly different in patients with vascular dementia (dysexecutive profile) compared with patients with Alzheimer's disease (amnestic profile). - In Table 1, I would refer to the MMSE-2 and MoCA as cognitive screening tests rather than neuropsychological tests. Altogether, my recommendation is to accept the manuscript pending minor revisions. ********** 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: Yes: Andrew J Larner Reviewer #2: Yes: David R. Roalf Reviewer #3: Yes: David Bergeron [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
| Revision 1 |
|
Converting from the Montreal Cognitive Assessment to the Mini-Mental State Examination-2 PONE-D-21-11110R1 Dear Dr. PARK, 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: 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 Reviewer #3: 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 Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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: No Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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 Reviewer #3: 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: (No Response) Reviewer #2: All initial reviews address. I have no additional comments. This article should be accepted for publication. Reviewer #3: My comments have been appropriately addressed. I have no further comment. I feel that the manuscript is ready for publication. ********** 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: Yes: AJ Larner Reviewer #2: Yes: David Roalf Reviewer #3: Yes: David Bergeron |
| Formally Accepted |
|
PONE-D-21-11110R1 Converting from the Montreal Cognitive Assessment to the Mini-Mental State Examination-2 Dear Dr. PARK: 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 |
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 .