PONE-D-21-10135

Determinants of late detection and advanced-stage diagnosis of breast cancer in Nigeria

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Olayide,

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

Dear authors,

I would ask you to address the issues raised by the reviewers.

Best wishes,

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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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: 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: No

Reviewer #2: 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: No

Reviewer #2: 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: Overall: thank you to the authors for presenting this piece of work. I would however, recommend that more work and care is taken to proof read the manuscript and the way the results are presented.

1. Spelling and grammar for example affiliations should be corrected to “Department” not “department”.

- “… socioeconomic barriers and lack of infrastructure make asymptomatic population-based screening impractical. And, patient demographic and presentation patterns make mammography an ineffective screening tool” – use of ‘and’ at the beginning of the sentence

- Revise where the full stops are placed within the sentence e.g. page 13 full stops are placed before (Table 3) and after as well

2. Results need re-working. As the tables stand now it is hard to understand what is being presented:

- Why are odds ratios presented only for some variables in table 2 and not for all

- Table 1 requires a has marital status on the side without any headings

- The use of (a), (b) etc. in the tables is better replaced by actual sub-headings in the tables so that the reader is not required to go back and forth

- Some p-values are written as p-value = … and others just has the numbers – please be consistent

- What are the p-values for table 3? Symptomatology does not have the reference value of 1 in the table

- What is the risk of progression i.e. how did you arrive at that percentage?

3. Not sure what the legend is supposed to show on page 22

Reviewer #2: 1. percentage of variables are missing in the tables. Authors should provide the percentages in the tables.

2. Page 7: Authors wrote "Fischer’s exact" . It should correct as " Fisher's exact test".

3. Table 3 and 4 are helpful to understand the progression.However, additional to table 3 and table 4, forest plot for OR and RR could be helpful to see risk and to visualize.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Determinants of late detection and advanced-stage diagnosis of breast cancer in Nigeria

PONE-D-21-10135R1

Dear Dr. Olayide Agodirin,

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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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,

Shah Md Atiqul Haq

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Dear authors,

Congrtaulations!

The paper is accepted.

Best wishes,

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 #2: All comments have been addressed

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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 #2: Yes

**********

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

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 #2: Yes

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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 #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 #2: (No Response)

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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 #2: No