PONE-D-22-34623Socio-demographic determinants of monkeypox virus preventive behavior: a cross-sectional study in PakistanPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Sah,

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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ACADEMIC EDITOR:

The manuscript will be re-evaluated after major revisions as suggested by the reviewers.

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Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 10 2023 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Om Prakash Choudhary, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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

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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: Yes

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: 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 manuscript is written well, however, some of the points need to be addressed before its publication. I have mentioned all the points below:

1. Some of the references are not as per the format of the journal. Kindly update the same in the revisions.

2. Read the complete manuscript because some spelling mistakes.

3. There are a few grammatical mistakes in the manuscript, hence I request authors check the manuscript carefully before submitting the revised version of the manuscript

Rest is ok.

Reviewer #2: I have gone through the manuscript, it contains adequate information. However, the English is not satisfactory, serious language editing is required. Sections are well defined but major comments are needed to address to improve this manuscripts.

1. Major language issues found that needs expert attention. Some sentences could be more precise. It seems to be some words that are overused along with article usage issues. Some sentences should be rewritten. The authors should check the punctuation marks because some are missing from the right places.

2. The present title of the article looks proper and concise.

3. The current abstract is concise and focused. Nevertheless, there are also some article (a, an, the) and punctuation usage problems.

4. Please use italics in the introduction in the genus, species names, and genes.

5. Keyword looks good and adequate.

6. Please follow the journal rules in every major section and subsection; every subsection within major sections will be Level 2 headings. It will be in bold and 16pt font. It is suggested to check the subsections of the Method and result sections. Do not use italic unnecessarily. Only use it in genus and species names, genes, etc. All level 1 heading will be bold and in 18pt font.

7. In the discussion part, Line 266, there is an error in writing. Understand that it could be a typographic problem. So, it ‘that’ should be removed.

8. The tables are clearly labeled, but they need to be ideally positioned. It should be close to the relevant text after the paragraph in which they are first cited.

9. Found some issues in reference citations; please cite references in brackets. For example, “[1], [2-5], or [3, 7, 9].

10. As per journal requirements, Authors should list the supporting information captions at the end of the manuscript in a section titled “Supporting information.” Use Level 1 and bold type for the titles.

11. In line no 303, a letter needs to be included.

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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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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: manuscript comments (1).docx

Attachment

Submitted filename: Socio-demographic determinants of monkeypox virus preventive behavior.docx

Socio-demographic determinants of monkeypox virus preventive behavior: a cross-sectional study in Pakistan

PONE-D-22-34623R1

Dear Dr. Sah,

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,

Jan Rychtář

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Based on the recommendation of the two reviewers, the paper is now acceptable for publication in 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 #1: All comments have been addressed

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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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 #1: Yes

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 #1: Yes

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 #1: accept the manuscript

Reviewer #2: This is a very informative research article that is well-written. The authors utilizes tables and figures effectively, which is one of its strengths. The topic of this article is appropriate and explains the scientific findings properly. The English and manuscript preparation are appropriate for publication. This article's writing is pretty good and the presentation is positive overall. The sections are thorough and clearly stated and previous issues have been improved.

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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

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