Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 15, 2024
Decision Letter - Noorsuzana Mohd Shariff, Editor

PONE-D-24-10340Health-related quality of life and associated factors among family caregivers of patients with cancer in oncologic centers of Northwest Ethiopia, a Multicenter cross-sectional study, 2023PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Tamene,

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,

Noorsuzana Mohd Shariff

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

- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281742

- doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2023-074112

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.

3. Please provide a complete Data Availability Statement in the submission form, ensuring you include all necessary access information or a reason for why you are unable to make your data freely accessible. If your research concerns only data provided within your submission, please write "All data are in the manuscript and/or supporting information files" as your Data Availability Statement.

4. 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. 

5. 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:

Dear author,

Thank you for considering PLOS One as the journal to publish your valuable scientific work. Your article has passed through the peer review process and both reviewers had agreed that the article has an important merit for publication and contribution to the field. However, minor revision is required. Please address all the comments and resubmit your revision.

Thank you.

[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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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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: Yes

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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: Yes

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: Dear Authors,

Generally, the study was very good. The writing is detailed except for minor issues as following:

1) Title: please remove "2023"

2) Results: For Table 1 and 6, please put currency reference (e.g I ET birr= x USD)

Table 2: please correct the spelling for Hodgkin's lymphoma,

Table 2: please do not use * for indicating the mean, please write Mean (SD)= the actual value

Under the following sub topic (Factors associated with health related quality of life among family

caregivers of cancer patients), please rephrase the first sentence "After adjusting for multiple linear regression analysis" to After adjusting for confounders by applying multiple linear regression analysis, .....

3) Conclusion and recommendation: Please summarise your major findings first: the level of HRQoL, folowed with the associated factors before suggesting with screening etc.

Reviewer #2: Please correct some typing errors. Please see my comment in the manuscript. You have written a clear and concise manuscript. If possible, please add some more discussion on the general characteristics of cancer patients.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: ROHAYU HAMI

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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.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: PONE-D-24-10340_reviewer.pdf
Revision 1

Responses to the review’s comments

Dear PLOS ONE editorial team,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of the manuscript, and we would also like to thank you for your crucial comments on our paper (Manuscript ID: PONE-D-24-10340). We are very concerned and have combined all the suggested comments provided, which we believe strengthen our paper, and we hope this will render our paper eligible for consideration for publication in your reputed journal. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers dedicated to providing feedback on our manuscript and are grateful for the insightful comments and valuable improvements to our paper.

The authors would like to inform you that we have addressed the comments and recommendations made by both reviewers and the editor, point by point. In addition, throughout our revision, we made our best corrections too. All changes in the revised manuscript are highlighted using tracking changes within the manuscript. Please see below, in blue, for a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns. All page numbers refer to the revised manuscript file with tracked changes.

Comments from the editor:

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.

Author response: Thank you for your recommendationstoadhere PLOS ONE’s style of requirements. We have ensured that the manuscript, its name, figures, and tables are per the journal requirements.

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

- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281742

- doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2023-074112

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.

Author response:

#3…... Please provide a complete Data Availability Statement in the submission form, ensuring you include all necessary access information or a reason for why you are unable to make your data freely accessible. If your research concerns only data provided within your submission, please write "All data are in the manuscript and/or supporting information files" as your Data Availability Statement.

Author response: Thank you very much for your request to revise the data availability statement. Based on your recommendation, we have revised it and stated in the main document as well as in the cover letter as “All necessary files are available in the manuscript including the datasets as supporting files (S1 File. Dataset and S2 File. Dataset)”.

#4…..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.

Author response: Thank you very much for the comment and we have added the caption for all supporting information.

#5……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.

Author response: Thank you very much for your suggestion and we would like to assure you that retracted reference was not used in the manuscript.

Response to Reviewers’ comments

Reviewer 1

#1…...Title: please remove "2023"

Author response: Thank you for your comment and we have taken it.

#2…... Results: For Table 1 and 6, please put currency reference (e.g I ET birr= x USD)

Author response: Thank you very much for your recommendation and we have included the equivalent currency in USD.

#3…..Table 2: please correct the spelling for Hodgkin's lymphoma

Author response: Thank you very much for identifying the typing error and it is corrected.

#4…...Table 2: please do not use * for indicating the mean, please write Mean (SD) = the actual value

Author response Thank you very much for your suggestion and correction was made.

#5…...Under the following sub topic (Factors associated with health related quality of life among family caregivers of cancer patients), please rephrase the first sentence "After adjusting for multiple linear regression analysis" to After adjusting for confounders by applying multiple linear regression analysis,

Author response: Thank you very much for recommending the way of writing and amendment was made.

#6…...Conclusion and recommendation: Please summarise your major findings first: the level of HRQoL, folowed with the associated factors before suggesting with screening etc.

Author response Thank you very much for your insight and we have revised the conclusion and recommendation section to make it clear.

Reviewer 2:

#1…... Comma here

Author response: Thank you very much for your comment and we have added the comma.

#2…... What is this number for?

Author response: Thank you very much for identifying the error made and it is corrected.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Noorsuzana Mohd Shariff, Editor

Health-related quality of life and associated factors among family caregivers of patients with cancer in oncologic centers of Northwest Ethiopia

PONE-D-24-10340R1

Dear Dr. Tamene,

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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Kind regards,

Noorsuzana Mohd Shariff

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Noorsuzana Mohd Shariff, Editor

PONE-D-24-10340R1

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Tamene,

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

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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.

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Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Noorsuzana Mohd Shariff

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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