Comparison of the efficacy among different interventions for radiodermatitis: A Bayesian network meta‑analysis of randomized controlled trials

Ying Guan; Shuai Liu; Anchuan Li; Wanqin Cheng

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0298209

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 15, 2023
2 Nov 2023 Decision Letter - Jingxian Ding, Editor PONE-D-23-26099Comparison of the efficacy among different interventions for radiodermatitis: a Bayesian network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trialsPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Guan, 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 Dec 17 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, Jingxian Ding, 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. Note from Emily Chenette, Editor in Chief of PLOS ONE, and Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Director of Open Research Solutions at PLOS: Did you know that depositing data in a repository is associated with up to a 25% citation advantage (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230416)? If you’ve not already done so, consider depositing your raw data in a repository to ensure your work is read, appreciated and cited by the largest possible audience. You’ll also earn an Accessible Data icon on your published paper if you deposit your data in any participating repository (https://plos.org/open-science/open-data/#accessible-data). 3. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a pre-existing iD in Editorial Manager. Please see the following video for instructions on linking an ORCID iD to your Editorial Manager account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcclfuvtxQ 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. 5. 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: Reviewer 1： This study is a Bayesian network meta-analysis of various interventions for the management of radiodermatitis. Despite being the most common side-effect of radiotherapy, the optimal management strategy for radiodermatitis remains elusive. The authors have used a network meta-analysis (NMA) approach to rank different treatment strategies in terms of both clinician and patient-reported outcomes. The use of NMA is appropriate in this scenario and the study was conducted in accordance with the established guidelines for conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The results of this study will offer clinicians much-needed information to make evidence-based decisions in managing radiodermatitis. However, the authors need to address the following issues; 1. The authors make conflicting statements about the presence of publication bias in the quality assessment and results sections. 2. Under study selection and data collection, the authors report that Any disagreements were resolved through “team discussions”. More clarification should be provided on this. 3. In their literature search, the authors did not use other common terms for RD such as skin reactions or skin burns. This could result in failure to retrieve some eligible studies. 4. The authors can improve the clarity and readability of the manuscript by addressing the following issues; • The pathogenesis of RD should be written in a less speculative way with reference to specific dermal components that are damaged by IR as well as involved signaling molecules. Also, authors should cite their sources here. • The discussion is too long and difficult for the reader to follow. The authors should make it more concise and limit the discussion to results of their study. • The description of NMA in the background should be condensed to one paragraph. Also, the authors should provide a preview of the risk factors for RD can provide a better context to the problem. • There are several instances where the same information is repeated in the background, methodology, and discussion. The authors should rectify this. 5. The authors should ensure appropriate sources are cited. For instance, the opening statements in the background are not supported by any citations. 6. In tables 2B-2E, the authors report too many decimal places in the mean differences and 95% credible intervals. 7. In Figure 8, the labels are too small and some colors chosen look very similar. 8. There are several spelling and grammatical errors. The authors are advised to proofread their manuscript before re-submission. Reviewer 2： This is a meticuously worked out and written manuscript. It is very well written and quite detailed systematic review on prosepctive trials investigating treatments of radiation dermatitis. Conclusions are clear. There is only thing, I would ask to adapt, change: there are two references in Brazilian, references number 13 and 14. Authors give non-English publications as an exclusion criterion. They should therefore be removed or substituted by other references. There are good English publications on the use of Calendula. [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: I Don't Know ****** 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: No 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 study is a Bayesian network meta-analysis of various interventions for the management of radiodermatitis. Despite being the most common side-effect of radiotherapy, the optimal management strategy for radiodermatitis remains elusive. The authors have used a network meta-analysis (NMA) approach to rank different treatment strategies in terms of both clinician and patient-reported outcomes. The use of NMA is appropriate in this scenario and the study was conducted in accordance with the established guidelines for conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The results of this study will offer clinicians much-needed information to make evidence-based decisions in managing radiodermatitis. However, the authors need to address the following issues; 1. The authors make conflicting statements about the presence of publication bias in the quality assessment and results sections. 2. Under study selection and data collection, the authors report that Any disagreements were resolved through “team discussions”. More clarification should be provided on this. 3. In their literature search, the authors did not use other common terms for RD such as skin reactions or skin burns. This could result in failure to retrieve some eligible studies. 4. The authors can improve the clarity and readability of the manuscript by addressing the following issues; • The pathogenesis of RD should be written in a less speculative way with reference to specific dermal components that are damaged by IR as well as involved signaling molecules. Also, authors should cite their sources here. • The discussion is too long and difficult for the reader to follow. The authors should make it more concise and limit the discussion to results of their study. • The description of NMA in the background should be condensed to one paragraph. Also, the authors should provide a preview of the risk factors for RD can provide a better context to the problem. • There are several instances where the same information is repeated in the background, methodology, and discussion. The authors should rectify this. 5. The authors should ensure appropriate sources are cited. For instance, the opening statements in the background are not supported by any citations. 6. In tables 2B-2E, the authors report too many decimal places in the mean differences and 95% credible intervals. 7. In Figure 8, the labels are too small and some colors chosen look very similar. 8. There are several spelling and grammatical errors. The authors are advised to proofread their manuscript before re-submission. Reviewer #2: This is a meticuously worked out and written manuscript. It is very well written and quite detailed systematic review on prosepctive trials investigating treatments of radiation dermatitis. Conclusions are clear. There is only thing, I would ask to adapt, change: there are two references in Brazilian, references number 13 and 14. Authors give non-English publications as an exclusion criterion. They should therefore be removed or substituted by other references. There are good English publications on the use of Calendula. ****** 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298209.r001
Revision 1
11 Dec 2023 Author Response December 9, 2023 Dr. Jingxian Ding Academic Editor of PLOS ONE Revision manuscript-" Comparison of the efficacy among different interventions for radiodermatitis: A Bayesian network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (Submission ID PONE-D-23-26099)" Dear Dr. Ding: Thanks for you and the reviewers’ comments of our manuscript titled as Comparison of the efficacy among different interventions for radiodermatitis: A Bayesian network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Your professional advices are helpful for us to improve the quality of the paper. We sincerely accepted and appreciated the reviewer’ comments. We have answered the reviewer’ questions point by point and revised our paper correspondingly. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. And here we did not list the changes but marked in yellow in the revised manuscript. We appreciate for Editors/Reviewers’ warm work earnestly and hope that the correction will meet with approval. We look forward to hearing from you again. Sincerely, Ying Guan, MD, PhD. Corresponding Author Mailing address: No 71, Hedi Road, Nanning, Guangxi 530021, P.R. China, Department of Radiation Oncology, Guangxi Medical University Cancer Hospital Email: 386927552@qq.com Response to the comments of reviewer #1 This study is a Bayesian network meta-analysis of various interventions for the management of radiodermatitis. Despite being the most common side-effect of radiotherapy, the optimal management strategy for radiodermatitis remains elusive. The authors have used a network meta-analysis (NMA) approach to rank different treatment strategies in terms of both clinician and patient reported outcomes. The use of NMA is appropriate in this scenario and the study was conducted in accordance with the established guidelines for conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The results of this study will offer clinicians much-needed information to make evidence-based decisions in managing radiodermatitis. However, the authors need to address the following issues: 1. The authors make conflicting statements about the presence of publication bias in the quality assessment and results sections. Reply: We are very sorry for this error and have corrected it in the revised manuscript and marked them in yellow. 2. Under study selection and data collection, the authors report that Any disagreements were resolved through “team discussions”. More clarification should be provided on this. Reply: Thanks for your careful reading our paper. A team discussion means that all four authors/researchers (YG, SL, ACL, and WQC) participated in the discussions. This sentence “or consultation with a third researcher, ACL" is repetitive and may cause misunderstanding, so we delete it. And an explanation of the team discussion is supplemented in parentheses immediately following. We have also made corresponding changes in the revised manuscript and marked them in yellow. 3. In their literature search, the authors did not use other common terms for RD such as skin reactions or skin burns. This could result in failure to retrieve some eligible studies. Reply: Thanks a lot for comments. The medical subject headings (Mesh)，Emtree and entry terms were used as search strategies. The complete search strategy and the results can be found in S1 Appendix. The outcomes would be improved if they were coupled with data from other common terms for RD such as skin reactions or skin burns in literature search. But it should be highlighted that Mesh and entry terms were used as search the most popular strategies. 4. The authors can improve the clarity and readability of the manuscript by addressing the following issues: • The pathogenesis of RD should be written in a less speculative way with reference to specific dermal components that are damaged by IR as well as involved signaling molecules. Also, authors should cite their sources here. • The discussion is too long and difficult for the reader to follow. The authors should make it more concise and limit the discussion to results of their study. • The description of NMA in the background should be condensed to one paragraph. Also, the authors should provide a preview of the risk factors for RD can provide a better context to the problem. • There are several instances where the same information is repeated in the background, methodology, and discussion. The authors should rectify this. Reply: Thanks very much for the reviewer's suggestion. We have made corresponding changes in the revised manuscript and marked them in yellow. (1) We have appropriately modified the background (introduction) section on the pathogenesis of RD to make it more understandable. (2) In order to clarify the discussion of the 14 RD interventions, we tried our best to make appropriate modifications according to the reviewer's comments, deleting some repeated paragraphs and simplifying sentences. (3) We condense the NAM's description to one paragraph. Also, we provide a preview of the risk factors for RD. (4）We deleted the same information is repeated in the background (introduction) section, methodology, and discussion. 5. The authors should ensure appropriate sources are cited. For instance, the opening statements in the background are not supported by any citations. Reply: Thanks for your suggestion. We do check the relative reference again and ensure appropriate sources are cited through the full text. We have made corrections in revised manuscript and have also marked them in yellow. 6. In tables 2B-2E, the authors report too many decimal places in the mean differences and 95% credible intervals. Reply: Thanks for your suggestion. We do agree with you and round the data in Table 2B-2E, keeping two decimal places. 7. In Figure 8, the labels are too small and some colors chosen look very similar. Reply: Thank reviewer for this comment. We are sorry for the above-mentioned image defects due to software limitations and over-compression of image size factors. We modified it by splitting Figure 8 into individual files (A-E) to make it more legible and readable. We have re-uploaded a clearer version of Fig 8A-8E. 8. There are several spelling and grammatical errors. The authors are advised to proofread their manuscript before re-submission. Reply: Thank you for your valuable and thoughtful comments. We have carefully checked and improved the English writing in the revised manuscript. Response to the comments of reviewer #2 1. This is a meticuously worked out and written manuscript. It is very well written and quite detailed systematic review on prosepctive trials investigating treatments of radiation dermatitis. Conclusions are clear. There is only thing, I would ask to adapt, change: there are two references in Brazilian, references number 13 and 14. Authors give non-English publications as an exclusion criterion. They should therefore be removed or substituted by other references. There are good English publications on the use of Calendula. Reply: Thanks a lot for comments. We agree with reviewer’s suggestion and have made modifications in References section as requested. [13] Pommier P, Gomez F, Sunyach MP, D'Hombres A, Carrie C, Montbarbon X. Phase III randomized trial of Calendula officinalis compared with trolamine for the prevention of acute dermatitis during irradiation for breast cancer. J Clin Oncol. 2004 Apr 15;22(8):1447-53. doi: 10.1200/JCO.2004.07.063. PMID: 15084618. [14] Kumar S, Juresic E, Barton M, Shafiq J. Management of skin toxicity during radiation therapy: a review of the evidence. J Med Imaging Radiat Oncol. 2010 Jun;54(3):264-79. doi: 10.1111/j.1754-9485.2010.02170.x. PMID: 20598015. Response to the editorial comments 1. 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'. Reply: Yes, we do revise our paper in response to the reviewer' and editor’s comments point-by-point, containing both the original query followed by our replies. And we also modified manuscript accordingly. We have uploaded response file as a 'Point-by-point response' file. All changes to the manuscript were highlighted or indicated by using tracked changes. The electric files of the revised manuscript with track changes as well as figures, respectively after we completed revisions. 2. 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. Reply: The financial disclosure has not been changed. We resubmit the Fig 8 in accordance with the requirements of the submission format of figure files. 3. 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/submissionguidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Reply: Thank you for your recommendation. The current study protocol was registered in PROSPERO with the registration number CRD42023428598. 4. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. Reply: We've read PLOS ONE formatting sample PDF file about title, authors, affiliations, main body, and file naming. The manuscript has also been modified in accordance with its relevant requirements. A marked-up copy of manuscript that yellow-highlight changes made to the original version. We also upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. 5. Note from Emily Chenette, Editor in Chief of PLOS ONE, and Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Director of Open Research Solutions at PLOS: Did you know that depositing data in a repository is associated with up to a 25% citation advantage (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230416)? If you’ve not already done so, consider depositing your raw data in a repository to ensure your work is read, appreciated and cited by the largest possible audience. You’ll also earn an Accessible Data icon on your published paper if you deposit your data in any participating repository (https://plos.org/open-science/opendata/#accessible-data). Reply: Thanks for your suggestion. All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article (and its Supporting Information files). 6. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a preexisting iD in Editorial Manager. Reply: Yes, I do have an ORCID iD. I have followed the instructions to fetch/validate my ORCID iD by updating my information. 7. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Reply: Yes, we include captions for our Supporting Information files at the end of our revised manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. 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. Reply: We re-checked the list of references and no documents were retracted. At the same time, the reference format was modified according to the requirements of PLOS ONE journal. Changes to the list of references are mentioned in the rebuttal letter accompanying the revised manuscript. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298209.r002
22 Jan 2024 Decision Letter - Huijuan Cao, Editor Comparison of the efficacy among different interventions for radiodermatitis: A Bayesian network meta‑analysis of randomized controlled trials PONE-D-23-26099R1 Dear Dr. Guan, 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, Huijuan Cao, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): 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 #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 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 #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: I Don't Know ****** 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 #2: 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 #2: 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 made during the previous round of review have been appropriately addressed. The current version is suitable for publication. Reviewer #2: All comments of reviewers have been addressed by the authors and changes have been made. Responses are sufficient ****** 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 #2: No ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298209.r003
Formally Accepted
30 Jan 2024 Acceptance Letter - Huijuan Cao, Editor PONE-D-23-26099R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Guan, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, 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. Huijuan Cao Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298209.r004

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 .