Peer Review History

Original SubmissionNovember 15, 2023
Decision Letter - Gerrit J. Bouma, Editor

PONE-D-23-36310DNA and RNA alterations in ovarian adult granulosa cell tumours and potential actionable variations: a scoping review protocolPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Karstensen,

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.

In particular, please carefully address comments and concerns raised by reviewer 1 regarding the need for additional information on granulosa ovarian cancer and comments raised by reviewer 3.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 30 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,

Gerrit J. Bouma, Ph.D.

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. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: Yes

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2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: Partly

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3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Descriptions of methods and materials in the protocol should be reported in sufficient detail for another researcher to reproduce all experiments and analyses. The protocol should describe the appropriate controls, sample size calculations, and replication needed to ensure that the data are robust and reproducible.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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

Reviewer #3: No

**********

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

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This scoping review protocol aims to systematically map the current evidence and identify knowledge gaps regarding molecular alterations, actionable variations and prognostic biomarkers in aGCT. This scoping review protocol is not an article paper, nor does it include specific experimental methods. In addition, there is a need to increase the accumulation of references in the introduction and discussion.The paper is inadequate and incomplete in its discussion of granulosa ovarian cancer.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript presents a scoping review for a planned summary of previously published molecular sequencing data in ovarian granulosa cell tumors. Although this document is a detailed summary of a planned research methodology, there is no original research presented here.

Reviewer #3: It is a very important area of study that the authors are conducting/reviewing, but I have some minor comments, which are described below.

1. Kindly state which reference manager you are using before importing eligible studies to Covidence for screening. you should also state the plan that you are using to remove duplicates.

2. Better the charting form include limitations of the included studies.

3. Stating "Animal studies " as an exclusion criterion is not necessary since the title of the objective is explaining that the review will be limited to human research specifically "women. "

4. Better to include "opinion papers and conferences" using "grey literature" as an umbrella since your review considers only published primary studies.

**********

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

Reviewer #3: 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 1

To the reviewers

Thank you for your reply and the constructive comments.

Reviewer #1: This scoping review protocol aims to systematically map the current evidence and identify knowledge gaps regarding molecular alterations, actionable variations and prognostic biomarkers in aGCT. This scoping review protocol is not an article paper, nor does it include specific experimental methods. In addition, there is a need to increase the accumulation of references in the introduction and discussion. The paper is inadequate and incomplete in its discussion of granulosa ovarian cancer.

Answer: Thank you for reviewing our protocol manuscript. We agree that information about granulosa cell tumor was missing in the introduction. We have elaborated on the current information and the need for a scoping review. We did not aim at performing any experimental method. We aimed to define our scoping review method and publish our intended workflow to strengthen the validity of our results.

For the discussion section we have elaborated on the strength and limitations of a scoping review and to what a scoping review will add to the knowledge of DNA variations in granulosa cell tumors. We are not able to discuss specific results on DNA variants in granulosa cell tumors until we have finished the review.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript presents a scoping review for a planned summary of previously published molecular sequencing data in ovarian granulosa cell tumors. Although this document is a detailed summary of a planned research methodology, there is no original research presented here.

Answer: Thank you for reviewing our protocol manuscript. To our knowledge, there are no published papers on scoping review protocol regarding the molecular landscape of adult granulosa cell tumors. The existing reviews on aGCT are very informative. However, there is a lack of transparency in the methodology with missing descriptions on how the publications were gathered for the review. We expect a risk of missing relevant publications. We wish to provide transparency and reproducibility by publishing our review protocol.

Reviewer #3: It is a very important area of study that the authors are conducting/reviewing, but I have some minor comments, which are described below.

1. Kindly state which reference manager you are using before importing eligible studies to Covidence for screening. you should also state the plan that you are using to remove duplicates.

2. Better the charting form include limitations of the included studies.

3. Stating "Animal studies " as an exclusion criterion is not necessary since the title of the objective is explaining that the review will be limited to human research specifically "women. "

4. Better to include "opinion papers and conferences" using "grey literature" as an umbrella since your review considers only published primary studies.

Answer: Thank you for reviewing our manuscript. We have amended accordingly:

1: We have used EndNote as a reference manager. However, in the review process we have only used Covidence and Covidence has removed duplicates. This information is added.

2: In Table 1 we have added a column describing the strengths and limitation of the included studies.

3: Thank you for pointing out this fallacy. We have deleted this.

4: We agree and have changed this accordingly.

Best regards

Sven Karstensen

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Gerrit J. Bouma, Editor

PONE-D-23-36310R1DNA alterations in ovarian adult granulosa cell tumours and potential actionable variations: a scoping review protocolPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Karstensen,

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 address the remaining minor comment from the reviewer.

Please submit your revised manuscript by May 24 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,

Gerrit J. Bouma, Ph.D.

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 address the remaining minor comments of the reviewer.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Descriptions of methods and materials in the protocol should be reported in sufficient detail for another researcher to reproduce all experiments and analyses. The protocol should describe the appropriate controls, sample size calculations, and replication needed to ensure that the data are robust and reproducible.

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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 #3: 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 #3: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #3: 1. The previous comments have been addressed but needs a few editorial and grammatical improvements like in Background "approx.": write it in full length" "Grey Litterature" in Box2. Avoid the second "t". Kindly check/correct throughout the document.

**********

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 #3: 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

Reviewer #3: 1. The previous comments have been addressed but needs a few editorial and grammatical improvements like in Background "approx.": write it in full length" "Grey Litterature" in Box2. Avoid the second "t". Kindly check/correct throughout the document.

Answer: Thank you for reviewing our protocol. We have revised the document carefully to correct language and grammatical errors.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to reviewers2.docx
Decision Letter - Gerrit J. Bouma, Editor

DNA alterations in ovarian adult granulosa cell tumours: a scoping review protocol

PONE-D-23-36310R2

Dear Dr. Karstensen,

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,

Gerrit J. Bouma, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

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