Peer Review History
Original SubmissionJuly 13, 2023 |
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PONE-D-23-21849The reporting quality and spin of randomized controlled trials of endometriosis pain: Methodological study based on CONSORT extension on abstractsPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Mirabi, 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:
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, Ahmed Mohamed Maged, MD 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 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. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well. 4. We note that your Data Availability Statement is currently as follows: [All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files] Please confirm at this time whether or not your submission contains all raw data required to replicate the results of your study. Authors must share the “minimal data set” for their submission. PLOS defines the minimal data set to consist of the data required to replicate all study findings reported in the article, as well as related metadata and methods (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-minimal-data-set-definition). For example, authors should submit the following data: - The values behind the means, standard deviations and other measures reported; - The values used to build graphs; - The points extracted from images for analysis. Authors do not need to submit their entire data set if only a portion of the data was used in the reported study. If your submission does not contain these data, please either upload them as Supporting Information files or deposit them to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of recommended repositories, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories. If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. If data are owned by a third party, please indicate how others may request data access. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Partly Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: 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 Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: 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: No Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: 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 I read the presented manuscript with great interest. Our team of researchers work on improving the methodological aspects of improving the reporting standards of RCTs and your manuscript adds value to the existing literature. I suggest you the following changes to strengthen the quality of the study presented 1. It is better to include all the RCTs into spin evaluation to analyse the impact of significance of the results on the incidence of spin used by the authors 2. I suggest the authors to use the validated ORG-LOC tool which is developed to evaluate the level of confidence of the RCTs based on the spin present in their abstracts to better report the spin noted in the included studies https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36310551/ 3. Discussion has many paragraphs in single lines and i suggest reordering them based on content and clustering them together for ease of reading 4. I suggest you compare the CONSORT adherence and the LOC grade of the RCTs to obtaining some meaningful results to be conveyed to the readers Reviewer #2: The authors analyzed the adherence to CONSORT for abstracts in 35 abstracts on RCT publications about endometriosis pelvic pain published between 2010 and 2021. They found that a mean of 8.54 from the 16 CONSORT-A was reported showing that there was poor overall adherence to CONSORT-A in these abstracts. In addition to that, they analyzed if studies with a non-significant primary endpoint misinterpreted this or if they reported secondary endpoints that were significant instead. They found that about 67% of these 18 abstracts had such a bias in the interpretation of results. Even though the topic is important and the manuscript has some strengths, some points have been noticed while reading that should definitely be revised and adapted. Flowchart: The Flowchart that is shown in figure 1 should be improved. In the first 3 steps the reasons for exclusion of RCT-abstracts are not reported. This is necessary for the reader to understand the process of data collection and should be added. In addition to that the final number of abstracts for analysis is 35. This is correct for the analysis of adherence to CONSORT-A but as the authors write in their methods section they only included abstracts with non-significant primary endpoints (n = 18?). This should be added to the Flowchart to avoid confusion. Abstract: In the abstract and title the word spin is used for the sort of interpretation bias analyzed in the paper. This should be defined in the abstract as the meaning of spin might not be clear for every reader. It is said that 35 abstracts are included but this wrong for the analysis of spin. Additionally the number of abstracts initially found should be added. It should be defined if only the reporting of the CONSORT-A items is checked or if the quality/ completeness is also checked. If yes: How? Introduction It should be added that abstracts are not only the source of knowledge in countries with low income but also the decision maker if a fulltext publication is worth buying. Methods Please explain why you need information from fulltext articles if abstracts are of interest Why do you chose a time of 2 years after publication of CONSORT-A? Why would 1 year not have been enough time? Why are significant primary endpoints excluded from spin analysis? Is spin really absolutely impossible there? open access yes/ no should be included as a characteristic and open access and non open access abstracts should be compared Please define when a CONSORT-A item was reported adequately Is the overall reporting score the sum of items? Please define it as it is the primary endpoint of the study. This should be changed in the section about the primary endpoint as this is used to identify the quality To the 3 point in spins in the results section: how can this be checked when abstracts with multiple primary endpoints are excluded? The last sentence in the “Spins in conclusions sections” should be part of the exclusion criteria are all points according to spin of the same importance or is there a weighting possible/ necessary? Statistical analysis: Only the primary endpoint/comparison should have a hypothesis testing? → why are there so many tests planned? In order to find associations and influencing factors on reporting quality a regression model (for example poisson regression) should be performed instead of the testing that is used. The authors should fit to regression models (one for CONSORT-A items and one for spin) so that a better (and adjusted) interpretation of the factors is possible. I ask the authors to add to these regression analyses. Results The adherence to CONSORT-A should be described in more detail as it is the primary endpoint of the study. Please delete testing and add the results of regression modeling Discussion When you analyze factors that affect the quality then this should be done with regression models General question: Did you check if the item was reported or was the quality and completeness of the reporting checked as well? “none of the abstracts presented precise data as required” what do you mean with this statement? “most items identified that were suboptimal” it was not reported at all or insufficiently why are allocation concealment and blinding the most important points? Please add the information on the medical field that was investigated in reference 17 and 18 Why was information on endpoints extracted from the full texts when abstracts were reviewed? I could not find the results on IF that are mentioned in the discussion The study registration is mentioned as a method to improve quality. But how is ensured that these are complete and correct? Conclusion: The study only shows the need for improvement of RCT abstracts but not of RCT reports. Please change the conclusion accordingly. The own results and the interpretation should be discussed in more detail The authors should revise the language to improve readability in some parts of the manuscript. Reviewer #3: Dear Editor in chief Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. There are some specific comments: Method: - Please update the search. The search is for 2 years ago. Discussion: - Page 19: "Only one abstract explained the details of randomization, and although 20 (57.1%) studies mentioned randomized assignment, they did not provide adequate information about sequence generation" Many journals have word limits and it is not possible to write details of randomization. Reviewer #4: The study addresses one of the important areas of reporting of abstracts of clinical trials in endometriosis. The study is merthodologically sound and well presented, however, I have one major concern which is the period of study for article selection. The authors indicate that the articles published until Sept 2021 has been included. It is possible that the authors might have missed some crucial data on the trials published in the past 2 years. Hence I suggest the authors to update the search by including articles published until September 2023 and present the updated results. ********** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes: Dr Sathish Muthu Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: Yes: Shabnam ShahAli Reviewer #4: 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.
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Revision 1 |
PONE-D-23-21849R1The reporting quality and spin of randomized controlled trials of endometriosis pain: Methodological study based on CONSORT extension on abstractsPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Mirabi, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: Please reply to all reviewers comments ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 11 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:
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, Ahmed Mohamed Maged, MD Academic Editor PLOS ONE [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 #2: (No Response) Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #4: 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 #2: Partly Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: 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 #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: 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 #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: 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 #2: Introduction: Aim (ii) should be answered using a regression model. Assessment of reporting quality: Examples in a supplementary file that show examples for adequately AND insufficient reporting. This would help the reader to understand data collection Main outcome measure is not adequately defined: It is called quality. Please define it more (as a score with the range of possible values). Statistical Analysis: The Analysis should be performed in a correct and adequate way. Currently testing is performed without taking into account the problem of multiple testing. (The level of significance and if it was corrected due to multiple testing must be explained) Please do not use the word “incidence” when describing figure 3 An insufficient linear regression is performed. Regression analysis should be the main method to answer the question of factors associated with quality of abstract-reporting. 1) More factors should be included in the analysis (all that are interesting and currently used in hypothesis testing) � Word count, FWCI, year, gynecological journal (yes/ no), open access (yes/no), word count, impact factor, cite score � Please perform regression without variable selection and choose all the variables that are currently analysed with tests � If linear regression is inaapropriate please use logistic regression (with a dichotomous quality endpoint using a cutpoint) or poisson regression (see: DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2018-021912 as an example) � If this is not available in SPSS use R instead. 2) Analysis of spin (yes/ no) must be conducted with logistic regression and not with the currently performed testing Reviewer #3: Dear editor Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. All feedback and suggestions have been duly noted by the authors with modifications evident in the latest submission. This reviewer has no additional recommendations of note at this juncture. Reviewer #4: The authors have satisfactorily addressed comments raised in the previous review by updating the search strategy. The article is methodologically sound and I do not have further comments. ********** 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 #2: No Reviewer #3: Yes: Shabnam ShahAli Reviewer #4: 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. |
Revision 2 |
PONE-D-23-21849R2The reporting quality and spin of randomized controlled trials of endometriosis pain: Methodological study based on CONSORT extension on abstractsPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Mirabi, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: Please respond to all reviewers comments ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 25 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:
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, Ahmed Mohamed Maged, MD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 #2: (No Response) ********** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #2: Partly ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: N/A ********** 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 #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 #2: No ********** 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 #2: Incomplete sentence“…Also, the decision maker if a full-text publication is worth buying These factors indicate …” Logistic Regresion is mentioned in the abstract and the results section. It should also be part of the methods. Change “Furthermore, we found that most articles were single center (n=30, 63.8%)” to „Furthermore, we found that most articles described single center (n=30, 63.8%) studies” Page 19 in the results section words like “interesting” should be avoided Table 3: please explain in methods what Standardized coeffcients means Please explain how the Bias-corrected and accelerated (Bca) 95% confidence interval was computed. This is unclear as the explanation is missing ********** 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 #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. |
Revision 3 |
The reporting quality and spin of randomized controlled trials of endometriosis pain: Methodological study based on CONSORT extension on abstracts PONE-D-23-21849R3 Dear Dr. Mirabi, 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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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, Ahmed Mohamed Maged, MD 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 #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 #2: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? 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 #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 #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 #2: (No Response) ********** 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 #2: No ********** |
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