Status of the stateless population in Thailand: How does stigma matter in their life?

Siwarak Kitchanapaibul; Tawatchai Apidechkul; Peeradone Srichan; Thanatchaporn Mulikaburt; Onnalin Singkhorn; Anusorn Udplong; Panupong Upala; Chalitar Chomchoei; Fartima Yeemard; Ratipark Tamornpark; Pilasinee Wongnuch

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0264959

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 20, 2021
19 Oct 2021 Decision Letter - Ghaffar Ali, Editor PONE-D-21-27010Status of the stateless population in Thailand: how does stigma matter in their life?PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Apidechkul, 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 Dec 03 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: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Ghaffar Ali, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. 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 2. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section. 3. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments/ Funding Section of your manuscript: This study was supported by a grant from the Center of Excellence for Hill Tribe Health Research, Mae Fa Luang Thailand. The funder had no role in the design of the study, collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data and writing of the manuscript. Please note that funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. [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: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: No ****** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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 paper is interesting and reflects the significant issue that minorities in Thailand are facing. The manuscript is well structured. However, there are some grammatical errors (for example, tenses) and word choices (for example, a mole instead of a spy). The authors need to work more on literature reviews. More discussions on the differences between stigma, prejudice, and discrimination should be added. More reviews on types of stigma: public stigma, self-stigma, & institutional stigma could be a good addition. The methodology section is well structured and clear. Some contents in the result section are not matched with headers in the result section, for example, in sections C, D, & E. The examples related to the Thai language may have a separate section. It is unclear on the interpretation of “life is nothing.” Is it about meaningless or invisible? In the conclusion section, the authors may need to suggest more substantial implications or policy recommendations instead of summarizing the findings again. Reviewer #2: The authors aimed to examine the experience of Thailand's stateless population and how they deal with stigma. The manuscript is a technically sound piece of scientific research that includes data to back up the conclusions. There is a concise statement as well as ethical considerations. However, there is a lack of theoretical support/discussion. An additional topic of debate might be the concept of stigma in marginalized communities, i.e. Furthermore, the analytical component is demonstrated without a comprehensive literature study or theoretical support/discussion. The analytical focus is solely on Thailand, with only limited implications for other empirical investigations. The author provides no evidence of demographic differences or differing educational backgrounds, which may have an impact on the type/degree of stigma. In many cases, the transcripts were simply inserted without further examination. Please clearly specify the interviewee selection criteria. Furthermore, because the definition of a stateless person is "who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law" (The 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons), Simply described, a stateless person is someone who does not have nationality from any country. Thereby, the analytical and conclusion sections, as well as recommendations should be done with caution to avoid recommendations with a tautology-related perspective. ****** 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: No Reviewer #2: No [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.0264959.r001
Revision 1
13 Dec 2021 Author Response Response to reviewers’ comments Dear Plosone, Thank you very much for given us the opportunity to revise the manuscript. We have carefully checked, cleared, and responded to all points raised by you and reviewers. Moreover, we have made a bit change on the title from “Status of the stateless population in Thailand: how does stigma matter in their life?” to “Status of the stateless population in Thailand: how does stigma matter in their life ?” which is reported in the cover letter to you as well. We do hope that you happy in this version, and look forward to hearing from you. Regards, TK PONE-D-21-27010 Status of the stateless population in Thailand: how does stigma matter in their life? PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. 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 : Thank you, we checked and followed the journal guidelines. 2. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section. : Thank you. This problem is now revised. 3. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments/ Funding Section of your manuscript: This study was supported by a grant from the Center of Excellence for Hill Tribe Health Research, Mae Fa Luang Thailand. The funder had no role in the design of the study, collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data and writing of the manuscript. Please note that funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. : Thank you. This information is now revised. : Please kindly insert the following statement in the funding section: “Funding This study was supported by a grant from the Center of Excellence for Hill Tribe Health Research, Mae Fa Luang Thailand (No. 01-2021). The funder had no role in the design of the study; collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data; or writing of the manuscript.” 4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. : Thank you. These files are now revised and updated. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: 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: 1) The paper is interesting and reflects the significant issue that minorities in Thailand are facing.The manuscript is well structured. However, there are some grammatical errors (for example, tenses) and word choices (for example, a mole instead of a spy). : This manuscript was revised again by American Journal Experts (AJE), reference No 39DA-241D-833B-CF5B-531B 2) The authors need to work more on literature reviews. More discussions on the differences between stigma, prejudice, and discrimination should be added. More reviews on types of stigma: public stigma, self-stigma, & institutional stigma could be a good addition. : Thank you for the comment. We added the relevant information on page 3, lines 7-21 with references no 15-19. 3) The methodology section is well structured and clear. : Thank you. 4) Some contents in the result section are not matched with headers in the result section, for example, in sections C, D, & E. The examples related to the Thai language may have a separate section. : Thank you for this important comment. : As a team, we carefully discussed this issue and realized that in Parts C and D, two themes were extracted from the analysis: being unable to qualify for health care services and being ranked below other hill tribe people who do hold Thai IDs. We revised all the details of the supported content so it relates to the theme. Meanwhile in Section E, P#9 said she could not get a good job because she did not attend a school when she was young. She also said she could not speak Thai, which was one reason she was not recruited into a good job. We decided to retain the sequence of her story in the manuscript’s contents because we want to ensure that all readers understand the context of the stateless population in Thailand. : With this important comment, we revised all the contents in the manuscript to ensure that all the information and themes are consistent. : Thank you very much for the comment and we hope our revisions are clear. 5) It is unclear on the interpretation of “life is nothing.” Is it about meaningless or invisible? : After carefully reviewing Section E (“Life is nothing”), we completely agree with you that the message lacks interpretation. Thank you very much for the important comment. : We reviewed all the information and interpreted it. Please see page 11, lines 12-14. 6) In the conclusion section, the authors may need to suggest more substantial implications or policy recommendations instead of summarizing the findings again. : Thank you for the comment. We improved this section. Reviewer #2: 1) The authors aimed to examine the experience of Thailand's stateless population and how they deal with stigma. The manuscript is a technically sound piece of scientific research that includes data to back up the conclusions. There is a concise statement as well as ethical considerations. : Thank you very much. 2) However, there is a lack of theoretical support/discussion. An additional topic of debate might be the concept of stigma in marginalized communities, i.e., Furthermore, the analytical component is demonstrated without a comprehensive literature study or theoretical support/discussion. : Thank you for the comment. : Essentially, we reviewed many studies and examined many concentrated conceptual frameworks before undertaking this project. Ultimately, we used the framework integrating normative influence on stigma (FINIS) for the study [15], which turned out to the best fit. 3) The analytical focus is solely on Thailand, with only limited implications for other empirical investigations. The author provides no evidence of demographic differences or differing educational backgrounds, which may have an impact on the type/degree of stigma. In many cases, the transcripts were simply inserted without further examination. : Thank you for the important comment. This project originated from the stigma experiences among the stateless population in Thailand. During the analysis, we thought carefully about including individual information in the manuscript quotations. However, we realized that inserting increasing amounts of information into the manuscript might violate the ethics of a good human-subject research project. Therefore, we listed the group’s demographics, including education, in Table 1. : Most of the stateless population in Thailand cannot access education (66.7% had no education and 23.5% attended primary school only), and the stigma impacts may not differ according to their educational level. We hope our explanation is clear. 4) Please clearly specify the interviewee selection criteria. : The interviewee selection criteria were a) being part of the stateless population, defined as having no Thai ID, and b) experiencing any form of stigma (page 4, lines 19-21). 5) Furthermore, because the definition of a stateless person is "who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law" (The 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons), Simply described, a stateless person is someone who does not have nationality from any country. Thereby, the analytical and conclusion sections, as well as recommendations should be done with caution to avoid recommendations with a tautology-related perspective. : Thank you so much for such an important comment. : The first paragraph of the Conclusion was focused on granting Thai IDs because the context of the related laws has changed over time and by case. Therefore, the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons clearly states the definition of stateless persons, but the new Constitution of Thailand includes much evidence as new criteria to be used for granting IDs. These include making a great contribution to Thai society in any respect, being a person devoted to Thailand through sports, etc. Moreover, the law has been revised to adapt to the new situation of Thai society. Therefore, we included this content in the first paragraph of the Conclusion. We hope that our reasoning is clear. TK Assistant Professor Dr. Tawatchai Apidechkul Dean, School of Health Science, MFU Director, Center of Excellence of the Hill Tribe Health Research, WHO-CC Former Hubert H Humphrey Fellow (2013-2014), Emory University Global Health Delivery Intensive (Harvard School of Public Health) Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reveiwer commentsEE.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264959.r002
27 Jan 2022 Decision Letter - Ghaffar Ali, Editor PONE-D-21-27010R1Status of the stateless population in Thailand: how does stigma matter in their life?PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Apidechkul, 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 Mar 13 2022 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: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Ghaffar Ali, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 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. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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: Partly ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A 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 #1: Yes Reviewer #2: 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 ****** 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 addressed and responded to all of my comments and suggestions. However, I have some comments on their responses. The name of Section E can be “No better options in life” instead of “Life is nothing.” “No better options in life” may represent the stories in this section clearer. The term “life is nothing” is unclear. In addition, please be careful on the lettering of section “B. Perceptions of stigma.” Should they all be “d), e)”? Another option is using numbers. It may be easier to structure the sections. In the conclusion section, the authors suggest that the problems may be alleviated by providing Thai IDs to hill tribe people. They also suggest the promotion of nonstigma behaviors and services toward anyone. In many countries, there are laws on discrimination in healthcare, employment, and education. The authors may explore more on the discrimination laws and regulations. Like my comment on the subsection “e)”, the term “life is nothing” is unclear. I would suggest that the term “No better options in life” should also be used in the discussion and conclusion. 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: No Reviewer #2: No [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.0264959.r003
Revision 2
29 Jan 2022 Author Response Response to reviewer comments Journal Requirements: 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. : Thank you, we have double check all references. Reference No.7, 9, 16, 17, 18, 26,33, and 34 are revised and completed. Reviewers' comments: 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: Partly 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A 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 #1: Yes Reviewer #2: 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 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 addressed and responded to all of my comments and suggestions. However, I have some comments on their responses. The name of Section E can be “No better options in life” instead of “Life is nothing.” “No better options in life” may represent the stories in this section clearer. The term “life is nothing” is unclear. : Thank you, we agreed with you and have changed accordingly, please see page 11, line 4. In addition, please be careful on the lettering of section “B. Perceptions of stigma.” Should they all be “d), e)”? Another option is using numbers. It may be easier to structure the sections. : To make sure that the sequence is not difficult for readers, we have revised by using Greek alphabet (I, II...) to the main theme and use English in sub-theme. Thank you In the conclusion section, the authors suggest that the problems may be alleviated by providing Thai IDs to hill tribe people. They also suggest the promotion of nonstigma behaviors and services toward anyone. In many countries, there are laws on discrimination in healthcare, employment, and education. The authors may explore more on the discrimination laws and regulations. : Thank you for great comment here, we have added information on creating and implementing relevant laws on discrimination protection in access healthcare services in this section, please see in page 18, lines 27-29. Like my comment on the subsection “e)”, the term “life is nothing” is unclear. I would suggest that the term “No better options in life” should also be used in the discussion and conclusion. : We agreed with you and revised. 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: No Reviewer #2: No Thank you, TK Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewer comments.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264959.r004
21 Feb 2022 Decision Letter - Ghaffar Ali, Editor Status of the stateless population in Thailand: how does stigma matter in their life? PONE-D-21-27010R2 Dear Dr. Apidechkul, 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. 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, Ghaffar Ali, PhD 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 ******** 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 ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A ****** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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 already responded all my comments and suggestions. However, there is a issue on formatting under section II. The authors should make their decision on the style of subsection. Should they be a), b), c), d), e) or a., b., c., d., e.? ****** 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 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264959.r005
Formally Accepted
4 Mar 2022 Acceptance Letter - Ghaffar Ali, Editor PONE-D-21-27010R2 Status of the stateless population in Thailand: how does stigma matter in their life? Dear Dr. Apidechkul: 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 Prof. Ghaffar Ali Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0264959.r006

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