Peer Review History

Original SubmissionNovember 24, 2021
Decision Letter - Xenia Gonda, Editor

PONE-D-21-37269One-Session Treatment for Specific Phobias: Barriers, facilitators and acceptability as perceived by children & young people, parents, and cliniciansPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hayward,

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 respond to the minor issues raised by the reviewer. 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 26 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Xenia Gonda

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

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https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. Please update your submission to use the PLOS LaTeX template. The template and more information on our requirements for LaTeX submissions can be found at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/latex.

3. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: "This research was funded by the National Institute for Health Research under its Health Technology Assessment Programme (Grant Reference Number: HTA 15/38/04). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care."

Please state what role the funders took in the study.  If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. 

Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

3. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability.

Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized.

Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.

We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter.

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5. 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.

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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

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

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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: 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

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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: This article reports on a qualitative sub-study as part of the ASPECT trial, to assess acceptability of one session treatment for specific phobias and common barriers and facilitators, as identified through interviews with children/young people, parents and clinicians who deliver treatment. The article clearly presents the key themes with illustrative quotations and provides sufficient detail regarding to the methodology.

The authors do not provide access to all data underlying findings. It would be helpful to provide a more detailed data availability statement regarding restrictions on availability of data in line with the data availability policy. If there is no opportunity to access data other than the quotations selected for the article and the summary coding table, the statement could usefully state this and comment on the selection of data presented in this article and supplementary material. I feel that significant data are provided in the article, and that the summary coding table is detailed and thorough, so a reader can understand how the researchers reached their conclusions. Nevertheless, I would recommend additional information in the Data Availability statement to explicitly address the issue of access to data.

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Reviewer #1: No

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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

All responses to editor and reviewer comments have been outlined on a point-by-point basis in a table in our Response to Reviewers document. Any changes requested to be outlined in our covering letter have been added. These are also documented below:

Editor Comments:

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

RESPONSE: The revised manuscript and file names have been updated in line with PLOS ONE submission style templates.

2. Please update your submission to use the PLOS LaTeX template. The template and more information on our requirements for LaTeX submissions can be found at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/latex.

We contacted the PLOS LaTex helpdesk for technical support. In our correspondence with Glenn Jackson he advised that our submission would not need to be updated as the manuscript has been built using Microsoft Word and to submit in a docx format. Therefore, we have uploaded our revised manuscript (tracked changes and clean version) in docx format.

Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: "This research was funded by the National Institute for Health Research under its Health Technology Assessment Programme (Grant Reference Number: HTA 15/38/04). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care."

Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. We confirm that the statement “he funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.” This has been added to our covering letter. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability.

Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized.

Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.

We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter.

RESPONSE: While the data presented does not contain any direct identifiers, due to the sensitive nature of the data presented and vulnerable participant group, we would not be able to make the dataset publicly available due to ethical reasons. The following wording can be added to the Data Availability statement: “Any requests for sharing of data can be made to the corresponding author or Sheffield Clinical Trials Unit (ctru@sheffield.ac.uk). The ASPECT trial management team will consider the sharing of data on a case-by case basis in line with the ethical approval and patient information sheets.” This information has been added to our covering letter.

3. 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.

RESPONSE: The corresponding author’s affiliation has been updated to Leeds & York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. We have been asked by the organisation for any invoices for payment to be addressed to : FAO Sarah Cooper, Leeds & York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, RGD Payables 4425, Phoenix House, Topcliffe Lane, Tingley, Wakefield, WF3 1WE.

4. 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.

RESPONSE: We have reviewed our reference list and included a list of changes in our response to reviewers letter.

5. Please amend your Response to Reviewers letter to include a point by point response to each of the points made by the Editor and / or Reviewers. Please follow this link for more information: http://blogs.PLOS.org/everyone/2011/05/10/how-to-submit-your-revised-manuscript/

RESPONSE: We have amended the letter to include a table with point by point responses to editors and the reviewer.

Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: "This research was funded by the National Institute for Health Research under its Health Technology Assessment Programme (Grant Reference Number: HTA 15/38/04). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care."

6. Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed.

Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter or in the Author Comments section; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

RESPONSE: We confirm that the statement “the funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.” This has been added to our covering letter.

7. 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. Please provide your response in the "Author Comments" section.

RESPONSE: The corresponding author’s affiliation has been updated to Leeds & York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. We have been asked by the organisation for any invoices for payment to be addressed to : FAO Sarah Cooper, Leeds & York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, RGD Payables 4425, Phoenix House, Topcliffe Lane, Tingley, Wakefield, WF3 1WE. Our response has been provided in the Author Comments section.

8. Can you please upload an additional copy of your revised manuscript that does not contain any tracked changes or highlighting as your main article file. This will be used in the production process if your manuscript is accepted. Please amend the file type for the file showing your changes to Revised Manuscript w/tracked changes. Please follow this link for more information: http://blogs.PLOS.org/everyone/2011/05/10/how-to-submit-your-revised-manuscript/

RESPONSE: The clean version of our manuscript has been updated with all tracked changes accepted.

9. We note your current Data Availability Statement says: "While the data presented does not contain any direct identifiers, due to the sensitive nature of the data presented and vulnerable participant group, we would not be able to make the dataset publicly available due to ethical reasons. Any requests for sharing of data can be made to the corresponding author or Sheffield Clinical Trials Unit. The ASPECT trial management team will consider the sharing of data on a case-by case basis in line with the ethical approval and patient information sheets." Before we can proceed, please provide the contact information for the Sheffield Clinical Trials Unit. We will update your Data Availability Statement on your behalf once you provide the necessary information.

RESPONSE: While the data presented does not contain any direct identifiers, due to the sensitive nature of the data presented and vulnerable participant group, we would not be able to make the dataset publicly available due to ethical reasons. The following wording can be added to the Data Availability statement: “Any requests for sharing of data can be made to the corresponding author or Sheffield Clinical Trials Unit (ctru@sheffield.ac.uk). The ASPECT trial management team will consider the sharing of data on a case-by case basis in line with the ethical approval and patient information sheets.”

Reviewer Comment:

1. This article reports on a qualitative sub-study as part of the ASPECT trial, to assess acceptability of one session treatment for specific phobias and common barriers and facilitators, as identified through interviews with children/young people, parents and clinicians who deliver treatment. The article clearly presents the key themes with illustrative quotations and provides sufficient detail regarding the methodology.

RESPONSE: Thank you!

2. The authors do not provide access to all data underlying findings. It would be helpful to provide a more detailed data availability statement regarding restrictions on availability of data in line with the data availability policy. If there is no opportunity to access data other than the quotations selected for the article and the summary coding table, the statement could usefully state this and comment on the selection of data presented in this article and supplementary material. I feel that significant data are provided in the article, and that the summary coding table is detailed and thorough, so a reader can understand how the researchers reached their conclusions. Nevertheless, I would recommend additional information in the Data Availability statement to explicitly address the issue of access to data.

RESPONSE: Thank you for this feedback. We have provided updated information for the Data Availability statement to address this.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Xenia Gonda, Editor

One-Session Treatment for Specific Phobias: Barriers, facilitators and acceptability as perceived by children & young people, parents, and clinicians

PONE-D-21-37269R1

Dear Dr. Hayward,

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,

Xenia Gonda

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Xenia Gonda, Editor

PONE-D-21-37269R1

One-Session Treatment for Specific Phobias: Barriers, facilitators and acceptability as perceived by children & young people, parents, and clinicians

Dear Dr. Hayward:

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. Xenia Gonda

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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