PONE-D-22-19339Quality and Credibility of Clinical Practice Guidelines Recommendations for the Management of Neonatal Hypoglycemia. A Protocol for a Systematic Review and Meta-synthesisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Florez,

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Additional Editor Comments:

The authors propose a SR and meta-synthesis of available CPGs, where synthesis occurs at recommendation level.

From the description of the meta-synthesis the 'unit of analysis' in the meta-synthesis is not clear to me. Neither is it clear what meta-synthesis methods are being used or where such methods has been used before.

I encourage the authors to clarify this important distinction (including references), which will set this reviews methods apart from a scoping review. The secondary objective is still descriptive in nature and not clearly linked to the synthesis or pooling concept.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Descriptions of methods and materials in the protocol should be reported in sufficient detail for another researcher to reproduce all experiments and analyses. The protocol should describe the appropriate controls, sample size calculations, and replication needed to ensure that the data are robust and reproducible.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

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 and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

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(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Thank you for this protocol - it was interesting to read and the results will be valuable to those managing neonatal hypoglycaemia, as well as an approach to assessing CPGs of different health conditions and identifying gaps. Some feedback:

Q4: data sharing stated as non applicable as this is a protocol. It would be helpful to know where the data will be found when the study is complete.

Q5: In general the writing is really good. Just a few suggestions: line 228 - sentence starting with "Furthermore..." is not clear and should be rewritten.

Line 234 - the words in brackets should be reordered to make sense e.g. (domain three being one of them)

Line 236 - should be "domains score" instead "when three out of six domain scores"

Line 250-1 - assume this is Cochrane RoB 2.0 tool? In which case correct here

Other comments on clarification: in the discussion, how will this research assist with adoption/adaption of high-quality CPGs (line 276-7) - would organizations not just need to do AGREE II and AGREE-REX of their own GL? I think this sentence perhaps needs clarification as it is not really clear how this will be done, also to which high-quality CPGs/CPGRs you are referring to here - do you plan to share the outcome of each AGREE II and -REX with the organizations who published those guidelines?

Lines 278 to 280 are clear and make sense.

References: references are meant to be in Vancouver format (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines) - there are a number of issues with your references:

* Reference should have a doi or web link ("Available from"), where possible

* Correct journal abbreviations should be used (hardly used any journal abbreviations, except Cmaj which should actually be Can. Med. Assoc. J.)

* Some references are incomplete (e.g. #17)

* Vancouver format has not be used in a standardised way e.g. Ref #24 lists 10 authors whilst Vancouver instructs to record the first 6 authors followed by "et al."

I suggest a full relook at all the references to ensure they are in the correct format. Guidelines are available in the "instructions to authors"

Reviewer #2: The protocol is well described and is well consistent with the purpose of the study.

I have only three points for the authors to consider:

a) wouldn't the search be more appropriate in the Cochrane Library rather than in CENTRAL since the latter is specific for clinical trials?

b) in the abstract there is no reference to LILACS and Epistemonikos - will the search be performed in these databases?

c) in the introduction section (lines 89 to 94), it seems that the two "goals" are repeated and neither of them refers to the research question indicated in the methods section.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: DANIELA OLIVEIRA DE MELO

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Quality and Credibility of Clinical Practice Guidelines Recommendations for the Management of Neonatal Hypoglycemia. A Protocol for a Systematic Review and Recommendations' Synthesis

PONE-D-22-19339R1

Dear Dr. Ivan

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