PONE-D-20-37209

Protocol for the systematic review of the epidemiology of superficial Streptococcal A infections (skin and throat) in Australia.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wiegele,

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Dafna Yahav

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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4)  PLOS considers systematic reviews and related protocols that will provide an up-to-date analysis of a particular research question. We typically define "up-to-date" as within the last 12 months. Therefore, please revise your methods that state that publications up until 2019 will be searched.

5)  Please note that appendices are in the body of the manuscript (at the end), and it might be more appropriate to include these as supplementary files. Please evaluate.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This article describes a protocol for conducting a systematic review of the epidemiology of superficial streptococcal A infections in Australia. The article is well written and meets the requirements of the PRISMA statement for the protocols of a systematic review. On the other hand, in the introduction, the authors adequately and extensively justify the need and convenience of carrying out this systematic review. They include adequate search strategies in multiple databases. Therefore, I think it deserves to be published. A few minor points need to be clarified:

-In line 103, there seems to be a repetition of the ideas in two consecutive sentences. They could try to avoid these repetitions.

-in line 134, it is stated that there is no risk of country-based location bias. Despite this, Australia is a large country, and it would be necessary to discuss whether there is a risk of bias based on the different territories of the country.

Reviewer #2: Thanks for the opportunity to review this protocol. protocol for a systematic review for Streptococcal infections. The protocol is well done and my comments are minimal.

1. In assessing study quality, why not consider measures that systematically evaluate bias in the design and implementation of the studies? Such as the Cochran’s risk of bias Tool?

2. Is it standard practice to exclude studies on the basis of bias? Why not exclude the, only in sensitivity analysis?

3. The terms time lag bias and duplication bias are unfamiliar to me. Please provide references for their use.

4. Provide justification for why you’re not considering fixed effects models.

5. Provide citation for the climate classification system and a brief justification for your choice.

6. Will study selection be done in duplicate with a system for breaking ties?

7. The introduction section is lengthy and can be summarized.

8. Study years – please update to end of 2020 at the latest.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Protocol for the systematic review of the epidemiology of superficial Streptococcal A infections (skin and throat) in Australia.

PONE-D-20-37209R1

Dear Dr. Wiegele,

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.

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Kind regards,

Dafna Yahav

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: