Perceptions of 3R implementation in European animal research: A systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-synthesis of barriers and facilitators

Edwin Louis-Maerten; Aoife Milford; David M. Shaw; Lester D. Geneviève; Bernice S. Elger

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0300031

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 15, 2023
7 Feb 2024 Decision Letter - Wesley Lyeverton Correia Ribeiro, Editor Transfer Alert This paper was transferred from another journal. As a result, its full editorial history (including decision letters, peer reviews and author responses) may not be present. PONE-D-23-42288Perceptions of 3R implementation in European animal research: A systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-synthesis of barriers and facilitatorsPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Louis-Maerten, 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. ============================== The manuscript is very well designed so that it can be considered for publication in PloS One. Please consider the reviewer's comment. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 23 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. 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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Wesley Lyeverton Correia Ribeiro, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal 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 financial disclosure: "The authors acknowledge the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF National Research Program (NRP) - 79 Advancing 3R – Animals, Research and Society, grant number 206432) in funding the APC." Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 3. We note that this manuscript is a systematic review or meta-analysis; our author guidelines therefore require that you use PRISMA guidance to help improve reporting quality of this type of study. Please upload copies of the completed PRISMA checklist as Supporting Information with a file name “PRISMA checklist”. 4. 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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: 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 ****** 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 ****** 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. I think it is very well designed, analysed and written. However, being a work oriented to the European Union, I am missing the work of a Spanish research group that has been working in this field in the last few years and that could be mentioned, since American groups are mentioned, it would not be superfluous to mention European groups. The works would be: - PMID: 34315536 PMCID: PMC8314439 DOI: 10.1186/s42826-021-00098-w - PMID: 34573605 PMCID: PMC8465412 DOI: 10.3390/ani11092639 - PMID: 35655241 PMCID: PMC9161537 DOI: 10.1186/s42826-022-00124-5 - PMID: 36496784 PMCID: PMC9735736 DOI: 10.3390/ani12233263 - PMID: 37684027 DOI: 10.1177/00236772231187177 This is just a recommendation, which I think would be interesting to be discussed in the discussion. Best regards, ****** 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 ******** [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.0300031.r001
Revision 1
14 Feb 2024 Author Response Dear Dr. Ribeiro, We are grateful for your comments and the comments of the reviewer, which helped to improve the manuscript. Below we describe in detail how we responded to each comment. Academic editor: 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf RESPONSE: The manuscript has been edited to meet the formatting requirements of the templates. 2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: "The authors acknowledge the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF National Research Program (NRP) - 79 Advancing 3R – Animals, Research and Society, grant number 206432) in funding the APC." Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. RESONSE: The financial disclosure statement has been amended accordingly in the manuscript. This statement has been added to the cover letter as well. 3. We note that this manuscript is a systematic review or meta-analysis; our author guidelines therefore require that you use PRISMA guidance to help improve reporting quality of this type of study. Please upload copies of the completed PRISMA checklist as Supporting Information with a file name “PRISMA checklist”. RESPONSE: The PRISMA checklist is reported in the Supporting Information section as “S1 Appendix”. The filename has been amended. 4. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. RESPONSE: These references have been added to the reference list following Reviewer #1 suggestion: Díez-Solinska A, Vegas O, Azkona G. Refinement in the European Union: A Systematic Review. Animals. 2022;12: 3263. doi:10.3390/ani12233263 Goñi-Balentziaga O, Vila S, Ortega-Saez I, Vegas O, Azkona G. Professional Quality of Life in Research Involving Laboratory Animals. Animals. 2021;11: 2639. doi: 10.3390/ani11092639 Goñi-Balentziaga O, Ortega-Saez I, Vila S, Azkona G. Working with laboratory rodents in Spain: a survey on welfare and wellbeing. Lab Anim Res. 2021;37. doi: 10.1186/s42826-021-00098-w Goñi-Balentziaga O, Azkona G. Perceived professional quality of life and mental well-being among animal facility personnel in Spain. Laboratory Animals. 2023;0. doi:10.1177/00236772231187177 Reviewer #1: Dear Authors, Congratulations on your work. I think it is very well designed, analysed and written. RESPONSE: Thank you very much for this positive feedback. However, being a work oriented to the European Union, I am missing the work of a Spanish research group that has been working in this field in the last few years and that could be mentioned, since American groups are mentioned, it would not be superfluous to mention European groups. The works would be: - PMID: 34315536 PMCID: PMC8314439 DOI: 10.1186/s42826-021-00098-w - PMID: 34573605 PMCID: PMC8465412 DOI: 10.3390/ani11092639 - PMID: 35655241 PMCID: PMC9161537 DOI: 10.1186/s42826-022-00124-5 - PMID: 36496784 PMCID: PMC9735736 DOI: 10.3390/ani12233263 - PMID: 37684027 DOI: 10.1177/00236772231187177 This is just a recommendation, which I think would be interesting to be discussed in the discussion. RESPONSE: Thank you for these suggestions. One of these references appeared in our systematic search, but could not be included in our analysis as it was not meeting all inclusion criteria. As the conclusions of some of these references relate to some aspects of our discussion, we included them where appropriate. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0300031.r002
21 Feb 2024 Decision Letter - Wesley Lyeverton Correia Ribeiro, Editor Perceptions of 3R implementation in European animal research: A systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-synthesis of barriers and facilitators PONE-D-23-42288R1 Dear Dr. Louis-Maerten, 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, Wesley Lyeverton Correia Ribeiro, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0300031.r003
Formally Accepted
19 Mar 2024 Acceptance Letter - Wesley Lyeverton Correia Ribeiro, Editor PONE-D-23-42288R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Louis-Maerten, 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. Wesley Lyeverton Correia Ribeiro Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0300031.r004

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