PONE-D-21-34084Prevalence of Timely Complementary Feeding Initiation and Associated Factors among Mothers Having Children Aged 6-24 Months in Rural North-central Ethiopia: Community based Cros-sectional StudyPLOS ONE

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: I Don't Know

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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

Reviewer #3: No

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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: No

Reviewer #3: No

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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: The whole manuscript is based on a community-based cross-sectional study to discuss the prevalence of complementary feeding initiation and associated factors

among mothers having children aged 6-24 Months in rural north-central Ethiopia. The investigation focus on the mother's situation, such as mother’s career, spouse career, mother's age, work environment, birth intervals.

Major critique:

1) Authors claimed that it needs great effort to disseminate information regarding the importance of timely initiation of complementary feeding to overcome child malnutrition. But there have been prospective studies on related topics, which may put this article in a insufficient innovation position, such as Complementary Feeding Habits in Children Under the Age of 2 YearsLiving in the City of Adama in theOromia Region in Central Ethiopia:Traditional Ethiopian Food Study, 2021.

Other points

2) To explore the prevalence, it would be helpful to discuss th status of children's growth and some specific diseases in the study, such as wasting, stunting, underweight, and low body mass index.

3) The specific food of complementary feeding may add into the study, Including but not limited to vegetables, cereals (teff, wheat, barley), and fruits.

4) The discussion focus comparison between this study and the others’ work, but lack for explaining the innovation and advantage, or their own defects.

Reviewer #2: Dear Authors

Thanks for the efforts that has been made to accomplish this work. The topic is interesting, however, the selected test is not appropriate to report such results. I would highly suggest asking for consultation to re do the test especially for the factor analysis section. Grammatical check is needed as well and you need to remove some parts or re write it such as dependent and independent variables, operational definition etc.

Reviewer #3: The data analysis is incomplete and can be expanded further. There is lack of novelty in the study and researchers should try to explore more variables which may have a relation with the timely initiation of complementary feeding. The overall language needs editing. The flow is not maintained.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: Nishtha Kathuria

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-34084.docx

Prevalence of Timely Complementary Feeding Initiation and Associated Factors among Mothers Having Children Aged 6-24 Months in Rural North-central Ethiopia: Community based Cros-sectional Study

PONE-D-21-34084R1

Dear Dr. ABATE,

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,

Ammal Mokhtar Metwally, Ph.D (MD)

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

A great effort was made by the authors to utilize the feedback that was provided for them to correct for resubmission

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 #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 #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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 #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 #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 #2: Dear Authors

Thanks for considering all comments.

This version is much better than previous one.

I wish you the good luck in your submission this time.

If you need any further clarification please do contact me

Cheers

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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 #2: Yes: Manal I. Kassab