PONE-D-23-14275What is a good death for patients, families and health professionals? A qualitative ethnographic and phenomenological study in the Catalan contextPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Serra-Sutton,

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 Sep 16 2023 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,

Martin Mbonye

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Dr. Serra-Sutton,

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 in its current form. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

The manuscript has been evaluated by two reviewers, and their comments are available below. The reviewers have raised a number of concerns that need attention. A common comment from both reviewers is on the disconnect between the introduction and the methodology which you have to address. Pay close attention to the comments on the methods section in general pointed out by both reviewers. Reviewer 2 was particular about the language editing that you need to pay attention to. Could you please revise the manuscript to carefully address the concerns raised?

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sept 15 2023 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,

Martin Mbonye

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure:

"The study is part of a governmental commissioned project of the General Directorate of Health of the Catalan Health Department from the Government of Catalonia (Spain) in the context of the implementation of the Death Observatory to the Agency for Quality in Healthcare and Assessment of Catalonia (AQuAS).  "

At this time, please address the following queries:

a)        Please clarify the sources of funding (financial or material support) for your study. List the grants or organizations that supported your study, including funding received from your institution.

b)        State what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

c)        If any authors received a salary from any of your funders, please state which authors and which funders.

d)        If you did not receive any funding for this study, please state: “The authors received no specific funding for this work.”

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

3. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability.

Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized.

Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.

We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter.

4. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide.

 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.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

________________________________________

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: N/A

________________________________________

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

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: 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:

When looking at the text, I don’t see any obvious red flags. I, however, don’t see the information in the text that I require to be able to make an adequately detailed decision. I was hoping that I would find, attached somewhere, an annex that would allow me to understand exactly what they had done and why. I do believe that at the end of my review process I will come to the conclusion that what I’m seeing appears to be sound, but that the initial structure of the article does not adequately anticipate the methodology section, so it requires substantial revision. What I mean by this is that the choices made in the methodology section require information which should be, but is not present in the introduction. I also believe that I will come to the conclusion that the method which they used is not a discourse analysis. As I have often found, I suspect that what I will find, when I have the opportunity to review more detailed information, is that they did a sound thematic contact analysis. It is a constant frustration of mine that authors in my field, feel, properly, compelled to claim that they are doing analysis methods which are far more complex than that either possible or necessary for their purposes.

I will find that the article failed to follow the expectations of annotation for transparent inquiry, which means that I do not understand the logic which they have used in sampling quotations for presentation in their text. I will also find that they failed to remain consistent in their recognition that the object, good death, would be understood very differently by their respondents. What this means, in consequence, is that rather than present, a set of scenarios at the end, each some sort of idealized representation selected for centrality. What they have done is present a list of common elements across respondents that are chosen more for commonality than salience. This sort of presentation of an intersection of subjective constructions is a common strategy that is used which suffers the unfortunate characteristic of failing to remember that each of the construction is considered may fail horribly when shorn of attributes specific to that single construction.

At the end, what I think I will find is that the article does an interesting examination of stakeholders understandings of a very complex and subjectively constructed construct, the good death.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript would benefit from language editing. In some cases, the language needs to be checked to suit the standard language used in research.

Extra suggestions for the manuscript;

In the introduction section;

- The following line; 40, 44 and 45 seem to imply that the author is studying people who wish to die at home and people’s experiences using health care services. In the rest of the manuscript, this is not the case. The author may wish to revise the above lines to reflect the specific problem that you are interrogating; ie the meaning of a good death.

- Line 69 seem to be incomplete

In the methodology section, please consider the following;

- The word both in line 85 seem to be inappropriate since the data sources are 3 not 2.

- The word intentional could be replaced with purposive in reference to the sampling procedure, if that is what the author wanted to mean. Check like 104 , 147 etc

- The author mentions that they excluded people did not have ‘powerful’ internet connection. The reader would be interested in knowing how they identified these- 164

- Throughout the manuscript, the author talks about discussion groups and not Focus Group Discussions. Is that intentional?

In the results section, please consider the following;

- In line 221, the author clearly shows that participants considered a good death in relation to a good life. One cannot have a good death unless they had a good life. It would be important for the author to explain what a good life was from the perspective of the study participants

In the conclusion, the author introduces a new concept of ‘red lines’ in relation to what participants refer to as unbearable suffering. However, it is important that the author introduces these concepts earlier in the manuscript to avoid new information in the conclusion section of the manuscript.

________________________________________

6. 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

[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.

[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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

**********

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: N/A

**********

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

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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: At this point, I have not yet had time to prepare the level of comments that I feel would be adequate to share with the authors. I hope that the discussion provided in the comments for the editor are enough to help you to decide either to give me an extension or to make a decision without my further input.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript would benefit from language editing. In some cases, the language needs to be checked to suit the standard language used in research.

Extra suggestions for the manuscript;

In the introduction section;

- The following line; 40, 44 and 45 seem to imply that the author is studying people who wish to die at home and people’s experiences using health care services. In the rest of the manuscript, this is not the case. The author may wish to revise the above lines to reflect the specific problem that you are interrogating; ie the meaning of a good death.

- Line 69 seem to be incomplete

In the methodology section, please consider the following;

- The word both in line 85 seem to be inappropriate since the data sources are 3 not 2.

- The word intentional could be replaced with purposive in reference to the sampling procedure, if that is what the author wanted to mean. Check like 104 , 147 etc

- The author mentions that they excluded people did not have ‘powerful’ internet connection. The reader would be interested in knowing how they identified these- 164

- Throughout the manuscript, the author talks about discussion groups and not Focus Group Discussions. Is that intentional?

In the results section, please consider the following;

- In line 221, the author clearly shows that participants considered a good death in relation to a good life. One cannot have a good death unless they had a good life. It would be important for the author to explain what a good life was from the perspective of the study participants

In the conclusion, the author introduces a new concept of ‘red lines’ in relation to what participants refer to as unbearable suffering. However, it is important that the author introduces these concepts earlier in the manuscript to avoid new information in the conclusion section of the manuscript.

**********

6. 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: Peter tamas

Reviewer #2: 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.

PONE-D-23-14275R1What is a good death for patients, families and health professionals? A qualitative ethnographic and phenomenological study in the Catalan contextPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Serra-Sutton,

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 Dec 27 2023 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,

Martin Mbonye

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Author,

I am glad to inform you that we have new comments to the revised version of your manuscript. Thank you very much for the efforts you put into this manuscript, but there is still some more major revisions for you to address before we can consider this manuscript ready for publication. I would advise that you look carefully at the comments and provide a detailed response.

It appeared to the reviewer that your response to some comments was not detailed enough and did not provide enough to justify some of the claims you made particularly on methodology. This is where most of the issues seem to stem from.

I do advise that as the author(s), you carefully read through the reviewer's comments and respond to each of them in good detail.

Please address the comments by 7th December, 2023. If you want more time, please let me know before that deadline

Regards and all the best

Martin

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

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: (No Response)

**********

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: No

**********

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

Reviewer #1: No

**********

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: 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

**********

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: 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

________________________________________

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: N/A

________________________________________

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Comment on revision: the PDF does not meet my understanding of the requirements for either archiving or data. The data are not in an archive, the relationship between the data found and the recording is uncertain, there are no meta-data and there is no qualitative equivalent to the R script I would expect to find with archived data

________________________________________

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:

When looking at the text, I don’t see any obvious red flags. I, however, don’t see the information in the text that I require to be able to make an adequately detailed decision. I was hoping that I would find, attached somewhere, an annex that would allow me to understand exactly what they had done and why.

• Comment on revision: The level of documentation of the methodology and methods remains inadequate.

I do believe that at the end of my review process I will come to the conclusion that what I’m seeing appears to be sound, but that the initial structure of the article does not adequately anticipate the methodology section, so it requires substantial revision.

• Comment on revision: the changes made have degraded my assessment of the rigor of analysis.

What I mean by this is that the choices made in the methodology section require information which should be, but is not present in the introduction.

• Comment on revision: Much of the information required to understand the logic behind selection of methods and the details of their use remain missing.

I also believe that I will come to the conclusion that the method which they used is not a discourse analysis.

• Comment on revision: I still lack the information required to determine whether the analysis conducted qualifies as a discourse analysis. For that I require a defensible definition followed by analytic practice that clearly matches that definition.

As I have often found, I suspect that what I will find, when I have the opportunity to review more detailed information, is that they did a sound thematic contact analysis. It is a constant frustration of mine that authors in my field, feel, properly, compelled to claim that they are doing analysis methods which are far more complex than that either possible or necessary for their purposes.

• Comment on revision: the information provided did not improve insight into the steps by which analysis was undertaken. For example, the terms ‘vertical and then horizontal reading’ do not mean much without both a definition and justification. This journal is read by a wide diversity of readers. They can not be expected to know what these are nor whether they are appropriate. This information must be provided by the authors.

I will find that the article failed to follow the expectations of annotation for transparent inquiry, which means that I do not understand the logic which they have used in sampling quotations for presentation in their text.

• Comment on revision: the authors did not improve the transparency through mechanisms such as ATI.

I will also find that they failed to remain consistent in their recognition that the object, good death, would be understood very differently by their respondents. What this means, in consequence, is that rather than present, a set of scenarios at the end, each some sort of idealized representation selected for centrality. What they have done is present a list of common elements across respondents that are chosen more for commonality than salience. This sort of presentation of an intersection of subjective constructions is a common strategy that is used which suffers the unfortunate characteristic of failing to remember that each of the construction is considered may fail horribly when shorn of attributes specific to that single construction.

• Comment on revision: The authors seem to flip-flop between accepting the possibility of a heterogeneity of mutually incommensurate constructions of ‘the good death’ and the policy convenience of a determinate list of identically understood (and therefore, somehow, important) themes.

**********

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: Peter A. Tamas

**********

[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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: plos1 nov 2023 good death revision.docx

PONE-D-23-14275R2What is a good death for patients, families and health professionals? A qualitative phenomenological study in the Catalan contextPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Serra-Sutton,

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 see below under the section additional Editor's comments, the summary of the issues that you need to address

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 17 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,

Martin Mbonye

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:

Dear Author,

Thank you very much for your patience with this paper. It is almost there but there are a few things that were suggested by the reviewer that I feel still need your attention as well as a few things. Below are the areas that you should look at and address before we can proceed.

1. Under materials and Methods: The reviewer was not satisfied that you had addressed in your revision of the methods section. The reviewer suggested that you give more details and justify the selection of the approach you use. I suggest that instead of pointing the reader to another location for details that instead you carefully read the comments on this particular issue and add more details.

2. Under sampling: Please be clear on which sample was selected under each of your sampling procedures. For example, who was purposively selected and who was selected by convenience sampling and why?

3. Under materials: Say something on the method used of Phenomenology in order to satisfy the reviewer's misgivings about clarity of methods. Also show why it was the most suited for answering your research question for readers unfamiliar with the concept.

4. I suggest that you include a section of the setting so that the non-Spanish readers appreciate the (rural and ethnic) context. You mention Catalonia but it may not be universally known

5. Under data analysis: Please respond to the reviewer's comment on finding a definition of discourse analysis and how you applied the discourse analysis based on your definition

6. The reviewer was not satisfied that your use of the terms vertical and horizontal under the analysis section added much value. So I suggest that you explain them clearly or replace them with more orthodox terms

7. You were asked to explain transparancy in application of participants quotes. I think a way around this would be to say something in the methods section indicating your use of quotes. Read any document you can find on annotation for transparency inquiry (ATI) for guidance

8. Lastly, there are still a number of gramatical errors and typos in the revised version. Please use an English speaker to help with the editor after you are done

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Reviewers' comments: These have been summarised above

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Defining a Good Death: Perspectives of Patients, relatives, and Health Care Professionals in the Catalan Context—a Qualitative Study

PONE-D-23-14275R3

Dear Dr. Serra-Sutton,

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,

Martin Mbonye

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

I would advise you to use the remaining period to carefully read through and correct any typos, areas with double full stops, areas that need grammatical improvements. These should make the paper more readable and error free

Reviewers' comments: