Assessing the knowledge and attitude towards HIV/AIDS among the general population and health care professionals in MENA region

Ayman Elghazaly; Nawaf AlSaeed; Syed Islam; Ibtihaj Alsharif; Layla Alharbi; Tala Al Ashagr; Albatoul Alshanifi; Reem Alrashoudi; Aynaa Alsharidi; Abdullah Alhokail; Qais Dirar; Atif Shibl; Khaled Al-Kattan; Noura Abothneen; Maha Al-Mozaini

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0288838

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 14, 2022
1 Mar 2023 Decision Letter - Frank Kyei-Arthur, Editor PONE-D-22-34156Assessing the Knowledge and Attitude Towards HIV/AIDS among the General population and Health Care Professionals in MENA regionPLOS ONE Dear Dr. AlMozaini, 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 Apr 15 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, Frank Kyei-Arthur, 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. You indicated that you had ethical approval for your study. In your Methods section, please ensure you have also stated whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians of the minors included in the study or whether the research ethics committee or IRB specifically waived the need for their consent 3. Please update the Figures captions, all figures captions as Figure 1(Figure 1. HIV Knowledge Score Among Gender and HCW VS NHW, Figure 1. Frequency of Utilization of Mass Media and Social Media among the Study Participants) Additional Editor Comments: The author should address the comments of the reviewers, especially reviewer 2. The author should pay attention to his/her sample collection protocol, data analysis and results. [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: Partly ******** 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: 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: This is a very important manuscript. It highlights the general public knowledge on HIV/AIDS. most importantly its highlight the perception of health workers towards HIV patients. The attitude of healthcare workers needs more improvement to provide the best amount of care to the HIV-afflicted. Reviewer #2: This is a good study, unfortunately dataset and results is not unique. The paper has many shortcomings in regards to data analyses and text. In my opinion, However, it need to more clarify regarding to the protocol of sample collection and protocol which is used to online survey.In addition, results has not been used to its full text. I think need more in depth analysis of the data. I also suggest siting more relevant and new literatures. ****** 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: Adwoa Asante-Poku 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. <quillbot-extension-portal></quillbot-extension-portal> https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288838.r001
Revision 1
1 May 2023 Author Response Dear Editor in Chief March 25, 2023 PLOS ONE We would like to thank the reviewers and the Editorial Office again for their time and their critical review of our manuscript. We are pleased to inform you that all the comments raised by the reviewers were taken carefully responded point-by-point. Please find below our point-by-point responses. All the changes in the attached revised manuscript are indicated in track change. We thank you again for the opportunity to resubmit our paper. Yours faithfully Maha Al-Mozaini, PhD Reviewer comments: 1. You indicated that you had ethical approval for your study. In your Methods section, please ensure you have also stated whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians of the minors included in the study or whether the research ethics committee or IRB specifically waived the need for their consent. Response: we have included this statement at the Ethics part of the manuscript. 2. Please update the Figures captions, all figures’ captions as Figure 1(Figure 1. HIV Knowledge Score Among Gender and HCW VS NHW, Figure 1. Frequency of Utilization of Mass Media and social media among the Study Participants) Response: amended Reviewer comments 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: Partly Response 1: On behalf of all the coauthors and myself, we appreciate this positive feedback. 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: N/A Response 2: We appreciate the reviewers positive support, we did indeed had an expert biostatistician analyzing our data. 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Response 3: Indeed, all the data are available in the supplementary files. 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Response 4: Once again on behalf of the co-authors and myself we are grateful and appreciate the positive feedback. 5. Review Comments to the Author Reviewer #1: This is a very important manuscript. It highlights the general public knowledge on HIV/AIDS. most importantly its highlight the perception of health workers towards HIV patients. The attitude of healthcare workers needs more improvement to provide the best amount of care to the HIV-afflicted. Response 4 for Reviewer 1: Indeed these data and our finding once published will share it with policy makers and the ministry of health to start awareness campaigns in the country especially among health care workers in order to provide the best healthcare to this group of patients without discrimination. Reviewer #2: This is a good study, unfortunately dataset and results are not unique. The paper has many shortcomings in regard to data analyses and text. In my opinion, However, it needs to more clarify regarding to the protocol of sample collection and protocol which is used to online survey. In addition, results has not been used to its full text. I think need more in-depth analysis of the data. I also suggest siting more relevant and new literatures. Response 4 for Reviewer 2: Valid point and accordingly, we have addressed this in the data collection method by describing how the online survey was disseminated through social media posts such as the twitter pots of our institute KFSHRC and WhatsApp platform of data collection volunteers. On behalf of the co-authors and myself we are grateful and appreciate your time in reviewing our project and we hope to collaborate on many more projects in the near future. Thank you Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Reviewer-PLOS ONE.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288838.r002
20 Jun 2023 Decision Letter - Frank Kyei-Arthur, Editor PONE-D-22-34156R1Assessing the Knowledge and Attitude Towards HIV/AIDS among the General population and Health Care Professionals in MENA regionPLOS ONE Dear Dr. AlMozaini, 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. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: The authors need to address the following concerns of reviewer 3 to strengthen their manuscript: There is discrepancy in the statistical tool used to analysed in the data. In the abstract, R-statistical tool was mentioned, while SPSS was mentioned in the methods section of the manuscript. The author needs to address it. Some participants were less than 18 years. The consent of their parents/guardians are required before they can be interviewed. The authors were silent on this issue. The authors need to address this issue. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by 20th July 2023. 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, Frank Kyei-Arthur, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 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: The authors need to address the following concerns of reviewer 3: • There is discrepancy in the statistical tool used to analysed in the data. In the abstract, R-statistical tool was mentioned, while SPSS was mentioned in the methods section of the manuscript. The author needs to address it. • Some participants were less than 18 years. The consent of their parents/guardians are required before they can be interviewed. The authors were silent on this issue. The authors need to address this issue. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #3: (No Response) ******** 2. 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 #3: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 4. 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 #3: Yes ****** 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 #3: Yes ****** 6. 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: All comments have been answered adequately. The authors took into consideration all recommendations. Reviewer #3: I reckon the flow of the article made it interesting to review. However, i was expecting analysis output from R software as stated on the abstract. Why was SPSS used instead. Also, how was consent gotten from teenagers who participated in the survey. Were their parents involved. Thank you. Great Article ****** 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 #3: Yes: Adeyemi, Adebowale Sylvester ******** [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.<quillbot-extension-portal></quillbot-extension-portal> https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288838.r003
Revision 2
27 Jun 2023 Author Response 1. There is discrepancy in the statistical tool used to analysed in the data. In the abstract, R-statistical tool was mentioned, while SPSS was mentioned in the methods section of the manuscript. The author needs to address it. Response: We thank the reviewers for noticing this minor mistake, we have corrected this by adding the R statistical tool that was utilized for our study. Red highlight in the manuscript in the statistical methodology section. 2. Some participants were less than 18 years. The consent of their parents/guardians are required before they can be interviewed. The authors were silent on this issue. The authors need to address this issue. Response: On behalf of all the coauthors and myself, we appreciate this point, accordingly we have addressed this in the ethics section that is highlighted in red. This comment was added ‘Some participants were less than 18 years, 12% of our study participant. The consent of their parents/guardians were obtained before they were interviewed’. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Reviewer-PLOS ONE.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288838.r004
6 Jul 2023 Decision Letter - Frank Kyei-Arthur, Editor Assessing the Knowledge and Attitude Towards HIV/AIDS among the General population and Health Care Professionals in MENA region PONE-D-22-34156R2 Dear Dr. AlMozaini, 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, Frank Kyei-Arthur, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: <quillbot-extension-portal></quillbot-extension-portal> https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288838.r005
Formally Accepted
19 Jul 2023 Acceptance Letter - Frank Kyei-Arthur, Editor PONE-D-22-34156R2 Assessing the Knowledge and Attitude Towards HIV/AIDS among the General population and Health Care Professionals in MENA region Dear Dr. Al-Mozaini: 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. Frank Kyei-Arthur Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288838.r006

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