Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 7, 2021
Decision Letter - Sanjay Kumar Singh Patel, Editor

PONE-D-21-11490

Association of Tdap Vaccine Guidelines with Vaccine Uptake during Pregnancy

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Badreldin,

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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Sanjay Kumar Singh Patel, Ph.D.

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 If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references.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 If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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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

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

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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

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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

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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: The manuscript entitled “Association of Tdap Vaccine Guidelines with Vaccine Uptake during Pregnancy” by DiTosto et al is conducted/performed this study to understand the vaccine uptake (Tdap, influenza, and pneumococcal vaccine) during pregnancy with respect to pre- and post- implementation of the 2012 ACIP guidelines. They observed that receipt and timing of Tdap vaccine and influenza vaccine has improved after implementation of the 2012 ACIP guidelines whereas uptake of the pneumococcal vaccine remained low. After carefully reviewing this article, this reviewer has certain suggestions that would help in more comprehensive overview of the topic.

Suggestions:

1. Since authors have studied only vaccination data of 11/2011-11/2012 (“pre-guideline”) and 12/2012-12/2015 (“post guideline”) that is form single care center only, therefore authors should include more data to their study.

2. Figure’s quality is not good for publication. Authors may improve the quality.

3. In figure 1, authors should check the total number of individuals included in their study as sum of pre-guidelines and post-guidelines individuals (684+1610= 2294) is more than total number of individuals (2288).

4. Why 2012 ACIP guidelines could not address racial disparities in vaccine uptake, authors may suggest their view to improve these guidelines further.

**********

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Vinay Kumar

[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

EDITOR

Editor, Point 1:

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: We have reviewed our reference list and determined that none of the cited papers have been retracted.

Editor, Point 2:

Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming.

Response: We have updated the manuscript and file naming in accordance with the PLOS ONE’s style requirements.

Editor, Point 3:

In your ethics statement in the Methods section and in the online submission form, please provide additional information about the data used in your retrospective study. Specifically, please ensure that you have discussed whether all data were fully anonymized before you accessed them and/or whether the IRB or ethics committee waived the requirement for informed consent. If patients provided informed written consent to have data from their medical records used in research, please include this information.

Response: This study was approved by the Northwestern University IRB and granted a waiver of consent. Data was provided by the Northwestern Medicine Electronic Data Warehouse and included protected health information. We have updated the ethics statement in the Methods section and the online submission form accordingly.

Editor, Point 4:

In your Methods section, please provide additional information about the participant selection method and the demographic details of your participants. Please ensure you have provided sufficient details to replicate the analyses such as:

a) the recruitment date range (month and year),

b) the institutions where patients were from,

c) a statement as to whether your sample can be considered representative of a larger population

Response: We appreciate the opportunity to clarify. We have revised our methods section to include the requested details and are happy to make any additional changes if requested by the Editor.

Editor, Point 5:

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.

Response: Thank you for the opportunity to clarify. In accordance with PLOS requirements, we are unable to share a de-identified dataset due to the potential of identifying sensitive patient information. We have clarified this in our cover letter.

Editor, Point 6:

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: Thank you for this information. We have updated our cover letter accordingly.

Editor, Point 7:

PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a pre-existing iD in Editorial Manager. Please see the following video for instructions on linking an ORCID iD to your Editorial Manager account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcclfuvtxQ

Response: We have added the ORCID iD for Dr. Badreldin in the submission portal (0000-0002-6341-3350).

REVIEWER 1

Reviewer 1, Point 1:

Since authors have studied only vaccination data of 11/2011-11/2012 (“pre-guideline”) and 12/2012-12/2015 (“post guideline”) that is form single care center only, therefore authors should include more data to their study.

Response: Thank you for this feedback. We believe that our sample size is large enough to detect meaningful differences across groups. However, we agree that future research is warranted in broader settings and with larger sample sizes. We have included this in our limitations section.

Reviewer 1, Point 2:

Figure’s quality is not good for publication. Authors may improve the quality.

Response: We apologize for this inconvenience. We have updated file type and the quality of our figures in accordance with PLOS ONE requirements.

Reviewer 1, Point 3:

In figure 1, authors should check the total number of individuals included in their study as sum of pre-guidelines and post-guidelines individuals (684+1610= 2294) is more than total number of individuals (2288).

Response: Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have carefully reviewed and updated the values in Figure 1.

Reviewer 1, Point 4:

Why 2012 ACIP guidelines could not address racial disparities in vaccine uptake, authors may suggest their view to improve these guidelines further.

Response: We appreciate this suggestion and agree that efforts to alleviate racial disparities in prenatal vaccine uptake are of utmost importance. We have revised our manuscript to include a discussion on the importance of acknowledging and addressing racial disparities in vaccine uptake.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Responses to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Sanjay Kumar Singh Patel, Editor

Association of Tdap Vaccine Guidelines with Vaccine Uptake during Pregnancy

PONE-D-21-11490R1

Dear Dr. Badreldin,

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.

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Kind regards,

Sanjay Kumar Singh Patel, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Sanjay Kumar Singh Patel, Editor

PONE-D-21-11490R1

Association of Tdap vaccine guidelines with vaccine uptake during pregnancy

Dear Dr. Badreldin:

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.

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Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Sanjay Kumar Singh Patel

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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