“How is your thesis going?”–Ph.D. students’ perspectives on mental health and stress in academia

Julian Friedrich; Anna Bareis; Moritz Bross; Zoé Bürger; Álvaro Cortés Rodríguez; Nina Effenberger; Markus Kleinhansl; Fabienne Kremer; Cornelius Schröder

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0288103

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 23, 2023
4 May 2023 Decision Letter - Khader Ahmad Almhdawi, Editor PONE-D-23-08552“How is your thesis going?” – Ph.D. students’ perspectives on mental health and stress in academiaPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Friedrich, 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. ============================== Thank you for submitting this study. Please conduct the minor changes suggested by our reviewers. "Comments: 1. The topic is extremely interesting and relevant. It seems to be a well-developed study. 2. I suggest using controlled vocabulary terms for the Key words (Mesh) section. 3. As mentioned by the authors, there are limitations associated to the study design they are developing (prevalence). In the discussion section, I would like the authors to deepen on others study designs (maybe more appropriate) to would allow handling confounding factors. 4. Given the large sample size, I would like to know if they performed any calibration of the tool and if a pilot phase was conducted. 2. Did you receive any assistance in preparing this review (e.g. from a post-doc or graduate student)? If yes, please include their name below ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 18 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. 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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 note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section. 3. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: "We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publishing Fund of University of Tübingen." Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: "We would like to express our gratitude to all participants of the survey as well to the sustainAbility Ph.D. initiative at the University of Tübingen. We thank Dr. Stephanie Rosenstiel for support with the ethics approval and Prof. Dr. Birgit Derntl and Prof. Dr. Andreas Fallgatter for their helpful feedback on the conception of the questionnaire. We thank Mumina Javed and Monja Neuser for their support in the early phase of the project. We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publishing Fund of the University of Tübingen." We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: "We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publishing Fund of University of Tübingen." Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 5. Thank you for stating the following in your Competing Interests section: "The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. All authors are or were Ph.D. students at the University of Tübingen." 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. 6. 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. 7. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics statement entered into the online submission form will not be published alongside your manuscript. 8. 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. Additional Editor Comments: Thank you for submitting this study. Please conduct the minor changes suggested by our reviewers. "Comments: 1. The topic is extremely interesting and relevant. It seems to be a well-developed study. 2. I suggest using controlled vocabulary terms for the Key words (Mesh) section. 3. As mentioned by the authors, there are limitations associated to the study design they are developing (prevalence). In the discussion section, I would like the authors to deepen on others study designs (maybe more appropriate) to would allow handling confounding factors. 4. Given the large sample size, I would like to know if they performed any calibration of the tool and if a pilot phase was conducted. 2. Did you receive any assistance in preparing this review (e.g. from a post-doc or graduate student)? If yes, please include their name below" [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: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: 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 Reviewer #2: 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: 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: 1. The topic is extremely interesting and relevant. It seems to be a well-developed study. 2. I suggest using controlled vocabulary terms for the Key words (Mesh) section. 3. As mentioned by the authors, there are limitations associated to the study design they are developing (prevalence). In the discussion section, I would like the authors to deepen on others study designs (maybe more appropiate) to would allow handling confounding factors. 4. Given the large sample size, I would like to know if they performed any calibration of the tool and if a pilot phase was conducted. Reviewer #2: Dear Authors, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your paper. This paper has full merit in getting accepted in Plos One for publication. However, I found some small mistakes in the manuscripts, such as the parenthesis needing to be closed properly in some places. I recommend this manuscript for publication in Plos One. Thanks ****** 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: KT DIAZ Reviewer #2: Yes: Dinakaran Elango ******** [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.0288103.r001
Revision 1
7 Jun 2023 Author Response Dear Khader Ahmad Almhdawi, Dear Reviewers KT DIAZ and Dinakaran Elango, We thank you for your feedback and insightful comments and the opportunity to improve our manuscript. We want to highlight that both reviewers were extremely positive about the presented work and “enjoyed reading” our manuscript and described the topic as “extremely interesting and relevant”. We really appreciate your enthusiasm and want to thank you for your time and energy to sharing your expertise with us. We have thoroughly answered each of the comments and provide a point-by-point response below. Reviewer 1 1. The topic is extremely interesting and relevant. It seems to be a well-developed study. Response: We thank the reviewer for these positive comments. 2. I suggest using controlled vocabulary terms for the Key words (Mesh) section. Response: Thanks for this great suggestion. We investigated the Medical Subject Headings on https://meshb.nlm.nih.gov and changed the keywords to controlled terms: “mental health, depression, working conditions”. Additionally, we included specific terms for our context (“Ph.D. students”, “academia”), which we think are very informative but don’t have a proper correspondence in the aforementioned keyword mesh. 3. As mentioned by the authors, there are limitations associated to the study design they are developing (prevalence). In the discussion section, I would like the authors to deepen on others study designs (maybe more appropriate) to would allow handling confounding factors. Response: We thank the reviewer to highlight the need to mention other study designs. In the updated version of the manuscript, we now discuss “about the dynamic changes in the transition phase between undergraduate studies and the Ph.D. as well as across the Ph.D. [51]. To track these changes or make comparisons over time, a longitudinal study design or propensity score matching procedures [52] could give further insights.” Other methods could be difference-in-difference approaches or regression discontinuity designs. 4. Given the large sample size, I would like to know if they performed any calibration of the tool and if a pilot phase was conducted. Response: We conducted an extensive literature review for the development of the questionnaire and identified relevant constructs for academic and work contexts. We discussed the questionnaire with two professors (with psychological and medical background) and iteratively developed it further. Subsequently, we tested the questionnaire several times within the research team and with members of the sustainAbility Ph.D. initiative for timing and comprehensibility, including interdisciplinary perspectives. However, a systematic pilot phase was not conducted. 2. Did you receive any assistance in preparing this review (e.g. from a post-doc or graduate student)? If yes, please include their name below." Response: We did not receive any other assistance apart from the ones named in the acknowledgments: For the ethics approval, we received support from Dr. Stephanie Rosenstiel. For the questionnaire development, we consulted with Prof. Dr. Andreas Fallgatter and Prof. Dr. Brigit Derntl. Reviewer 2 Dear Authors, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your paper. This paper has full merit in getting accepted in Plos One for publication. However, I found some small mistakes in the manuscripts, such as the parenthesis needing to be closed properly in some places. I recommend this manuscript for publication in Plos One. Thanks Response: We thank the reviewer for the positive feedback. We checked again thoroughly the manuscript for spelling and parentheses. The changes are highlighted in the appended version. Editor 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: We thank the editor for this reminder. We changed the manuscript accordingly and hope that it fulfils all requirements. 2. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section. Response: We thank the editor for this comment. We updated the grant information in the “funding information” and “financial disclosure”. There are no grant numbers for the open access fund (“We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publishing Fund of the University of Tübingen.”). 3. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: "We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publishing Fund of University of Tübingen." Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Response: We thank the editor for this comment. We would like to add the provided suggestion: “We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publishing Fund of University of Tübingen. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.” 4. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: "We would like to express our gratitude to all participants of the survey as well to the sustainAbility Ph.D. initiative at the University of Tübingen. We thank Dr. Stephanie Rosenstiel for support with the ethics approval and Prof. Dr. Birgit Derntl and Prof. Dr. Andreas Fallgatter for their helpful feedback on the conception of the questionnaire. We thank Mumina Javed and Monja Neuser for their support in the early phase of the project. We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publishing Fund of the University of Tübingen." We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: "We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publishing Fund of University of Tübingen." Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Response: We thank the editor for this clarification. We deleted the funding information in the acknowledgements. The funding statement can remain as it is: “We acknowledge support by the Open Access Publishing Fund of University of Tübingen. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.” 5. Thank you for stating the following in your Competing Interests section: "The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. All authors are or were Ph.D. students at the University of Tübingen." 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. Response: We thank the editor for this clarification. We would like to change the sentence to “The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.” and delete the next sentence “All authors are or were Ph.D. students at the University of Tübingen.", as this information is already provided in the authors’ affiliation list. 6. 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. Response: We thank the editor for this comment and highly appreciate the initiative for freely accessible research data. The minimal data set is now available online. The following link is also the DOI: https://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.12914. The code is provided in a public GitHub repository: https://github.com/coschroeder/mental_health_analysis. The updated Data Availability statement reads as follows: “The anonymized data set is available at https://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.12914. All code for the analysis can be found at https://github.com/coschroeder/mental_health_analysis.” 7. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics statement entered into the online submission form will not be published alongside your manuscript. Response: We thank the editor for this comment. The ethics statement was already mentioned in the Methods section on p. 5: “Ethics approval was obtained by the “Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Economics and Social Science of the University of Tübingen”, which did not raise any ethical concerns. Written informed consent was given by the participants.” We deleted it from other sections. 8. 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. Response: We thank the editor for this comment. We reviewed and updated our reference list. We did not cite any retracted papers. All changes are highlighted in the attached document. Sincerely, Julian Friedrich and the authors julian.friedrich@uni-tuebingen.de https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288103.r002
20 Jun 2023 Decision Letter - Khader Ahmad Almhdawi, Editor “How is your thesis going?” – Ph.D. students’ perspectives on mental health and stress in academia PONE-D-23-08552R1 Dear Dr. Friedrich, 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, Khader Ahmad Almhdawi, Ph.D Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Thank you for adopting reviewers' comments and improving your manuscript. We think it is ready for publication, congratulations! Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288103.r003
Formally Accepted
23 Jun 2023 Acceptance Letter - Khader Ahmad Almhdawi, Editor PONE-D-23-08552R1 “How is your thesis going?” – Ph.D. students’ perspectives on mental health and stress in academia Dear Dr. Friedrich: 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 Prof. Khader Ahmad Almhdawi Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288103.r004

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