Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 5, 2024
Decision Letter - Yuan-Pang Wang, Editor

PONE-D-23-44176Global Burden of Fall Among Individual with Low Vision: A Systematic-Review and Meta-AnalysisPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ekemiri,

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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Yuan-Pang Wang, M.D., Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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2. We noticed you have some minor occurrence of overlapping text with the following previous publication(s), which needs to be addressed:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJPCC-09-2015-0033/full/html

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24314403/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311932.2019.1642981

https://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/ijcd/2021/6708865.pdf

In your revision ensure you cite all your sources (including your own works), and quote or rephrase any duplicated text outside the methods section. Further consideration is dependent on these concerns being addressed.

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Additional Editor Comments:

Both reviewers have provided comments and suggested corrections to this manuscript. Please point to point to address their concerns.

[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

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: I have already commented it to rewrite it in standard English. I hope the authors will act accordingly. the manuscript technically sounded, the statistical analysis performed appropriately and rigorously.

Reviewer #2: it is an important work but needs revision

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Mistire Teshome Guta

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: comments to low vision.docx
Attachment
Submitted filename: PLOS ONE.docx
Revision 1

Dear Editor,

A rebuttal letter was sent and attached as "Response to Reviewers."

A marked-up copy was sent and labelled as Revised Manuscript with Track Changes

An unmarked version of revised paper was sent and labelled as "Manuscript"

The overlap was revised especially the introduction and Method

Response for reviewer 1

Dear reviewer thank you for your constructive comments and suggestion, we tried to incorporate all issues raised by you.

Manuscript PONE-D-23-44176 Global Burden of Fall Among Individual with Low Vision: A Systematic-Review and Meta-Analysis

Comments

The tittle “Global Burden of Fall among Individual with Low Vision: A Systematic-Review and Meta-Analysis” is important because, the Vision loss and fall are interrelated, vision loss is high among those who fall, and vision loss may be a contributing factor to falls. Falling results poor health and well-being, decreased activity of daily living and social participation, lower life satisfaction, as well as it affects the quality of life of the individuals.

I like to give minor comments and questions for this review.

1. I need to see the searching terms that you use for each data bases with their results? How do you get an access for each data bases other than PubMed?

Response- as we mentioned in method part we used those search terms for all databases after we extracted MeSH for our study based on POCC.

• We got all most all studies from PubMed, from other sites we only get 2 studies ( 1 Scopus indexed, so we accessed through institutional login.) the other from Google scholar.

Regarding the access issue most of the health journals are indexed in PubMed in addition to that other sites, so we haven’t faced any challenges. But what we have done for those not indexed on those sited is we did manual searches.

2. The whole article has language and grammar problems.

Response- modified

3. In line 129 it says “the keywords used were, Low vision OR visual impairment OR…..” are this key words or search terms?

Response—corrected based on your suggestion

4. Check for the right citation: for example for citation 35………

Response—corrected

5. Make the PRISMA diagram aesthetic.

Response---corrected

6. Since you are using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA)….. use its correct format. Like 1. Introduction, 2. Material and methods, 2.1. Study design and search strategy, 2.2. Study selection and eligibility criteria, 2.3. Study selection and quality appraisa, 2.4. Data extraction, 2.5. Measure, 2 .6. Statistical analysis, 2. 7. Publication bias, 3. Results………….. 4. Discussion, 4.1. Implications, 5. Conclusions, Financial disclosures, Declaration of Competing Interest, Acknowledgements, Appendix A. Supplementary data, References.

Response- we followed PRISMA 2020, so corrected based on your recommendation

7. In line 235 make it 88.4%, it says 884%.

Response – corrected

8. If the Egger’s test is found to be significant, it indicates the presence of publication bias in the meta-analysis. To correct the final pooled prevalence, one can use the trim-and-fill method1. This method involves trimming the studies that are causing funnel plot asymmetry and then filling the funnel plot with hypothetical studies to make it symmetrical. The final pooled prevalence is then calculated using the filled funnel plot.

Response – mentioned on line 183 and 184

Response for reviewer 2

Dear reviewer thank you for your comments, we response for all comments raised by you.

Global Burden of fall and Associated factors among Individual with Low 2 Vision: A Systematic-Review and Meta-Analysis; It is an important piece of work but needs minor revision

Comments to author

� The title on the system and word document is different , should be similar Global Burden of Fall Among Individual with Low Vision: A Systematic-Review and Meta-Analysis and Global Burden of Fall and associated factors Among Individual with Low Vision: A Systematic-Review and Meta-Analysis

Response – corrected

� On page 1 line number 5 , Kingsley Ekemiri 1* 3 ,Chioma Ekemiri², Ngozika

Ezinne¹,Victor Virginia³,Osaze 4 Okoendo⁴ , Robin Seemongal-Dass⁵ , Diane Van

Staden⁶ , Carl Halladay Abraham⁷ , Low Vision Study Group¹

“ Low Vision Study Group” should be removed because it not the name of author

Response – removed

� The Corresponding Author is already showed by astrix and the affiliation so don’t need to be restated in title page

Dr Kingsley Ekemiri(OD,MPH)

Department of Optometry, Faculty of Medical Sciences, The University of West indies, St Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago

Response – removed

� Under inclusion criteria- why authors only included reported fall injury within past two years?

Response – the author included studies which reported within two years is in order to minimize recall bias.

� All included studies are published studies, why author dealt with unpublished study?

Response – corrected and we removed the word unpublished from main document, we don’t have unpublished studies

� Under conclusion- author recommended …to give attention, do you think there is no attention for those groups?

Response – the current facts says fall is not given attention for those with low vision rather most literature suggests attention for older age groups

� The contents of declaration letter is not correct, it is cover letter , please amend it

See plos one submission guideline at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines

Response – corrected and removed from the manuscript

� All supporting information is not available

Response – we will make available/ attach as supporting information

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: response to reviewers (1).docx
Decision Letter - Yuan-Pang Wang, Editor

Global Burden of Fall Among Individual with Low Vision: A Systematic-Review and Meta-Analysis

PONE-D-23-44176R1

Dear Dr. Ekemiri,

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.

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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,

Yuan-Pang Wang, M.D., Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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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: The manuscript technically sound, statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously and written in standard English. The authors well addressed the comments I send to them. So, I have no more comments.

Reviewer #2: the authors corrected all my comments and worthy if it is published by journal. I don't have additional comments

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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: Yes: Mistire Teshome Guta

Reviewer #2: No

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Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Yuan-Pang Wang, Editor

PONE-D-23-44176R1

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ekemiri,

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.

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Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Yuan-Pang Wang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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