Protocol for the development of a core outcome set for neonatal sepsis (NESCOS)

Petek Eylul Taneri; Jamie J. Kirkham; Eleanor J. Molloy; Linda Biesty; Richard A. Polin; James L. Wynn; Barbara J. Stoll; Niranjan Kissoon; Kondwani Kawaza; Mandy Daly; Aoife Branagan; Lívia Nagy Bonnard; Eric Giannoni; Tobias Strunk; Magdalena Ohaja; Kenneth Mugabe; Denise Suguitani; Fiona Quirke; Declan Devane

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0295325

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 14, 2023
21 Aug 2023 Decision Letter - Andrew Harding, Editor PONE-D-23-05983Protocol for the development of a Core Outcome Set for Neonatal Sepsis (NESCOS)PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Taneri, 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. Given the manuscript reports a robust and well established study design, and the manuscript is well written, as academic editor I am happy to accept your submission without undertaking a formal peer review process. However, you will notice that I am flagging it as a minor revision and I ask that some extremely minor formatting issues are addressed before I can proceed to formally accept the manuscript in the system. For example, I did notice a minor issue - one of the citations (44) in the reference list is incomplete and displayed an error message. I hope you are pleased with this outcome and I look forward to seeing and processing the revised manuscript. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 31 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, Andrew Harding, PhD 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 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. 3. 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. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: [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.0295325.r001
Revision 1
30 Aug 2023 Author Response Dear editor, Thank you for your valuable suggestions, which we have now incorporated into the submission. Kindly find below the specific changes we've made as per your recommendations. 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 Changes we made: We carefully reviewed the PLOS ONE style templates and made the necessary adjustments to ensure that our manuscript meets the criteria set by the journal. 2. 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. Changes we made: We added captions for the Supporting Information file at the end of the manuscript and revised the in-text citations to align with the provided guidelines. We took into account the guidelines while making these updates. 3. 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. Changes we made: We thoroughly reviewed the reference list to confirm its completeness and accuracy. There are no instances of retracted papers within the list. It's important to note that we made no additions or removals of references; our sole focus was on rectifying the reference list itself. Kind regards, Petek Eylul Taneri Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295325.r002
10 Nov 2023 Decision Letter - Andrew Harding, Editor PONE-D-23-05983R1Protocol for the development of a Core Outcome Set for Neonatal Sepsis (NESCOS)PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Taneri, 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. During our internal assessment of the manuscript, we noted that the consent statement is missing. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified (1) whether consent will be informed and (2) what type you will obtain (for instance, written or verbal, and if verbal, how it will be documented and witnessed). If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 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, Johanna Pruller, PhD Associate Editor PLOS ONE on behalf of Andrew Harding, PhD 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. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] [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.0295325.r003
Revision 2
14 Nov 2023 Author Response Response to Reviewers Thank you for your valuable suggestions. 1. During our internal assessment of the manuscript, we noted that the consent statement is missing. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified (1) whether consent will be informed and (2) what type you will obtain (for instance, written or verbal, and if verbal, how it will be documented and witnessed). If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information. Changes we made: We carefully revised our submission, and we added this information to our manuscript and online submission information: “During the Delphi survey and consensus meeting phases, participants were provided with detailed project information via participant information leaflets. They were then cordially invited to partake in the study, contingent upon their agreement as evidenced by completing the standardized consent forms. These forms, which included a thorough briefing, were utilized to obtain written consent from the participants. Integral to our adherence to ethical standards, these documents were incorporated into our submission to the ethical committee and were subsequently granted approval.” https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295325.r004
21 Nov 2023 Decision Letter - Andrew Harding, Editor Protocol for the development of a Core Outcome Set for Neonatal Sepsis (NESCOS) PONE-D-23-05983R2 Dear Dr. Taneri, 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, Andrew Harding, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Thank you for the minor changes to your protocol, and we can now accept your manuscript for publication. Good luck with publishing the rest of the work associated with your project. Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295325.r005
Formally Accepted
24 Nov 2023 Acceptance Letter - Andrew Harding, Editor PONE-D-23-05983R2 Protocol for the development of a core outcome set for neonatal sepsis (NESCOS) Dear Dr. Taneri: 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 customercare@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. Andrew Harding Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295325.r006

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 .