PONE-D-22-29810Maternal occupational risk factors and Preterm birth: Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Adane,

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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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Ricardo Ney Oliveira Cobucci, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments :

The authors prepared a systematic review protocol with the aim of assessing whether maternal occupational risk factors increase the risk of preterm delivery. Despite having previously published systematic reviews, the results are not conclusive and are still contradictory, which justifies the proposal of a new protocol.

However, as you can see, the reviewers have requested revisions to your manuscript. We are certainly willing to reconsider a revised submission, but please know that this is not preliminary acceptance of your paper. When returning your revised manuscript, please be sure to include a point-by-point summary of the suggestions of the reviewers that specifies how and where in the text you have addressed the suggestions.

In addition, consider reviewing the inclusion of manuscripts exclusively published in English in the protocol, as today with tools such as Google Translate and others, language limitations in the search strategy for a systematic review are not justified, as they facilitate the translation and understanding of the content of articles published in other languages. A search only for manuscripts published in English causes an important bias that limits the external validity of the systematic review, as well as compromising its results.

Finally, why did you decide to include only manuscripts published after the year 2000 in your search strategy? Are there no studies relating maternal occupational risk factors and preterm birth published before 2000? If they exist, the authors need to review this criterion. Another recommendation is that the authors add keywords related to the types of study in table 1, such as prospective cohort, retrospective cohort, case control and cross-sectional studies.

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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?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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 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.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

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

Reviewer #1: The manuscript seems to be well-written. I have some minor comments.

1. (Introduction) I think that systematic review of this topic is important. In contrast, could you explain in Introduction why a protocol for the systematic review needs to be published? I think that the authors should submit a manuscript after conducting the research.

2. (Introduction) Weren’t there any systematic reviews that investigated an association between preterm birth and occupational physical risk in the past?

3. (Meta-analysis section in Methods) It is written hat “a pooled odds ratio from ~ risk ratio”, how do you obtain a pooled odds ratio from risk ratio? Using risk ratio as a odds ratio for some studies might not be a good idea.

Reviewer #2: This manuscript by Adane et al. is useful for public health reading especially in the area of maternal and foetal health.

Minor comments

Consistency with "preterm" or "pre-term"

Figure 1 has (n=) with no explanation for its meaning

Inclusion criteria: Both singleton and twin pregnancies, nulliparous and multiparous included? Please clarify

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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: Yes: ENOCH ODAME ANTO

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Maternal occupational risk factors and Preterm birth: Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

PONE-D-22-29810R1

Dear Dr. Adane,

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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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,

Ricardo Ney Oliveira Cobucci, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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

**********

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

**********

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

**********

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

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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: No

**********

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

**********

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.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

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

Reviewer #1: Thank you for the comments.

It is true that risk ratios can be transformed into odd ratios by using the formula; RR = OR / (1 – p + (p x OR)).

However, in case control studies, p cannot be obtained in general.

Therefore, RRs and ORs need to be analyzed separately, or RRs need to be transformed to ORs.

Reviewer #2: Authors have responded to all comments on the manuscript entitled, "Maternal occupational risk factors and Preterm birth: Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis"

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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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