PONE-D-21-34587Prevalence and Determinants of Undernutrition among Adolescents in India: A Protocol for Systematic Review and Meta-AnalysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Acharya,

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Additional Editor Comments:

Dear authors,

please follow and improve the quality of the protocol submitted according to the referee's reports.

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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: No

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?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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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: PONE-D-21-34587 Parida, Jayashree et al. comments - Prevalence and Determinants of Undernutrition among Adolescents in India: A Protocol for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

The manuscript presents a protocol for a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis that aims to determine the pooled prevalence and determinants of undernutrition (stunting, underweight/wasting) among Indian adolescents. The protocol was prepared according to (PRISMA-P 2009), Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology and PRISMA-P 2015 checklist. A systematic search in 6 databases (PubMed, EMBASE, SCOPUS, Google, Google Scholar, and Cochrane databases) was proposed and the quality of the articles included in the review will be evaluated using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS). Publication bias will be assessed through visual examination of funnel plots and objectively by Egger’s regression test.

Major:

It would be insightful for authors to provide a more detailed, expanded and clarified transcript of a draft search strategy to be used for at least one electronic database (for e.g. Pubmed), including planned limits, to ensure that it could be repeated.

-The authors registered the review protocol at PROSPERO. Author´s should kindly provide PROSPERO’s data of registration and registration number.

Minor:

-According to PRISMA-P 2015 checklist, e-mail address of all protocol authors should be provided.

-Regarding PRISMA-P 2015 checklist item n° 7, an explicit statement of the question(s) the review will address with reference to participants, interventions, comparators, and outcomes (PICO) was not found on page number 3. The authors should kindly review the pages pointed at each checklist item of PRISMA-P 2015 checklist, in order to verify if the information requested matches the pages.

Reviewer #2: In this manuscript, the authors presented the “Prevalence and Determinants of Undernutrition among Adolescents in India: A Protocol for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis”. The manuscript has an interesting topic to study through a systematic review and meta-analysis, the proposed study is clear and valid, the hypothesis is good and the methodology is feasible; however, some issues need to be addressed.

General

• Please, revise the English grammar, vocabulary, and punctuation. There are grammatical errors and sometimes it is hard to understand the text.

Abstract

• Methodology: You should include the registration number of the PROSPERO protocol.

• Discussion: in the last sentence you could include the contribution to the creation or improvement of public policies to fight undernutrition.

Introduction

• In the 2nd paragrapher you should provide an explicit statement of the question(s) the review will address with reference to participants, interventions, comparators, and outcomes (PICO) (according to the PRISMA)

Objectives

• You might review the format of the objective.

Methods

Systematic review registration and reporting of the findings

• You should review the PRISMA-P checklist (attached file);

• You have to include the PROSPERO number.

Study design and search strategy

• Did you do a pilot search to define the MeSH terms and search strategies? Have you validated them?

• You should include more keywords as synonyms to adolescents like teenagers or young adults.

• You should organize the MeSH terms into blocks to retrieve the publications and show them.

Inclusion criteria

• “All articles published only in the English language” Why not in Hindi?

Risk of bias and quality assessment

• Why do not submit the studies to a critical appraisal using the Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal checklist (JBI 2020) and Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE)?

Data analysis and assessment of publication bias

• How many studies do you need to perform the meta-analysis?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Protocol manuscript.docx

Attachment

Submitted filename: Review paper PLOS.docx.pdf

Prevalence and Determinants of Undernutrition among Adolescents in India: A Protocol for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

PONE-D-21-34587R1

Dear Dr. Acharya,

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,

Eduardo Monguilhott Dalmarco, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The authors now as an academic editor, I consider that all questions raised by the referees were answered by the authors.

Reviewers' comments: