PONE-D-24-19965Wearable neurofeedback acceptance model for students' stress and anxiety management in academic settingsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Dias,

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.

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Manob Jyoti Saikia, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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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

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

Reviewer #1: 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: 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: 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: Manuscript is well written. However some informations are found to be missing. The work incorporates EEG & other biosignals to develop the neuro feedback system. The sampling rate of acquired signals, location of placing electrodes, frequency band of EEG used for the neuro feedback system are unknown. Preprocessing of biosignals is not given much importance in the manuscript. Temperature is also considered for the feedback system. But there is no information how body temperature relates stress or anxiety. Secondly, the work uses people from different age groups. Number of participant per group is not available. But output responses are average out. Age might be an important factor when stress/anxiety is quantised. Thirdly, how the level of stress correlates with the TEM model?

Overall representation is found to be good.

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Reviewer #1: No

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PONE-D-24-19965R1Wearable neurofeedback acceptance model for students' stress and anxiety management in academic settingsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr.  Dias,

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. One of our reviewers found a few more issues with the manuscript. Please address these issues and submit the revised version. 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 18 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,

Manob Saikia, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: (No Response)

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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: No

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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

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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: Review comments are well addressed. The manuscript covers all the details of the experiment and the results are well explained.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript investigates the acceptance of a conceptual multimodal wearable sensing framework, mSense, which aims to give real-time neurofeedback for stress and anxiety management in students. As such, they distributed an online survey to individuals above 18 years of age to assess the perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEoU), usage attitude (UA), and intention to use (IU) on this conceptual technology. While most of the manuscript is well written, I feel there is a major problem with the Study Design section. There is very little information about the participants, their background in multimodal biosensor or wearable tech, and how much - if any - briefing they received about the proposed conceptual technology prior to completing the survey. Highlighted below are the major and minor points I would like to see addressed:

1. P 5, L127: Please provide a citation for mTAM.

2. P6: I understand that this is a conceptual framework, but as a researcher who does multimodal biosensor work, I wonder how feasible it is to set up, connect, and synchronize all of these biosensors without professional help. This hugely affects usability and PEoU and potentially IU. Please include technical feasibility of the application/use of this device by novice users. Please also indicate whether the participants were briefed on the setup of the device as it is crucial in understanding whether they were able to effectively evaluate PEoU, UA, and IU.

3. P 6, L163: clip in the ear should be clip on the ear, I presume?

4. Given that their analysis is based on participants evaluating a conceptual framework, I would have liked more details about the types of feedback given to the individuals, how it is delivered, when is it delivered (do they only receive feedback when they feel stress/anxiety?), if there are any delays (as there usually are in most types of real-time neurofeedback). Did the participants receive any details about the feedback given? (I did not see any information on the survey).

5. Page 11, L 280: They state that they invited 300 mental health experts, doctors/health professionals, researchers, biomedical students, and designers/developers to participate in the survey research. Were all participants familiar with all of the biosensors? I looked at the survey and there is no description of any of the biosensors used. How do we know that they understand what these biosensors do and how to set them up successfully and use them? If they do not know how to use these biosensors, how could they rate their PEoU, UA, or IU?

6. Page 12: Please provide upper range of participants’ age.

7. Page 19~: It would be helpful if the authors broke down which of these qualitative responses were in response to which of the four open ended questions. For example, which ones were in response to the first open ended question: Please specify why would you not use the mSense system to monitor and manage your stress/anxiety levels.

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

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[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.

Wearable neurofeedback acceptance model for students' stress and anxiety management in academic settings

PONE-D-24-19965R2

Dear Dr. Dias,

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.

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Kind regards,

Manob Saikia, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE