Peer Review History
Original SubmissionNovember 15, 2021 |
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PONE-D-21-36322Assessment of the Willingness of Dentists in the State of Indiana to administer vaccines.PLOS ONE Dear Dr. SHUKLA, 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 Feb 09 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:
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Ojcius 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 [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: No Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: I Don't Know ********** 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: No 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: No 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: I have reviewed the manuscript, "Assessment of the Willingness of Dentists in the State of Indiana to administer vaccines" submitted to PlosOne for its contents. Authors have investigated the readiness of dentists in the state of Indiana in being able to administer vaccines. This manuscript does not present enough data and novelty for a full length original article. Reviewer #2: I enjoyed very much reading this this well written, well-structured manuscript that provides a valuable contribution to the literature about the role of dentists in administering vaccinations as members of the wider healthcare team. I am very happy with the paper in this current stage, and I hope that the authors will find my comments below useful to strengthen the paper even more. Abstract “Dentists should be allowed to administer HPV, Influenza, Hep A and COVID 19” I think the word “vaccinations” might be missing from that sentence. Background “the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act” is this specific for the state of Indiana or is it at US level? The authors are presenting a comprehensive overview of the vaccinations that are being provided by dentists in various US states. As this is an international journal, it might strengthen the argument to mention a few examples of other countries where dentists have been allowed to provide vaccinations e.g., the UK. “Oropharyngeal cancers have been on the rise in the past three decades due to persistent high-risk-type human papillomavirus (HPV) infections”. Whilst I agree with the first part of the statement, that oropharyngeal cancers have been on the rise in the past three decades, I believe that it might be difficult to attribute this to a singular cause e.g., increased prevalence of HPV infections. It might be worth considering also mentioning the increasing role of the wider risk factors e.g., alcohol and smoking. “Pre-COVID 19 pandemic averages of HPV vaccine completion rates in the US were low (54.2%)”. Does this include both boys and girls or girls only? “Expanding dental providers scope of practice to include vaccination could provide similar results as with pharmacists, however such changes nationwide would call for legislative enabling.” Would there be anything else needed? E.g., professional indemnity/insurance, training? Results “More than half of the respondents (68%) reported having a policy for oral cancer screening in their office.” I couldn’t find this data in Table 1. I noticed that the authors have presented in several places p values to attribute statistical significance. I am wondering if this really necessary and if it adds value to the paper. A significant number of journals have been moving more towards “confidence intervals” instead of p values to inform readers about the precision of the results as a more robust measure than p values. Also, I noticed the number of participants in some of the subgroup analysis is quite small therefore some of the statistical significance might be due to chance. I am not a statistician, and I am happy to be challenged here but perhaps a sample size calculation might have been useful to avoid the risk of multiple testing bias. I think perhaps percentages and/or confidence intervals might be an alternative to consider by the authors. The authors talk about “the level of agreement”. I am not sure if I understand this correctly. Is this level of agreement based on percentage of responses agreeing with a statement or based on the p values? Table 3 and table 4 presents two columns: single variable and multivariable. The authors might wish to consider clarifying what are the variables. Barriers (not referenced in tables). Does the first sentence refer to all respondents in general or only dentists working in the public sector? The second sentence starts with “private practitioners”. Might be worth clarifying which group does the first sentence refer to. Discussion The authors argue about the opportunities of using dentists for administering vaccinations. Whilst this is important and noteworthy, it might be worth considering that dental hygienists/therapists and trained dental nurses might also have a role, which might be even more cost effective. Not sure about the situation in the US but in some countries, flu vaccinations in GP surgeries are not always administered by GPs but by trained nurses. This frees up GP time to deal with day-to-day business that requires a qualified physician. Might be worth considering the implications of using the wider dental workforce, not just dentists, to administer vaccinations as long as they are properly trained, competent, indemnified and remunerated. “More than half of our study respondents were private practitioners which is comparable to the practice distribution of dental providers in the state of Indiana, where most dentists (93.6%) work in private practices.” Does this sentence imply that the dentists working in public sector were over represented in the study? FQHCs and DSOs appear in multiple places. Might be worth repeating what these acronyms mean for a the non-US based readers. “Further research exploring non- traditional settings to overcome the infrastructure challenges of supply chain, storage and cost inefficiency may be helpful in improving participation of dental providers, especially in private practice settings.” Does cost inefficiency mean cost effectiveness in this context? Once again I congratulate the authors for this important research and I am looking forward to reading their published article. ********** 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. |
Revision 1 |
PONE-D-21-36322R1Assessment of the Willingness of Dentists in the State of Indiana to administer vaccines.PLOS ONE Dear Dr. SHUKLA, 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 24 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:
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, David M. Ojcius Academic Editor PLOS ONE [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: (No Response) 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: No Reviewer #3: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: No 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: No 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 #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: (No Response) Reviewer #3: This study investigates a relevant question, and answers it with details that can guide policymakers for vaccination efforts. I have some minor recommendations: 1. It would be helpful to give a rough estimate of how many vaccinators may be added to the state's vaccination workforce if dentists are allowed to vaccinate, based on the percentage of dentists in the study that said they would consider vaccinating if allowed. That calculation can be given in the form of the number of dentists that may join the vaccination workforce, as well as what percent that may increase the vaccination workforce. These values would have to be tempered with an admission that these are purely rough estimates based on willingness to consider vaccinating, rather than readiness to vaccinate. 2. In the Introduction, 2nd paragraph, 2nd sentence, the statement "More than half of our study respondents were private practitioners which is comparable to the practice distribution of dental providers in the state of Indiana, where most dentists (93.6%) work in private practices" is hard to rectify. >50% and 93.6% seem to far apart to be considered comparable. 3. In a FQHC, which will likely already have medical personnel administering vaccines in the same building as a dental clinic, there may be limited value to having dentists administer vaccines. I recommend at least mentioning this, as well as any reason why it may still be beneficial to have dentists in FQHCs administering vaccines. 4. The authors reference a previous study that looked at pharmacists' willingness to vaccinate. Now, pharmacists are a major part of the COVID vaccination effort. It would be valuable to mention how well that study predicted the current stage of the COVID vaccination drive and pharmacists' involvement. 5. Please explain what is meant by the term "social desirability" in page 18, top paragraph. 6. Please check if more states now permit dentists to vaccinate, since the original submission of this manuscript. ********** 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 #3: 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. |
Revision 2 |
Assessment of the willingness of dentists in the state of Indiana to administer vaccines. PONE-D-21-36322R2 Dear Dr. Shukla, 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, David M. Ojcius Academic Editor PLOS ONE 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 #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 #3: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? 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 #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 #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 #3: My recommendations have been adequately addressed. The manuscript has adequate study design, and is clearly explained. ********** 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 #3: Yes: Andrew Young |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-21-36322R2 Assessment of the willingness of dentists in the state of Indiana to administer vaccines. Dear Dr. Shukla: 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. David M. Ojcius Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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