Peer Review History

Original SubmissionNovember 15, 2021
Decision Letter - Praveen Rishi, Editor
Transfer Alert

This paper was transferred from another journal. As a result, its full editorial history (including decision letters, peer reviews and author responses) may not be present.

PONE-D-21-36297Antimicrobial agents for the treatment of enteric fever chronic carriage: A systematic reviewPLOS ONE

Dear Dr.  McCann

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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Praveen Rishi, Ph.D., FAMI, FABMS

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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[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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

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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: Yes

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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 MS reports on  antimicrobial agents for the treatment of enteric fever chronic carriage: A systematicreview. In this review the author presented about the efficacyof different antimicrobials in treating enteric fever chronic carriage.   Author also states that research is needed to investigate whether these antimicrobials remain appropriatetreatment options or whether alternative interventions are more effective. But, the  presentation of MS is not good enough, due to this it is very hard  to understand MS.  I have some questions about MS.

1.  Author (s) should rewrite the content so the reader can understand the MS.2. It is very difficult to understand the Table-1, moreover some part of this table is missing in the MS.

Reviewer #2: This manuscript by MacCannN, Scott P, and colleagues entitled ''Antimicrobial agents for the treatment of enteric fever chronic carriage: A systematic review'' proposes to address the efficacy of different antimicrobials in treating enteric fever chronic carriage. In addition, this work shows the evidence for fluoroquinolones and amoxicillin as antimicrobial interventions for treatment of enteric fever carriage. The data collected in this systemic review could be of fundamental importance.

Some minor points to consider are included below:

In line 41: Please add comma(,) after 'identified'.

In line 218, please correct the data 'were' synthesized.

Table 1, table 2 and table 3 are incomplete. Please complete them.

**********

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

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Revision 1

Unfortunately we have been unable to successfully convert the manuscript from a doc to LaTeX format. Being unfamiliar with LaTeX it has taken us a significant number of hours to learn the basics of LaTex and convert the file from a word file into a .tex file in the correct format using the online instructions. Although able to correctly convert all the text (which we would be happy to upload and send) we have been unable to convert the tables and bibliography successfully despite a number of attempts. Currently, we are unable to progress further with the LaTeX manuscript conversion and therefore hope submitting in .doc file in the correct format is satisfactory. I have sent 2 emails to editors requesting advice regarding this but unfortunately have not heard back within the time period so am re-submitting the initial doc manuscript.

I have provided a point-by-point response to the reviewers below:

Reviewer #1: The MS reports on antimicrobial agents for the treatment of enteric fever chronic carriage: A systematic review. In this review the author presented about the efficacy of different antimicrobials in treating enteric fever chronic carriage. Author also states that research is needed to investigate whether these antimicrobials remain appropriate treatment options or whether alternative interventions are more effective. But, the presentation of MS is not good enough, due to this it is very hard to understand MS. I have some questions about MS.

1. Author (s) should rewrite the content so the reader can understand the MS.2. It is very difficult to understand the Table-1, moreover some part of this table is missing in the MS.

Apologies, there were some formatting errors in the initial manuscript submitted and therefore some of the information in the tables were not fully visible. This has been amended and all the data in all three tables are now fully visible. We hope this has significantly improved the presentation, and therefore understanding, of the manuscript in full.

In addition, we requested a proof-read of the manuscript by an additional person, a clinical academic but not in the field of enteric fever research, to ensure the manuscript was understandable and presented well. They reviewed the manuscript and made a few small comments which have been incorporated in this revision, but commented that the overall presentation of the manuscript was good and easy to understand.

If there are further areas of the manuscript that are still hard to understand we would be happy to amend these if advised where the issues are.

Reviewer #2: This manuscript by MacCannN, Scott P, and colleagues entitled ''Antimicrobial agents for the treatment of enteric fever chronic carriage: A systematic review'' proposes to address the efficacy of different antimicrobials in treating enteric fever chronic carriage. In addition, this work shows the evidence for fluoroquinolones and amoxicillin as antimicrobial interventions for treatment of enteric fever carriage. The data collected in this systemic review could be of fundamental importance.

Some minor points to consider are included below:

In line 41: Please add comma(,) after 'identified'.

This has been added

In line 218, please correct the data 'were' synthesized.

This has been changed

Table 1, table 2 and table 3 are incomplete. Please complete them.

All three tables have been amended so all the data is fully visible.

In addition please find our response to the Journal Requirements requested:

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

We have amended the manuscript as per the style requirements and template.

Please note that in order to use the direct billing option the corresponding author must be affiliated with the chosen institute. Please either amend your manuscript to change the affiliation or corresponding author, or email us at plosone@plos.org with a request to remove this option.

University College London is listed as a chosen institute that has an Institutional Account with Plos. The corresponding author is affiliated with University College London and has a UCL email address. Please let us know if something additional is required.

We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide.

All data is included within the manuscript itself therefore respository information for the data is not required. This has been amended in the submission.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response_to_reviewers_May.docx
Decision Letter - Praveen Rishi, Editor

Antimicrobial agents for the treatment of enteric fever chronic carriage: A systematic review

PONE-D-21-36297R1

Dear Dr. Naina McCann

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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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,

Praveen Rishi, Ph.D., FAMI, FABMS

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

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

Reviewer #1: No

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: No

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: Author answered most of the questions and revised manuscript has been changed much of the content. I recommend it for acceptance.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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 #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Praveen Rishi, Editor

PONE-D-21-36297R1

Antimicrobial agents for the treatment of enteric fever chronic carriage: A systematic review

Dear Dr. McCann:

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. Praveen Rishi

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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