Factors regarding the dog owner’s household situation, antisocial behaviours, animal views and animal treatment in a population of dogs confiscated after biting humans and/ or other animals

Ineke R. van Herwijnen; Joanne A. M. van der Borg; Chantal M. Kapteijn; Saskia S. Arndt; Claudia M. Vinke

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0282574

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionNovember 6, 2022
16 Jan 2023 Decision Letter - Harvie P. Portugaliza, Editor PONE-D-22-30566Factors regarding the dog owner’s household situation, antisocial behaviours, animal views and animal treatment in a population of dogs confiscated after biting humans and/ or other animalsPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Herwijnen, 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. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: Methods L177-180: The analysis compares identified factors likely linked to dog bites based on counts of cases between timeframes 2008-2010 and 2020-2022. This determines which factors are consistent or stable across time and which are more prevalent in one timeframe than the other. However, it may be helpful to know which factors across the timeframe will most significantly explain the increase or decrease the frequency of biting incidents. In my opinion, a regression analysis can be done on whether the pre-identified factors (independent variable) influence the number of biting incidents (dependent variable). Results L191-194: How about other demographic data that are also relevant, including age, household number, marital status, etc? Table 9: Write the x² value and p-value instead of n.s. Other comments: Please include as supplementary a STROBE Statement—a checklist of items that should be included in reports of observational studies (see https://www.strobe-statement.org/checklists/) ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 02 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. 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, Harvie P. Portugaliza, D.V.M., Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 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 2. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified (1) whether consent was informed and (2) what type you obtained (for instance, written or verbal, and if verbal, how it was documented and witnessed). If your study included minors, state whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians. If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information. If you are reporting a retrospective study of medical records or archived samples, please ensure that you have discussed whether all data were fully anonymized before you accessed them and/or whether the IRB or ethics committee waived the requirement for informed consent. If patients provided informed written consent to have data from their medical records used in research, please include this information Once you have amended this/these statement(s) in the Methods section of the manuscript, please add the same text to the “Ethics Statement” field of the submission form (via “Edit Submission”). For additional information about PLOS ONE ethical requirements for human subjects research, please refer to http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-human-subjects-research 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 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. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: It is a good paper with a very interesting subject to discuss. They presented the rabies from its original and then discussed their results and plans. This paper is attractive and important and the data presented is very interesting. ****** 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: Yes: Hashim Talib Hashim ******** [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282574.r001
Revision 1
8 Feb 2023 Author Response Thank you for allowing us to optimize our manuscript ‘Dog ownership factors in a population of dogs confiscated after biting incidents’ for publication by PLOS and thank you to the reviewer for his valuable feedback. Please allow us to address the points raised during the review process, here below. Methods: • L177-180: The analysis compares identified factors likely linked to dog bites based on counts of cases between timeframes 2008-2010 and 2020-2022. This determines which factors are consistent or stable across time and which are more prevalent in one timeframe than the other. However, it may be helpful to know which factors across the timeframe will most significantly explain the increase or decrease the frequency of biting incidents. In my opinion, a regression analysis can be done on whether the pre-identified factors (independent variable) influence the number of biting incidents (dependent variable). Thank you for this valuable suggestion, which we would like to address in future studies. For the present data set, based on reports on dogs confiscated by Dutch governmental bodies, we feel that any presentation on changes in frequency of biting incidents may unintentionally mislead readers of our manuscript. This as we have investigated a very specific dataset, not reflective of total biting incidents. Also, we feel this manuscript adds value by its reporting on dog ownership factors that possibly underly biting incidents. Our aim is specifically not to add to statistics on biting incidents, but to address which ownership factors may be relevant for future (more hypotheses driven) studies, including studies that could more validly address this interesting suggestion by the reviewer. Results: • L191-194: How about other demographic data that are also relevant, including age, household number, marital status, etc? Thank you for your suggestion. Unfortunately, this data was not made available in the reports used as the basis of our study. • Table 9: Write the x2 value and p-value instead of n.s. Thank you for your suggestion and we have added this information to Table 9. Other comments: • Please include as supplementary a STROBE Statement—a checklist of items that should be included in reports of observational studies (see https://www.strobe-statement.org/checklists/). We have taken another look at the https://www.strobe-statement.org/checklists/ website, but fail to find a checklist that can be filled out for our desk research type study, based on existing risk assessment reports. We are not aware of a STOBE Statement for desk research, but have filled out a cross-sectional STROBE Statement for your convenience. We suggest to not include this as a supplementary file as this may unintentionally lead interested readers into thinking that our study set up was of cross-sectional nature, whilst in fact it regards desk research. We have also addressed the additional requirements, regarding style requirements and an extra check of the reference list. With regard to the participant consent, additional details have been added (starting at line 188 in the manuscript with track changes) to the ethics statement. Finally, we have added the minimal data set underlying the results described as a Supporting Information file. Hopefully this addresses the raised points satisfactory. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282574.r002
21 Feb 2023 Decision Letter - Harvie P. Portugaliza, Editor Factors regarding the dog owner’s household situation, antisocial behaviours, animal views and animal treatment in a population of dogs confiscated after biting humans and/ or other animals PONE-D-22-30566R1 Dear Dr. Herwijnen, 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, Harvie P. Portugaliza, D.V.M., Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282574.r003
Formally Accepted
24 Feb 2023 Acceptance Letter - Harvie P. Portugaliza, Editor PONE-D-22-30566R1 Factors regarding the dog owner’s household situation, antisocial behaviours, animal views and animal treatment in a population of dogs confiscated after biting humans and/ or other animals Dear Dr. Herwijnen: 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. Harvie P. Portugaliza Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282574.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .