PONE-D-23-02151The experiences and needs of unpaid family caregivers for persons living with dementia in rural settings: A qualitative systematic reviewPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Campbell-Enns,

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 substantially revise your article in light of the comments of all three reviewers.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 13 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,

Anastassia Zabrodskaja, 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. Thank you for stating the following in your Competing Interests section:  

"The authors have declared that no completing interests exist."

Please complete your Competing Interests on the online submission form to state any Competing Interests. If you have no competing interests, please state ""The authors have declared that no competing interests exist."", as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now 

This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

3. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide.

4. 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Partly

**********

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: 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: The authors have addressed an important area of concern n the care of people with dementia in relation to place of residence, and the article is based on robust data with global spread. The only snag is the paucity of papers from LMICs which abound with rural settings for comparison based on socio-economic standings.

The only concern is the stereotyping with the use of "rural persons, rural caregivers of rural families" as found on lines 256, 284, 313, 358-360. These should be revised to read " caregivers of persons/families resident in rural communities"

Reviewer #2: This paper needs to revise in every section. Need to write the paper according to the template of the journal. Please check the organization of the paper. The updated references should be added. A few of the research directions should be implemented.

Reviewer #3: • In paper, a cohort of studies was selected as there is only one study published in 1993 which is mentioned in Table (1), while the remaining 35 studies are from 2000-2022. How was this cohort decided? If researchers intended to add research published in 2000-22 then they should exclude 1993.

• In paper, study rationale and implication are missing. Add some paragraphs about study implications and significance.

• Researchers selected studies from Canada (n=15), the 187 United States (n=7), Australia (n=3), Scotland (n=3), Norway (n=1), Sweden (n=1), South Africa 188 (n=1), Kenya (n=1), Ghana (n=1), and Japan (n=1). As Japan is an Asian country then researches from other Asian countries like Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, China, Iran, Malaysia, were not included? kindly write down the reasons behind selection of countries.

• Researchers just gave overall findings of researches, at least they should specify the category of caregiver, no doubt, in method section, they have described caregiver” was defined as an unpaid career who may be referred to as a care partner or informal career; But in Table 1, a separate column should be made for the extracted themes to elaborate that family caretaker might have different concerns than those informal careers.

• Selected studies did not specify that patients with dementia were suffering from other morbidities or not, and also did not explain that patients might be completely paralyzed or partially paralyzed or were quite stable if in the early stage of dementia.

• Studies did not specify the age of caregivers and gender. Age and gender also bring different responses.

• In discussion, there is a need to describe findings from formal (family members) and informal careers separately.

**********

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: ADESOLA OGUNNIYI

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: HAMEDI M.A.

**********

[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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Reviewer Suggestions (1).docx

The experiences and needs of unpaid family caregivers for persons living with dementia in rural settings: A qualitative systematic review

PONE-D-23-02151R1

Dear Dr. Campbell-Enns,

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,

Anastassia Zabrodskaja, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: