PONE-D-21-11951Barriers and enablers to young people accessing sexual and reproductive health services in Pacific Island Countries and Territories: a scoping reviewPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Baigry,

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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: Partly

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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: Yes

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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: Comments on “Barrier and enablers to young people accessing sexual and reproductive health services in pacific island countries and territories: a scoping review”

Dear authors,

First of all, I would like to congratulate you for all your hard works on the area of sexual and reproductive health and your effort to explore the available literatures in this topic. However, there are some rooms for improvements which can be found below. Please address these issues.

1. First of all, it is very critical to include just 8 articles for scoping review

2. Including just young people defined as 10-20 years seemed tricky to study about the sexual and reproductive health services.

3. The study has talked about actions of health care providers giving condoms and contraceptives to only married men and women affirming the perception that only married people were eligible to access family health services (result: lack of sexual and reproductive health knowledge)

- However, the study included the participants aged 10-20 years. Should young people aged, for example aged 10-15~16 years aged be given the contraceptives from the health care providers? Is the policy of PICTs support this?

- Also, the age group identified in this study mostly comprises of unmarried population (or say too early to get married), so it is unlikely to compare these results with married population.

4. The themes created to portray Barriers and Enabler of SRH in PICTs shows the strength of the study however, the articles itself contradicts the information provided in the articles;

- For example; behavior of health care provider is shown as both barriers and enabler

- Similarly, the parent knowledge and perception was also shown as both barriers and enablers

5. It is recommended to include the late adolescents (rather than 10-20 years) in the study which would actually show the barriers and enablers of SRH, since it is too early for the early adolescent to seek/access and utilize SRH (by themselves)

6. Referencing should be checked since some of the references is missing (ref. 37 and directly ref. 55 is shown > ref 38-54 is missing)

7. I am not fully authorized for the English language checking but, some grammatical corrections is recommended in some sentences.

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Reviewer #1: No

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PONE-D-21-11951R1Barriers and enablers to young people accessing sexual and reproductive health services in Pacific Island Countries and Territories: a scoping reviewPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Baigry,

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. The original referee was not available to comment on the revision, and a new reviewer has provided comments. As you will see, the reviewer is positive about the work and the revisions, and has requested minor revisions for additional information and clarification. Can you please revise the manuscript to address the issues raised?

Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 17 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.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Vanessa Carels

Staff Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

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. 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 #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 #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #2: N/A

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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 #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 #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 #2: Thank you for conducting this scoping review to explore a topic which, thus far, has had little attention.

I am pleased to review R1 of this paper and can see the authors have appropriately addressed the queries raised by the reviewers of the original submission.

Abstract:

The authors revision of the abstract structure has improved the readership.

General Comments:

My advice to the authors is to publish their scoping review protocol in future, which can be done by depositing in their University's online repository or through an online repository, such as FigShare. That said, they have provided the protocol as an Appendix, which is also acceptable.

The authors only searched three databases (Medline, Scopus, CINAHL). I would recommend the inclusion of some other databases (e.g. Embase, PsychInfo) to ensure comprehensive identification of all published reports. However, it is likely they have identified the bulk of the suitable papers, given their search identified 589 unique papers.

Items to address:

1) Please state in the text what other sources were searched to identify the 40 papers included in Identification section of Figure 1. This would be best inserted after the sentence about the databases searched.

2) Please check that the 2 papers attributed to Kennedy are separate studies and are not reporting the same data from the same study (and therefore the same study population). Likewise, for the 2 papers by White. If so, you will need to address this in the limitations as it could skew the conclusion you draw from the data. This is a particularly important methodological issue for themes where the evidence is only derived from one study population, rather than reported across multiple study populations (e.g. the theme "Friendly non judgemental and kind healthcare providers" is only supported by data published by Kennedy).

3) Can the authors clarify in the manuscript whether they used original quotes from the papers, or the themes derived & reported in the papers, as the data for the thematic analysis?

4) Can the authors include the number of reviewers for each step of the data screening process, and include their initials in brackets in the text? Also, can the authors include who did the thematic analysis and include their initials in brackets in the 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.

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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 #2: Yes: Dr Jacqueline Stephens

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

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.

Barriers and enablers to young people accessing sexual and reproductive health services in Pacific Island Countries and Territories: a scoping review

PONE-D-21-11951R2

Dear Dr. Baigry,

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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Kind regards,

Adetayo Olorunlana, Ph.D.

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 #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: N/A

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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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: I am pleased to review R2 of this paper and can see the authors have appropriately addressed my queries and have made the suggested changes to the manuscript.

Reviewer #3: The authors have address previous reviewers' comments sufficiently. Although there are some minor edits to consider... in the abstract the authors used "youths" it should be just "YOUTH". There is also a word missing between "...hundred eighty..." it should be "...hundred AND eighty...". lastly, the authors need to update the page numbers on appendix S3- it is not aligned with the main 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 #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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