Preprint articles as a tool for teaching data analysis and scientific communication

Lisa Z. Scheifele; Nikolaos Tsotakos; Michael J. Wolyniak

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0261622

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 2, 2021
23 Jul 2021 Decision Letter - Or Kan Soh, Editor PONE-D-21-18261 PREPRINT ARTICLES AS A TOOL FOR TEACHING DATA ANALYSIS AND SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Scheifele, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 06 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. 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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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 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 If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references.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 If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: Dear Author(s) I am pleased to inform you that the reviewers have come to the conclusions for minor corrections to your manuscript. Please refer to their comments for further action. Thank you. [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: N/A Reviewer #2: N/A Reviewer #3: N/A ****** 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: Yes 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: Preprint articles as a tool for teaching data analysis and scientific communication In the present article, the authors developed a new method in which students use a cognitive apprenticeship model to uncover how experts analyzed a paper and compare the professional’s cognitive approach to their own. In my opinion, the study is interesting and innovative, including was well delineated. Reviewer #2: Dear authors, thank you for your collaboration A very interesting work on teaching strategy. I would consider making it less extensive in order that readers can locate themselves in the strategy used and the qualitative form that you have used to evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy in Higher Education Teaching. Reviewer #3: Congratulations on building this model to develop student’s skills in peer review by engaging in realistic, real-work tasks conducted on 28 students from three institutions during the Fall 2020 semester using the cognitive apprenticeship approach. It is encouraging to observe the teaching of this approach from the earliest stages of university education, which I believe will go a long way to improve peer review and interpreting research data. I propose to the authors the following questions and suggestions, which might help to clarify some of these concerns: - Could you describe the methodological design you used? - Did any students refuse to participate, or did they not complete the entire assessment? - Regarding the qualitative results, precisely the verbatims, could you provide information about the participant, at least age and gender? A minor language revision is necessary to improve the manuscript understandable. Below are some grammatical errors to be corrected: Introduction Line 25 science to scientific Line 36 step to steps Line 37 peer reviewed to peer-reviewed Line 62 Central to this process are the 5 to Central to this process is the 5 Line 68 critique by having students review articles themselves to critiques by having students review articles themselves Line 72 difference between their assessment and the peer reviewer’s. to differences between their assessment and the peer reviewers. Discussion Line 477 judgement to judgment ****** 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: Tarek Mohamed Abd El-Aziz Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: Yes:** Ian Blanco-Mavillard [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261622.r001
Revision 1
24 Aug 2021 Author Response Dear Dr. Soh: Thank you for your assistance in seeing our manuscript through the peer review process. We appreciate the careful review by the reviewers, their overall strongly positive assessment of our work, and their view that only minor corrections to our manuscript are needed. We have addressed all the reviewers’ requests and include a point-by-point response below. 1. Reviewer #2: I would consider making it less extensive in order that readers can locate themselves in the strategy used and the qualitative form that you have used to evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy in Higher Education Teaching. While we agree with reviewer 2’s statement that it is necessary for readers to be able to see how they could use or implement this pedagogical strategy, we believe that shortening the manuscript and making it less extensive would hinder that process rather than enabling it. Because our pedagogical technique can be implemented in different classes and contexts, we felt that it is necessary to include sufficient details about each of the different instances of the technique being used that a diverse range of faculty from different institutional types can best use this teaching strategy. 2. Reviewer #3: Could you describe the methodological design you used? We appreciate the reviewers’ request here and have included a better explanation that we believe improves the revised manuscript. Specifically, we described how we designed our study methods correspond to three steps of the cognitive apprenticeship approach (lines 113-118 in the revised manuscript with tracked changes), the learning model on which our pedagogical approach is based. 3. Reviewer #3: Did any students refuse to participate, or did they not complete the entire assessment? No students refused to participate, but this exercise was one of two options that students could choose from in one of the participating courses; we have clarified in the manuscript that 6 of the 24 enrolled students chose to participate in this study (lines 98-99 in the revised manuscript with tracked changes). Two students did not complete the entire assignment, and we have now clarified that student work was not included unless all three parts were completed (lines 101-102 in the revised manuscript with tracked changes). 4. Reviewer #3: Regarding the qualitative results, precisely the verbatims, could you provide information about the participant, at least age and gender? We appreciate the reviewer’s interest in characteristics of our study participants. We describe the gender and class year of all our participants in the methods section. To respond more precisely to this request while still protecting our students’ privacy, we have included the students’ gender and class year for each of the significant direct quotes, and this information can now be found on lines 257, 281, 323, 391, 429, 480 of the revised manuscript with tracked changes. 5. Reviewer 3: A minor language revision is necessary to improve the manuscript understandable. Below are some grammatical errors to be corrected: Introduction Line 25 science to scientific This correction has been made. Line 36 step to steps We believe that this is grammatically correct as written: “publication on a preprint server is increasingly becoming the first step of publishing a research article”. Line 37 peer reviewed to peer-reviewed This correction has been made. Line 62 “Central to this process are the” to “Central to this process is the” We believe that this is correct as written; the subject of the sentence is “the principles” and therefore the verb should be plural “are”. Line 68 critique by having students review articles themselves to critiques by having students review articles themselves This correction has been made. Line 72 difference between their assessment and the peer reviewer’s. to differences between their assessment and the peer reviewers. This correction has been made. Discussion Line 477 judgement to judgment This correction has been made. Thank you again for your help shepherding our manuscript. We hope that these changes have fully addressed the reviewers’ concerns, but if not, we would be happy to make additional revisions as necessary. Sincerely, Lisa Scheifele Associate Professor and Chair Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261622.r002
7 Dec 2021 Decision Letter - Muhammad Shahzad Aslam, Editor PREPRINT ARTICLES AS A TOOL FOR TEACHING DATA ANALYSIS AND SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION PONE-D-21-18261R1 Dear Dr. Scheifele, 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. 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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: (No Response) 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: N/A 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: Yes 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: The authors have been addressed all the comments. I recommend to accept the manuscript in the present version. Reviewer #2: Dear authors, thank you for your contribution. A very good teaching-learning exercise in sup education Reviewer #3: The authors correctly respond to the questions of both reviewers. For my part, there are no further methodological concerns or limitations. Congratulations to the authors! ****** 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 Reviewer #3: Yes:** Ian Blanco-Mavillard https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261622.r003
Formally Accepted
13 Dec 2021 Acceptance Letter - Muhammad Shahzad Aslam, Editor PONE-D-21-18261R1 Preprint articles as a tool for teaching data analysis and scientific communication Dear Dr. Scheifele: 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 Dr. Muhammad Shahzad Aslam Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261622.r004

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