PONE-D-22-20952METHODOLOGICAL TRANSPARENCY OF PREOPERATIVE CLINICAL PRACTICE GUIDELINES FOR ELECTIVE SURGERY. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW.PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Jose Andres Calvache,

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,

Seung-Hwa Lee

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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This work was supported by departmental funding (Department of Anesthesiology, Universidad del Cauca, Colombia, and Department of Anesthesiology, Erasmus University Medical Centre Rotterdam, The Netherlands).

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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: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

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: Title: methodological transparency of preoperative clinical practice guidelines for elective surgery. Systematic review.

This is a timely and very important study. Congratulations to all authors.

Please note the following suggestions to further improve the quality of the manuscript:

Line 29: need to be corrected as “..increase quality while decreasing the risk of…”

Line 138: need to be corrected as “All evaluators underwent a thorough detailed training…”

Line 272: need to be corrected as “…interest were declared..”

Line 273: however, it is better to report the proportion of CPG that reported the funding source here.

Line 276: score of 67% cannot be considered as a ‘high score’

Line 276: need to be corrected as “…(67%), with higher scores for CPG..”

Reviewer #2: The review is well described and I have few comments/suggestions.

- In the “search strategy” item, the authors cite the "TRIP Database", but in the "Data sources" item of the abstract it is not mentioned;

- The authors don´t mention when the search in databases was conducted;

- Could you provide list of excluded texts in the supplement (second elegibility)? Could you provide table with the characteristics of the guidelines in the supplement?

- Line 185: "...only six (20%) reported a formal method for achieving..." – the % should be 30% (6 of 20);

-Table 1, in the part where it presents data on clear reporting of funding reports only from 10 guidelines, could it not include the option of "not mentioned" or "not clearly mentioned"?

- In the discussion (lines 245/246): "...obtained AGREE-II scores above 90%;", I believe it should be equal or above 90%, since one of the guidelines presented a score of 90%;

- Domain 6 had a median of 97%, but there were guidelines with low scores (0) in this domain, and it bothered me not to comment on this variability;

- Couldn't a "limitation" be to have considered versions of the same guideline? And language?

- In the results topic, I was bothered by the fact that he reported that 14 guidelines were classified as recommended and mentioned table 1, which despite presenting separate data according to quality classification, is more focused on characteristics, while the evaluation result/scores are in table 2;

- It is missing an arrow in the flowchart (Figure 1);

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Ishanka Ayeshwari Talagala

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PLOS ONE manuscript review.docx

METHODOLOGICAL TRANSPARENCY OF PREOPERATIVE CLINICAL PRACTICE GUIDELINES FOR ELECTIVE SURGERY. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW.

PONE-D-22-20952R1

Dear Dr. Jose Andres Calvache,

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,

Seung-Hwa Lee

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

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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

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

Reviewer #1: 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 #1: 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 #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: Congratulations to the authors for the manuscript on a timely and important topic.

Thank you for accepting the suggestions given and making the changes for the manuscript text

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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

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