Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 24, 2023
Decision Letter - Christian Napoli, Editor

PONE-D-23-05498Assessment of vaccine perception and vaccination intention of Mpox infection among the adult males in Bangladesh: A cross-sectional study findingsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Islam,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by May 25 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,

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 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.

[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

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

**********

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

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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: Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript "Assessment of vaccine perception and vaccination intention of Mpox infection among the adult males in Bangladesh: A cross-sectional study findings."

It is well-written, and the topic is relevant. I have only minor changes to further improve the quality of this paper.

1. The Material and methods section should better explain what the authors mean with the question regarding the impact of Covid-19 on the respondents’ life.

2. I believe that you should add in the limit of the study that you excluded females of all ages, as this is a clear selection bias.

3. I suggest to compare these results with more experiences that consider not only a possible MPXV vaccination, but the relationship between the general population and monkeypox virus as well, especially in European continent (see doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens11111285).

Reviewer #2: The authors have conducted a study which is irrelevant in the perspective of country where it is conducted. As of now, no cases of Monkey pox were reported in Bangladesh. Hence, why should one be concerned about vaccination when quick identification, isolation and management would be appropriate to prevent the spread of the disease. And if there is no plan to vaccinate people in near future, why one should be concerned about awareness regarding Mpox vaccine perception and acceptance?

Moreover, the description of result doesn't match with tables and figures.

**********

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: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

[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.

Revision 1

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

Thank you for your letter and the reviewers' comments on our manuscript entitled "Assessment of vaccine perception and vaccination intention of Mpox infection among the adult males in Bangladesh: A cross-sectional study findings" (Manuscript ID PONE-D-23-05498). All the comments were valuable and helpful to the revision and improvement of the manuscript. We have carefully studied the comments and made corrections, which we hope will merit your approval. We marked the revised portions using track changes. Our point-by-point answers to the reviewers’ comments appear at the end of this letter.

We earnestly appreciate the Editors'/Reviewers' work. We hope that after this revision, the paper will be deemed fit for publication. We would be glad to respond to any further questions and comments that you may have.

Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Best regards,

Md. Rabiul Islam, PhD

Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacy, University of Asia Pacific, 74/A Green Road, Farmgate, Dhaka-1205, Bangladesh. Email: robi.ayaan@gmail.com; Cell: +8801916031831

Point by point authors’ responses to the reviewers

Manuscript ID PONE-D-23-05498

Title: Assessment of vaccine perception and vaccination intention of Mpox infection among the adult males in Bangladesh: A cross-sectional study findings

Reviewer #1

Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript "Assessment of vaccine perception and vaccination intention of Mpox infection among the adult males in Bangladesh: A cross-sectional study findings."

It is well-written, and the topic is relevant. I have only minor changes to further improve the quality of this paper.

Author’s response

Thank you for your review and encouraging comments on our manuscript. We have addressed all your observation very carefully in our revised manuscript.

Comment 1. The Material and methods section should better explain what the authors mean with the question regarding the impact of Covid-19 on the respondents’ life.

Author’s response

Thank you for your observation. We have now included more information about the impact of Covid-19 on the respondents’ life in the method section for better understanding of readers (page 6, line 19-20).

Comment 2. I believe that you should add in the limit of the study that you excluded females of all ages, as this is a clear selection bias.

Author’s response

Thank you for your suggestion. We have explained about the inclusion of only males in this study based on the disease epidemiology and prevalence (page 6, lines 3-6).

“Only adult males were invited to participate in this study of ages ranging from 18 to 45 years as this age is vulnerable to the Mpox virus. Moreover, several data studies around the world showed 98% of confirmed cases of Mpox disease among 18-45 years of males. Therefore, we excluded females of all ages.”

However, we have added this point as a limitation of this study to avoid selection biasness (page 18, lines 9-10).

Comment 3. I suggest to compare these results with more experiences that consider not only a possible MPXV vaccination, but the relationship between the general population and monkeypox virus as well, especially in European continent (see doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens11111285).

Author’s response

Thank you again for your valuable suggestion. We have now compared our results with the suggested study finding in Europe (page 16, line 21-24).

Reviewer #2

The authors have conducted a study which is irrelevant in the perspective of country where it is conducted. As of now, no cases of Monkey pox were reported in Bangladesh. Hence, why should one be concerned about vaccination when quick identification, isolation and management would be appropriate to prevent the spread of the disease. And if there is no plan to vaccinate people in near future, why one should be concerned about awareness regarding Mpox vaccine perception and acceptance?

Moreover, the description of result doesn't match with tables and figures.

Author’s response

Thank you for your review and opinion about this manuscript. We have conducted this study regarding Mpox vaccine perception and vaccination intention in Bangladesh where there is no reported case of Mpox infection. Bangladesh is a densely populated lower middle-income country (total population is 169.35 million). The population density in Bangladesh is 1265 per Km2 (3,277 people per mi2). The median age in Bangladesh is 27.6 years. It is difficult to control infectious disease outbreak in such country with large population and weak healthcare infrastructure. Therefore, preventive measures might be a good option for Bangladesh. We conducted this study to report vaccine perception and vaccination intention of Bangladeshi population so that the authorities can know and take necessary measures. Moreover, we totally agree that quick identification, isolation and management are appropriate to prevent the spread of infectious disease. But according to our own experience during Covid-19 pandemic, it was almost impossible to implement these measures in Bangladesh for high population load and literacy level of general people. What Bangladesh did, the country achieved high success in rolling out Covid-19 vaccination (more than 90% people vaccinated). Therefore, the country did face any big threat due to the recent past pandemic. I this context the present study is relevant and useful for the healthcare authorities, policymakers, and others.

Also, we have corrected some mismatch about the description of result with tables and figures in the revised manuscript.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Christian Napoli, Editor

Assessment of vaccine perception and vaccination intention of Mpox infection among the adult males in Bangladesh: A cross-sectional study findings

PONE-D-23-05498R1

Dear Authors,

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,

The Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Christian Napoli, Editor

PONE-D-23-05498R1

Assessment of vaccine perception and vaccination intention of Mpox infection among the adult males in Bangladesh: A cross-sectional study findings

Dear Dr. Islam:

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. Christian Napoli

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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 .