PONE-D-24-31730Experience of personnel involved in dead body management at an apex institute in the aftermath of Odisha triple train collision.PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Patnaik,

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 Oct 21 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,

Ramesh Athe, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

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. In the online submission form, you indicated that Data cannot be shared publicly because of confidentiality. Data are available from the corresponding author on request.

All PLOS journals now require all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript to be freely available to other researchers, either a. In a public repository, b. Within the manuscript itself, or c. 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. 

3. Please amend either the abstract on the online submission form (via Edit Submission) or the abstract in the manuscript so that they are identical.

4. 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.

[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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: 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: 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: I would like to congratulate the authors on conducting a thorough qualitative study on the experience of personnel involved in managing a disaster. I have a few comments that are as follows:

I would like to congratulate the authors on conducting a thorough and well-thought qualitative analysis of one of the worst accidents in the country of India.

Following are a few suggestions that will improve the quality of the manuscript:

1. Lines 74 – 77: Include the train number for all the trains involved.

2. Lines 84 – 85: Rephrase to “Odisha triple train collision accident was thus a major train accident”

3. Lines 86 – 87: Rephrase to “All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bhubaneswar, a teaching medical college granted with the status of ‘Institute of National Importance’ was given the responsibility of managing the deceased of this train accident”.

4. Line 100: Rephrase to “The present study was a qualitative questionnaire-based …”.

5. Line 102: Rephrase to “… accident after obtaining clearance from the Institutional Ethics Committee …”.

6. Line 109: Rephrase to “A google form …”.

7. Line 114: Rephrase to “Participants’ time”.

8. Lines 114-115: The table for the themes and subthemes should be cited here.

9. Line 116: Please elaborate on what the authors mean by validation of the questionnaire by experts.

10. Line 135: Ensure that the subtitle is in sentence case, or capitalize each first alphabet of all the words.

11. Lines 136-137: Please elaborate on the high-level meeting mentioned (the agenda for the meeting, the participants involved, the conclusion of it, etc.). Also, the Figure 1 is of poor quality, and should be resubmitted in higher resolution (>800 DPI).

12. Lines 147-148: Rephrase to “An expert team consisting of …”.

13. Line 148: Mention what biological samples were collected for DNA analysis

14. Line 152: Replace “us” with “AIIMS Bhubaneswar” or “THC where the study was conducted”.

15. Line 163: Figure 2 is of poor quality, and should be resubmitted in higher resolution (>800 DPI).

16. Table 1: Add (years) next to Age; Insert an “em-dash” (–) between all the numbers in the age row; Change the designation of MBBS Students to Undergraduate Medical Students; Write full forms of DH and H in the table’s legend; Change the designation of nursing students to Undergraduate Nursing Students; Add departments of all the consultants and residents.

17. Lines 193 – 194: Rephrase to “COVID-19”.

18. Lines 198 – 199: Authors should quote the responses of the 6.38% of individuals who had prior experience in handling DVM cases.

19. Line 206: Rephrase to “the institute’s strength”.

20. Line 209 – 210: Rephrase to “Another participant had commented …”.

21. Line 332: Figure 3 is of poor quality, and should be resubmitted in higher resolution (>800 DPI). Since the figure is a graph, I suggest inserting it in the word document as a graph itself instead of saving it as an image and then inserting it.

22. Citation for Likert scale should be inserted wherever necessary.

23. Line 362: Rephrase to “Forsberg et al.” instead of “Forsberg R et al.”.

24. Line 368: Rephrase to “Sarkar and Sarkar”.

25. Line 379: Rephrase to “Kaur” instead of “Manpreet Kaur”.

26. Line 383: Rephrase to “Rajabalinejad et al.”.

27. Line 387: Rephrase to “Evans et al.”.

28. Line 398: Rephrase to “The participants of the present study…”.

29. Line 405 – 412: The font type has changed in this paragraph, make it uniform.

30. Line 410: Rephrase to “Chakraborty”.

31. Line 422: Rephrase to “Cordner and Ellingham…”.

32. Line 427: Rephrase to “Evans et al.”.

33. Line 504: The format of the reference is incorrect, and should be revised.

Furthermore, the authors should include their questionnaire in the form of supporting material, or deposit it in a public repository.

Reviewer #2: 1. The background section of this study provides a rich and detailed description of the accident, but it is recommended that the uniqueness of the study and its potential contribution to the management of similar disasters in the future be further emphasized in the elaboration process.

2. Although the study is based on survey analysis, it is recommended that an attempt be made to analyze some of the results quantitatively, e.g., through statistically specific graphs and charts to enhance the persuasiveness and visualization of the results.

3. How to make sure that all staff strictly follow the regulation process during the corpse disposal process is a concern.

4. In line 138, it is mentioned that “some bodies were immediately placed in a morgue cooler and others were placed on ice."  Would the different ways of handling the bodies have an impact on the subsequent autopsy investigation?

5. In the recommendation section in line 430, the recommendations are enriched to include, for example, physical health checks, vocational rehabilitation, and social support to make the recommendations more practical.

6. Overall, the quality of the writing is good, but it is recommended that the author proofread carefully to eliminate any grammatical or spelling errors.

**********

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: Rutwik Shedge

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.

Experience of personnel involved in dead body management at an apex institute in the aftermath of Odisha triple train collision.

PONE-D-24-31730R1

Dear Dr. Patnaik,

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,

Ramesh Athe, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: