Peer Review History
Original SubmissionMarch 31, 2021 |
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PONE-D-21-10647 Can open-defecation free (ODF) communities be sustained? A cross-sectional study in rural Ghana PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Peletz, 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. As the reviewers have mentioned, this paper has the potential to make an important contribution to the OD literature. The sample, including size and inclusion of vulnerable groups in particular, is impressive and the approach to analysis is appropriate. The reviewer's have made several minor suggestions for improving the paper including clarifying and adding more detail about the OD slippage (Reviewer 1), more discussion about shared latrine usage in the context of the paper (Reviewer 3), and clarification/formatting in data presentation. Please consider addressing these suggestions, in particular, as well as other relevant comments made by the reviewers. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 08 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
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Competing interests can arise in relationship to an organization or another person. Please follow this link to our website for more details on competing interests: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests 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 [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: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 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: The authors have conducted a cross-sectional survey of sanitation access years following community-led total sanitation. It is a an excellent and well written article. A few minor suggestions: 1. Have the authors registered their cluster randomized controlled trial? From the description given, it appears it would fit NIH’s definition of a clinical trial. I would recommend registering the trial, and citing that registration here. 2. Figure 2 presents results from multivariate regression models. Are these models described in the methods, and would the authors please include a table showing results from the models? 3. It would be good for the authors to highlight the ODF slippage. More than half the communities had > 60% toilet use, and more than half the communities had < 20% open defecation practice. These two numbers need to be reconciled – is this some sort of survey bias or are people using shared toilets oftentimes? 4. I’d like to see the decline in toilet coverage in the main document. Going from 87% to 60% over 2 years without further intervention is not surprising, nor is it all that bad. What was toilet coverage before the intervention? If it is below 60%, perhaps then the intervention had a positive effect over the two years? 5. The first paragraph of the discussion, can the authors standardize the percent ODF slippage by baseline open defecation practice? For example, going from 70% to 100% toilet coverage and then slipping to 90% would be different from going from 50% to 100% and then slipping to 90%. Reviewer #2: The statistical analysis is fairly simple using both a household and community level analysis for determining the significant factors associated with the various dependent measures from each setting. To examine the associations between household-level sanitation indicators and the remaining 10 household characteristics, they computed multivariate logistic regressions and adjusted standard errors for community clustering. The investigators also examined associations between the two community-level sanitation indicators and the remaining 14 community characteristics. using the R package. They determined that the community-level indicators followed a beta distribution. They then performed a multivariate beta regression with the logit link from a generalized linear model. Assuming that the sampling procedure for this type of indication is appropriate, the analysis is routine and the results follow from the analyses performed. Reviewer #3: This article provides valuable evidence on latrine and behavior sustainability and determinants. The article is well written, and is based on a high quality dataset (5000+ households surveyed – wow). I also was happy to see results specifically for vulnerable groups, and that respondents were surveyed on behaviors while away from home. I have a number of minor comments that should be addressed in the next submission. • Further mention of latrine sharing would be good, along with reference(s). In discussion probably, as well as methods section maybe? Approximately 50% of Ghana’s population primarily uses shared latrines (according to the JMP), which is dramatically different from any other African country. I believe this is related to a history of the government providing shared latrines. This report has some information, though there may be better articles/resources on the topic: https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/4008 • Line 176 (and the following section): great clear description of your sanitation indicators • Sections 2.3 and 2.4 dedicate a lot of text to describing indicators. You could consider moving Table S1 into the main paper, and significantly reducing the amount of text used to describe the table. The same goes for Table S2. I’m more used to seeing study population characteristics as a table at the beginning of the results section. Again, this certainly isn’t required, but it might be easier to absorb the information in that format. • Tables: the table format is a bit odd. I’m not used to seeing two columns of variables in the same table. I think a single column would look better in a published article, even if it looks bulky in a pre-proof draft. If your article is accepted, I would suggest trying an alternate/more conventional table layout. I also find it odd to not have column headers for the tables. I would suggest adding these. • Line 438 and 453: these odds ratios can’t be interpreted without units. From table S3, it looks like this odds ratio corresponds to months since ODF certification. I would indicate this in the main text (even though it’s already in the table and figure). • Line 471: please modify the text to say they communities did not meet (rather than no longer met). As you didn’t collect the ODF data, you can’t know that all these communities ever met the ODF criteria (and in my experience, ODF certification does not always mean the community met the requirements). • Limitations: please include that prior ********** 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. 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Revision 1 |
Can open-defecation free (ODF) communities be sustained? A cross-sectional study in rural Ghana PONE-D-21-10647R1 Dear Dr. Peletz, 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. Thank you for your patience in this process. I know there have been delays, and it has been frustrating at times. 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. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. 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, Samantha C Winter, Ph.D. 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 ********** 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: (No Response) ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: (No Response) ********** 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: (No Response) ********** 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: (No Response) ********** 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: (No Response) Reviewer #2: (No Response) ********** 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: Yes: David Larsen Reviewer #2: No |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-21-10647R1 Can open-defecation free (ODF) communities be sustained? A cross-sectional study in rural Ghana Dear Dr. Peletz: 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. Samantha C Winter Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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