Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 15, 2022
Decision Letter - Ashfikur Rahman, Editor

PONE-D-22-34373Scoping review of qualitative studies investigating reproductive health knowledge, attitudes, and practices among men and women across RwandaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Buser,

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,

Ashfikur Rahman

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. We noticed you have some minor occurrence of overlapping text with the following previous publication(s), which needs to be addressed:

-https://www.unfpa.org/sexual-reproductive-health?page=3&type_1=All

-https://fp2030.org/sites/default/files/Rwanda%20FP-ASRH_Strategic%20Plan%202018%20-2014%20final.pdf

In your revision ensure you cite all your sources (including your own works), and quote or rephrase any duplicated text outside the methods section. Further consideration is dependent on these concerns being addressed.

3. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. 

[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: No

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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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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: 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: Reviewer’s Comments

Thank you very much for giving me a chance to review the manuscript entitled “Scoping review of qualitative studies investigating reproductive health knowledge, attitudes, and practices among men and women across Rwanda” to the journal of “PLOS ONE”. I appreciate the time and effort that the authors have dedicated to preparing the manuscript. I read the manuscript very carefully and consequently raised the quarries and suggestions to improve the manuscript which are as follows:

Major Revisions:

1. In ‘Introduction’ a clear explanation is needed about the background of the study and the importance of this study (Line no.124).

2. The heading of methods should be materials and methods according the guideline of PLOS ONE Journal (Line no. 157).

3. In the ‘method’ section, the authors have mentioned that the search was limited to articles published from 2002 to 2022 (Line no. 175-176). So the authors should provide the logic of limiting the search within this timeframe.

4. Under the sub-heading of ‘Screening Process’, the authors mentioned that the title and abstract screening was performed by two independent researchers (Line no. 194-195). So they have to specify who actually performed the title and abstract screening process. Similarly, the authors have to clearly specify who actually reviewed the full-text articles instead of using and/or vague term like (JMB, EA, OT, FGD, RG, GK, LI, TE, 197 and/or YS) (Line no. 196-197).

5. The authors are suggested to include the ‘Study quality assessment/Quality assessment of the included literature’ point under ‘materials and methods’ section (Line no. 157). They can follow the critical appraisal skill program (CASP) checklists (CASP, 2018) to assess the quality of the qualitative studies.

6. The ‘result’ section has to revise and extend in line with the specific objectives. It would be better to add relevant quotations (if possible) from included studies under different themes (Line no. 204).

7. The ‘Discussion’ section needs major revision. Here, the authors can compare and contrast their study findings with previous studies more extensively (Line no. 312).

8. The authors have to revise the conclusion and have to specify the results-specific policy recommendations (Line no. 334).

9. Overall, the writing of the manuscript has to improve following Standard English and ‘PLOS ONE’ Journal’s guidelines.

The author(s) are suggested to rewrite the manuscript accordingly. Hopefully, the aforesaid comments and suggestions would help to enrich this manuscript.

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Reviewer #1: No

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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.

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Revision 1

23 February 2023

PLOS ONE Editorial Board

Title: "Scoping review of qualitative studies investigating reproductive health knowledge, attitudes, and practices among men and women across Rwanda” (PONE-D-22-34373)

Dear Md. Ashfikur Rahman:

We are very pleased to have the opportunity to revise our original manuscript for publication in PLOS ONE. We addressed each of the reviewer’s comments and made the necessary revisions and modifications. Responses are provided below.

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

Requirement #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.

Response #1: Thank you, we ensured that our manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements and updated the file names.

Requirement #2: We noticed you have some minor occurrence of overlapping text with the following previous publication(s), which needs to be addressed:

-https://www.unfpa.org/sexual-reproductive-health?page=3&type_1=All

-https://fp2030.org/sites/default/files/Rwanda%20FP-ASRH_Strategic%20Plan%202018%20-2014%20final.pdf

In your revision ensure you cite all your sources (including your own works), and quote or rephrase any duplicated text outside the methods section. Further consideration is dependent on these concerns being addressed.

Response #2: Thank you, in our revision we revised the overlapping text for UNFPA and FP2030 citations. We also ensured that we cited all our sources outside the methods section.

Requirement #3: Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information.

Response #3: We updated the text to include captions at the end of the manuscript for the Supporting Information files.

Reviewer comments:

Reviewer #1

Comment #1: In ‘Introduction’ a clear explanation is needed about the background of the study and the importance of this study (Line no.124).

Response #1: Thank you for your comment. To improve the manuscript, a statement was added at the beginning of the introduction to summarize the need and importance of the study, which was also integrated throughout the introduction.

Comment #2: The heading of methods should be materials and methods according the guideline of PLOS ONE Journal (Line no. 157).

Response #2: Thank you for sharing this observation. We updated the heading of this section to adhere to submission guidelines.

Comment #3: In the ‘method’ section, the authors have mentioned that the search was limited to articles published from 2002 to 2022 (Line no. 175-176). So the authors should provide the logic of limiting the search within this timeframe.

Response #3: We appreciate this suggestion for improvement and revised the text providing the logic of limiting the search within this timeframe.

Comment #4: Under the sub-heading of ‘Screening Process’, the authors mentioned that the title and abstract screening was performed by two independent researchers (Line no. 194-195). So they have to specify who actually performed the title and abstract screening process. Similarly, the authors have to clearly specify who actually reviewed the full-text articles instead of using and/or vague term like (JMB, EA, OT, FGD, RG, GK, LI, TE, 197 and/or YS) (Line no. 196-197).

Response #4: We updated the text to mention who performed the title and abstract screening process. We also removed the vague term and/or to clarify that all authors listed in brackets actually reviewed the articles.

Comment #5: The authors are suggested to include the ‘Study quality assessment/Quality assessment of the included literature’ point under ‘materials and methods’ section (Line no. 157). They can follow the critical appraisal skill program (CASP) checklists (CASP, 2018) to assess the quality of the qualitative studies.

Response #5: We updated the text to incorporate this suggestion and indicated that we followed the CASP qualitative study checklist.

Comment #6: The ‘result’ section has to revise and extend in line with the specific objectives. It would be better to add relevant quotations (if possible) from included studies under different themes (Line no. 204).

Response #6: We thank the reviewer for sharing this suggestion for improvement. We revised the ‘result’ section by adding relevant quotations throughout from included studies under different themes.

Comment #7: The ‘Discussion’ section needs major revision. Here, the authors can compare and contrast their study findings with previous studies more extensively (Line no. 312).

Response #7: We expanded the discussion to compare our study findings with previous studies more extensively.

Comment #8: The authors have to revise the conclusion and have to specify the results-specific policy recommendations (Line no. 334).

Response #8: Thank you, we revised the conclusion and specified the results-specific policy changes recommended.

Comment #9: Overall, the writing of the manuscript has to improve following Standard English and ‘PLOS ONE’ Journal’s guidelines.

Response #9: Thank you, we revised the text throughout to improve English language usage and ‘PLOS ONE’ submission guidelines.

Sincerely,

The Authors

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Ashfikur Rahman, Editor

Scoping review of qualitative studies investigating reproductive health knowledge, attitudes, and practices among men and women across Rwanda

PONE-D-22-34373R1

Dear Dr. Buser,

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,

Ashfikur Rahman

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Thanks for addressing the comments made by the reviewers, I have gone through the revision, and I think it is suitable for publication. I communicated w

Reviewers' comments:

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Ashfikur Rahman, Editor

PONE-D-22-34373R1

Scoping review of qualitative studies investigating reproductive health knowledge, attitudes, and practices among men and women across Rwanda

Dear Dr. Buser:

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. Ashfikur Rahman

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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