PONE-D-21-25089Making sense of unfamiliar COVID-19 vaccines: How national origin affects vaccination willingnessPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Pfleger,

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

I agree with the concerns pointed out by the reviewers then please respond to each of their comments.

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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: Yes

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: Yes

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: Yes

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: In the manuscript titled Making sense of unfamiliar 1 COVID-19 vaccines: How national origin affects vaccination willingness” the authors have shown the importance of nationalism in decision making for vaccine acceptance.

This is quite natural but not the only factor in decision making many other factors such as the technology used and vaccine efficacy, vaccine safety etc. are also involved in the decision making. While nationalism may be a factor but that is very region specific and may not be an important contributor for decision making.

Giving preference to the vaccine developed in Germany or USA rather than to Russia or China is very natural because the perception a population has about some countries in their overall dealing in geopolitical role, transparency in different national/international issue, human index etc. The better this factor are the more is the confidence in the product a country develops. Vaccines approval by WHO is also a major factor in decision making; Sputnik V, Chinese vaccine or even India Covaxin are not WHO approved which undermines the willingness of use

The study is very region specific also; the same question may be responded in a very different way in African region or in south east-Asian countries or country which don’t have vaccine candidate. This countries/region will make their decision based on the quality of vaccine and approval from WHO

In the above view my concerns are

1. Why the authors feel nationalism is an important factor in decision making for vaccine willingness and how important this factor is among the other factors (vaccine efficacy and safety)

2. How the decision making influenced by the global approval of a vaccine candidate

3. How the authors feel the nationalism factor will affect or change in decision making for under developed countries (to my opinion vaccine efficacy and safety will still be a decision making factor rather than nationalism or country of origin).

Comments highlighting the above issues need to be incorporated in the manuscript at appropriate palaces.

Reviewer #2: This study is highly relevant and explores an interesting question about how nationalism and in-group biases can influence people's willingness towards a vaccine. However, the cause for vaccine willingness is multifactorial and more acceptance for a specific vaccine candidate cannot be solely attributed to national origin. Additional data can be helpful to corroborate their conclusion further.

1) How many people in the study are aware of the vaccine efficacy? If so, nationalism may not be the determinant in higher acceptance for Pfizer/Moderna. This data can be included as a supplementary figure or added to the result section.

2) Line 262-263: Are there any references to validate this statement? The present study applies to Germany, but can this be extended to other countries, and what additional factors govern that?

Minor:

Table 1 and 2: Table titles are abbreviated.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Making sense of unfamiliar COVID-19 vaccines: How national origin affects vaccination willingness

PONE-D-21-25089R1

Dear Dr. Pfleger,

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,

Shinya Tsuzuki, MD, MSc

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

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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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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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: Yes

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 #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. 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 authors have done the needful changes to reflect that the outcome of the study is specific to geo-political location and available freedom for making choices for vaccine and the criteria for choice will be very different depending on the available privilege to other country.

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 #1: No

Reviewer #2: No