Professional quality of life in animal research personnel is linked to retention & job satisfaction: A mixed-methods cross-sectional survey on compassion fatigue in the USA

Lauren Young; Fabienne Ferrara; Lisa Kelly; Tara Martin; Sally Thompson-Iritani; Megan R. LaFollette

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0298744

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 19, 2023
25 Oct 2023 Decision Letter - Rosemary Frey, Editor PONE-D-23-17551Professional quality of life in animal research personnel is linked to retention & job satisfaction: A mixed-methods cross-sectional survey on compassion fatigue in the USAPLOS ONE Dear Dr. LaFollette, 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 calculate the effect size as requested by Reviewer 2.============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 09 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, Rosemary Frey Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Thank you for stating the following in the Competing Interests section: “All authors are employed by the institution noted in their affiliation except for Lauren Young who is a student. All authors are also members of the 3Rs Collaborative’s Compassion Fatigue Initiative. Elizabeth Nunamaker and Sally Thompson-Iritani also sat on the board of directors and leadership team of the 3Rs Collaborative during publication.” Please confirm that this does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests). If there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared. Please include your updated Competing Interests statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 3. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. 4. Please remove your figures from within your manuscript file, leaving only the individual TIFF/EPS image files, uploaded separately. These will be automatically included in the reviewers’ PDF. 5. 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. 6. 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: 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: Dear Authors, Congratulations on your work. It is an interesting manuscript that continues with your line of work and that contributes new data to a field that has more consideration. Regarding statistics, I would propose to calculate the size effect, and make correlations to determine the influence of each variable studied. There is a typo in table 1, "veterinary technician" 910 instead of 10. Best regards, Reviewer #2: The manuscript by Young et al uses a mixed methods cross sectional survey to explore the quality of life of animal research personnel. Of particular interest is the finding that compassion fatigue is impacted most by institutional culture. On this point, it could be valuable for the authors to divide the respondents by level of seniority of the employee on the institutional culture metric. As mentioned by the authors, this study cannot account for those who have left their role. However, the inclusion of such data (for example, the turnover rate) of specific job categories, could be insightful. Whether their current institution is their 1st or 5th, and the reason for their departure from previous roles could also provide good info. From my experience, there is often a very high rate of departure and hiring in animal care roles. Line 274 - Table 1 under veterinary technician typo? I believe the authors meant to put n of 10, not 910. Papers of potential interest to the authors for this study. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41684-021-00852-6 https://labanimres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42826-022-00129-0 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2020.573106/full https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.13020 Overall, a good study. ****** 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.0298744.r001
Revision 1
6 Dec 2023 Author Response November 15, 2023 Dear Dr. Rosemary Frey Thank you for inviting us to submit a revised version of our manuscript. We appreciate the detailed and helpful feedback that both reviewers provided. We believe their contributions have strengthened our manuscript. We have completed all revisions and address each comment individually below. The reviewer's comments are bolded and our responses are non-bolded. We would also like to add the following requested statement to the Competing Interests section of our manuscript: “This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” We have also added the following three references to our reference list, based on helpful suggestions from Reviewer #2: 32. Murray J, Bauer C, Vilminot N, Turner PV. Strengthening workplace well-being in research animal facilities. Frontiers in Veterinary Science. 2020;7. doi:10.3389/fvets.2020.573106 33. Tsang B, Gerlai R. Researchers, animal support and regulatory staff: symbiosis or antagonism? Laboratory Animal Research. 2022;38: 19. doi:10.1186/s42826-022-00129-0 34. Paull GC, Lee CJ, Tyler CR. Beyond compliance: harmonising research and husbandry practices to improve experimental reproducibility using fish models. Biological Reviews. 2023. doi: 10.1111/brv.13020 We look forward to receiving your response and decision. Thank you for inviting our revision. Sincerely, Megan LaFollette, MS, PhD and Co-Authors Journal requirements: 1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 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 We have revised the manuscript to ensure it meets all of PLOS ONE’s style requirements and have fixed all naming conventions. 2. Thank you for stating the following in the Competing Interests section: “All authors are employed by the institution noted in their affiliation except for Lauren Young who is a student. All authors are also members of the 3Rs Collaborative’s Compassion Fatigue Initiative. Elizabeth Nunamaker and Sally Thompson-Iritani also sat on the board of directors and leadership team of the 3Rs Collaborative during publication.” Please confirm that this does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests). If there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared. Please include your updated Competing Interests statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. We have added the requested line to our Competing Interests statement in the above cover letter. Thank you for updating this on our behalf. We have also added this to our manuscript file. 3. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. This is still correct. We will provide repository information for our data, and there are no changes to our Data Availability statement. 4. Please remove your figures from within your manuscript file, leaving only the individual TIFF/EPS image files, uploaded separately. These will be automatically included in the reviewers’ PDF. We have ensured the figures are removed from within the manuscript, leaving only the image files that were separately uploaded. 5. 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. We have added captions for the Supporting Information files to submit along with our manuscript. 6. 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. We have added three new references to our reference list based on suggestions from Reviewer #2. Reviewer #1: Dear Authors, Congratulations on your work. It is an interesting manuscript that continues with your line of work and that contributes new data to a field that has more consideration. Thank you to Reviewer 1 for these remarks. 1. Regarding statistics, I would propose to calculate the size effect, and make correlations to determine the influence of each variable studied. We have now calculated effect sizes and added these to the Results section of our manuscript at lines 320-325. We briefly mention this in the discussion as well. 2. There is a typo in table 1, "veterinary technician" 910 instead of 10. This is a great catch thank you. This correction to Table 1 has been made. Reviewer #2: 1. The manuscript by Young et al uses a mixed methods cross sectional survey to explore the quality of life of animal research personnel. Of particular interest is the finding that compassion fatigue is impacted most by institutional culture. On this point, it could be valuable for the authors to divide the respondents by level of seniority of the employee on the institutional culture metric. This is a great suggestion. Based on our sample size per role, we only believed it was appropriate to further investigate our themes in animal caretakers and researchers. We do not have large enough sample sizes for veterinarians (n=10), managers (n=18) and the ‘other’ category (n=15), to even make explorative conclusions. However, we did have a respectable sample size for animal caretakers and researchers. We divided them by the percentage of respondents in each role that mentioned each theme. We have added this to the Results at line 503-510 and have also added a new Figure 3 to display these findings. We have mentioned this in the discussion as well lines 608-612. 2. As mentioned by the authors, this study cannot account for those who have left their role. However, the inclusion of such data (for example, the turnover rate) of specific job categories, could be insightful. Whether their current institution is their 1st or 5th, and the reason for their departure from previous roles could also provide good info. From my experience, there is often a very high rate of departure and hiring in animal care roles. Thank you for this suggestion. We are currently in the midst of updating our survey for another year of data collection, and this is something we will consider adding to our updated survey, to gather data on turnover rates for our longitudinal study. 3. Line 274 - Table 1 under veterinary technician typo? I believe the authors meant to put n of 10, not 910. This is a great catch thank you. This correction to Table 1 has been made. 4. Papers of potential interest to the authors for this study. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41684-021-00852-6 https://labanimres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42826-022-00129-0 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2020.573106/full https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.13020 Thank you for these references. We have read these publications and have included reference to three of them in our Discussion (lines 561-563 and lines 585-586) to further put our results in the context of the broader literature on compassion fatigue and a Culture of Care. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298744.r002
26 Dec 2023 Decision Letter - Rosemary Frey, Editor PONE-D-23-17551R1Professional quality of life in animal research personnel is linked to retention & job satisfaction: A mixed-methods cross-sectional survey on compassion fatigue in the USAPLOS ONE Dear Dr. LaFollette, 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 Feb 09 2024 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, Rosemary Frey 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: Please include the two articles requested the reviewer. 1 [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 #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: 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 #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: Dear Authors, Thank you for indicating the size effects. During this time I have noticed that two articles have been published in Laboratory Animals that are not mentioned in the bibliography and should be included. The first is a systematic review "Psychological stress and strain in laboratory animal professionals - a systematic review" (10.1177/00236772221129111) and the second is an article also looking at professional quality of life and mental health "Perceived professional quality of life and mental well-being among animal facility personnel in Spain" (10.1177/00236772231187177). Best regards, Reviewer #2: Congratulations on the work. This area of study is often overlooked, and I am positive both scientists and animal welfare personnel will benefit from the results of this study to improve their current working policies. Looking forward to reading the follow up studies in the future. ****** 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 ******** [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.0298744.r003
Revision 2
17 Jan 2024 Author Response January 17, 2024 Dear Dr. Rosemary Frey Thank you again for inviting us to submit a revised version of our manuscript and allowing us to make these additional revisions. We appreciate the additional feedback that the reviewers have provided. We have completed all revisions and address each comment individually below. The reviewer's comments are bolded, and our responses are non-bolded. We have also added the following two references to our reference list, based on helpful suggestions from Reviewer #1: 1. Rumpel, S., Kempen, R., Merle, R., & Thoene-Reineke, C. (2023). Psychological stress and strain in laboratory animal professionals – a systematic review. Laboratory Animals, 57(4), 396–411. https://doi.org/10.1177/00236772221129111 2. Chang, F. T., & Hard, L. A. (2002). Human-Animal Bonds in the Laboratory: How Animal Behavior Affects the Perspective of Caregivers. ILAR Journal, 43(1), 10–18. https://doi.org/10.1093/ilar.43.1.10 3. Friese, C., & Latimer, J. (2019). Entanglements in Health and Well-being: Working with Model Organisms in Biomedicine and Bioscience. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 33(1), 120–137. https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12489 4. Engel, R. M., Silver, C. C., Veeder, C. L., & Banks, R. E. (2020). Cognitive Dissonance in Laboratory Animal Medicine and Implications for Animal Welfare. Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science: JAALAS, 59(2), 132–138. https://doi.org/10.30802/AALAS-JAALAS-19-000073 5. Goñi-Balentziaga, O., & Azkona, G. (2023). Perceived professional quality of life and mental well-being among animal facility personnel in Spain. Laboratory Animals, 00236772231187177. https://doi.org/10.1177/00236772231187177 We look forward to receiving your response and decision. Thank you for inviting our revision. Sincerely, Megan LaFollette, MS, PhD and Co-Authors 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. We have added two additional references per Reviewer #1’s request. We have noted the additional citations in the revised manuscript and in the cover letter above. Additional Editor Comments: Please include the two articles requested the reviewer. 1 We have added the two additional articles per Reviewer #1’s request. Reviewers' comments: Review Comments to the Author Reviewer #1: Dear Authors, Thank you for indicating the size effects. During this time I have noticed that two articles have been published in Laboratory Animals that are not mentioned in the bibliography and should be included. The first is a systematic review "Psychological stress and strain in laboratory animal professionals - a systematic review" (10.1177/00236772221129111) and the second is an article also looking at professional quality of life and mental health "Perceived professional quality of life and mental well-being among animal facility personnel in Spain" (10.1177/00236772231187177). Best regards, Thank you to Reviewer #1 for this suggestion to add these articles. These are very important findings to mention in comparison to our findings. We have integrated the first article into our Introduction at lines 77-90, as well as three articles that this systematic review references, and we have incorporated its findings into our Discussion at many different points throughout. We have also incorporated the second article into our Discussion at 579-580 and 606. These two articles have also been added to our Reference List, along with three additional articles that Rumpel et al. 2023 reference whose findings we found to be relevant. Reviewer #2: Congratulations on the work. This area of study is often overlooked, and I am positive both scientists and animal welfare personnel will benefit from the results of this study to improve their current working policies. Looking forward to reading the follow up studies in the future. Thank you to Reviewer #2 for the positive feedback on this work. We also look forward to continuing this work and conducting follow up surveys to build on our findings. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298744.r004
30 Jan 2024 Decision Letter - Rosemary Frey, Editor Professional quality of life in animal research personnel is linked to retention & job satisfaction: A mixed-methods cross-sectional survey on compassion fatigue in the USA PONE-D-23-17551R2 Dear Dr.,LaFollette, 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, Rosemary Frey 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: 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 #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: Dear Authors Thank you very much for updating the references. I have not found this one in the text: Goñi-Balentziaga, O., & Azkona, G. (2023). Perceived professional quality of life and mental well-being among animal facility staff in Spain. Animales de Laboratorio, 00236772231187177. https://doi.org/10.1177/00236772231187177 But otherwise, everything is fine. Best regards, Reviewer #2: The authors have addressed my previous comments. No further questions or revisions are requested from me. ****** 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.0298744.r005
Formally Accepted
2 Apr 2024 Acceptance Letter - Rosemary Frey, Editor PONE-D-23-17551R2 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. LaFollette, 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. Rosemary Frey Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298744.r006

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