Barriers to healthcare access among reproductive age women in extremely high and very high maternal mortality countries: Multilevel mixed effect analysis

Wubshet Debebe Negash; Adina Yeshambel Belay; Lakew Asmare; Demiss Mulatu Geberu; Asebe Hagos; Melak Jejaw; Kaleb Assegid Demissie; Misganaw Guadie Tiruneh; Kaleab Mesfin Abera; Yawkal Tsega; Abel Endawkie; Nigusu Worku; Amare Mesfin Workie; Lamrot Yohannes; Mihret Getnet

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0304975

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 17, 2024
1 May 2024 Decision Letter - Gilbert Abotisem Abiiro, Editor PONE-D-24-02171More than six in ten mothers had barriers in healthcare access in extremely high and very high maternal mortality countries: Multilevel mixed effect analysisPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Wubshet Debebe Negash, 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 Jun 15 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. 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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/10.1186/s12889-023-15952-w 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. In the online submission form, you indicated that [The data used for this study will be available with a reasonable request from the corresponding author.]. All PLOS journals now require all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript to be freely available to other researchers, either 1. In a public repository, 2. 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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. 6. 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: The reviewer has raised a very important concern about the title of the manuscript. Could you please address the reviewer's concern? [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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: The study is interesting and reveals the barriers to healthcare access among reproductive age women. It is not entirely clear to me why the author decided to use the title More than six in ten mothers had barriers in healthcare access in extremely high andvery high maternal mortality countries and not what was mentined in the abstract as the aim of the study (assess barriers to healthcare access among reproductive age women in extremely high and very high maternal mortality countries) please clarify. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). 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Revision 1
7 May 2024 Author Response Authors’ response to editor and reviewer comments We are very grateful to both the editor and reviewers for your comments and suggestions. All the concerns raised so far will have an undeniable impact on improving the quality and readability of our scholarly work. Appreciating your effort and valuable comments, we have provided possible reflections and amended the raised concerns and questions. Kindly find our reflections here. We hope you will consider the revised manuscript acceptable for publication in PLOSE ONE research journal. S.no Editor comments Authors’ responses 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 Dear Editor thank you for your comments. We revised the manuscript to meet PLOSE ONE’s style. 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/10.1186/s12889-023-15952-w 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. We tried to identify the minor overlaps and corrected it. 3 In the online submission form, you indicated that [The data used for this study will be available with a reasonable request from the corresponding author.]. All PLOS journals now require all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript to be freely available to other researchers, either 1. In a public repository 2. Within the manuscript itself, or 3. Uploaded as supplementary information This policy applies to all data except where public deposition would breach compliance with the protocol approved by your research ethics board. If your data cannot be made publicly available for ethical or legal reasons (e.g., public availability would compromise patient privacy), please explain your reasons on resubmission and your exemption request will be escalated for approval. Thank you for your comments. We uploaded the data set as supplementary file 1. Kindly see on page 22 line 310 or page 25 line 442. 4 Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics statement entered into the online submission form will not be published alongside your manuscript. We accepted and putted the ethics statement in the methods section. Kindly see on page 10 line 155-165. 5 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. Thank you for your recommendation. We include captions for supporting information at the end of the references. Kindly see on page 25 line 442. 6 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. We reviewed our references lists and ensured that they all are complete and correct. 7 Additional Editor Comments: The reviewer has raised a very important concern about the title of the manuscript. Could you please address the reviewer's concern? Thank you. We revised the reviewer comments and corrected it accordingly. Kindly see on page 1 line 1-3. Reviewer #1: 1 The study is interesting and reveals the barriers to healthcare access among reproductive age women. It is not entirely clear to me why the author decided to use the title More than six in ten mothers had barriers in healthcare access in extremely high andvery high maternal mortality countries and not what was mentined in the abstract as the aim of the study (assess barriers to healthcare access among reproductive age women in extremely high and very high maternal mortality countries) please clarify. Dear Reviewer thank you for your important observations. We wrote the declarative form of the title. Because it is recommended that the title to be informative and more concise by findings. We did it for clarity and brevity. Our goal was to make the title more concise and conclusive so readers could identify the main message more easily. However, we accepted your comments and corrected the title as “Barriers to healthcare access among reproductive age women in extremely high and very high maternal mortality countries: Multilevel mixed effect analysis” Kindly see on page 1 line 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304975.r002
22 May 2024 Decision Letter - Gilbert Abotisem Abiiro, Editor Barriers to healthcare access among reproductive age women in extremely high and very high maternal mortality countries: Multilevel mixed effect analysis PONE-D-24-02171R1 Dear Wubshet Debebe Negash , 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, Gilbert Abotisem Abiiro, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304975.r003
Formally Accepted
8 Jul 2024 Acceptance Letter - Gilbert Abotisem Abiiro, Editor PONE-D-24-02171R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Negash, 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 If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Gilbert Abotisem Abiiro Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304975.r004

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