PONE-D-24-10064An Infodemiologic Review of Internet Resources on Dental Hypersensitivity: A Quality and Readability Assessment.PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Alassaf,

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 Aug 07 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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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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Shahabedin Rahmatizadeh, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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

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Additional Editor Comments:

The paper is well prepared, but it is necessary to address the issues raised by the original reviewers and to make major revisions to the paper.

Some of the statistics provided are out of date and not reliable at this time.

It may be better to focus on broader issues in this area instead of limiting the discussion to one oral and dental problem. A wider range of web-based information should be explored to reach a larger user base.

Please provide a list of some reputable and useful websites, for example, top ten websites.

Make suggestions for improving the status of websites and discuss the role of health practitioners, managers and policy makers.

[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: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: 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: Investigating how patients seek and incorporate information about oral health is vitally important for understanding the questions they ask dental professionals and the types of treatments they prefer. You have done a tremendous amount of work on this study, and I appreciate the time and care you spent on the analysis.

I do, however, have a few questions about this manuscript.

In the first paragraph of the Introduction, you cite a paper from the WHO which states 71% of internet users seek health-related information. A few pages later, you cite a paper by Cline and Haynes which states that there are over 70,000 websites that provide health related content that are visited by more than 50 million users. These numbers seemed a bit off to me, and a quick check of the References showed that these papers are from 2007 and 2001 respectively. When reporting on the information seeking habits of internet users staying completely current is difficult as tools literally change daily, but there must be better sources of data than these. A quick check of Google Scholar (which admittedly is not without its own concerns) shows that Cline and Haynes have been cited more than 2,300 times with more than 500 of these citations coming in the last five years. Perhaps one of these papers would have more recent data that could be used instead.

Too much of the Introduction is also devoted to the various causes of hypersensitivity and tooth pain. This would be relevant if patients were searching for specific causes of their discomfort (such as something like “tooth sensitivity cold” or “tooth sensitivity hard toothbrush”), but the searches documented only show "Sensitive teeth" and "Teeth hypersensitivity" which are much broader.

I also have a question about this question itself; you write, “In the field of dentistry, patients often seek health information regarding teeth hypersensitivity. It is common for patients to turn to the internet for information regarding dental health issues such as tooth hypersensitivity”. Is this anecdotal? Is this a topic patients often ask about in the office? I did a quick search in Google Trends for the broader term you used (Tooth Sensitivity) and it didn’t register as a trending topic. I broadened this out to the last year and compared it to what Google reported as a more common related search (Tooth Pain) and here are the results:

(See attachment for image)

I don’t have access to more powerful analytics platforms like Semrush or Similarweb, but I did a similar search using Wikipedia’s Pageviews Analysis for Tooth Sensitivity and Toothache (which is the parent term for Tooth Sensitivity on the platform):

(See attachment for image)

I have no doubt that Tooth Sensitivity is of supreme interest to patients suffering from its effects, but it’s not as common as other concerns to internet users. Was this topic chosen to make analyzing the results more manageable? If so this is fine, real world concerns like this are valid, but this should be noted if this indeed a conscious choice.

In the Methods and Materials you mention that you used Google Chrome in Incognito mode to minimize impact from cookies and to eliminate bias. As you may have read, Google recently settled a class-action lawsuit in the United States due to years of misleading claims about the degree of anonymity provided by incognito mode. I realize that this information was made public after this manuscript was prepared and after your study was conducted, but the objectivity of Google’s SEO has always been suspect. I appreciate the steps you took to try to make these searches as transparent and reproducible as possible, but using a search engine like DuckDuckGo or a browser like Tor would be a better option.

While thinking about the Methods, how did you decide upon analyzing a total of 600 websites? With over 30,000,000 results choosing a Representative Sample (say even 1%) would be daunting, but there needs to be some explanation as to how this choice was made. Did you consult with a statistician? Did you follow the approach used by a similar study? Did you try to mimic the behavior of the average searcher? If this is the case 100 results from each search is far too large as previous studies have noted that the vast majority of users rarely click through more than the second page of results, so perhaps the first 20 would be a more common sample size. It’s also true that users can rarely access more than the first 1,000 results from a search engine, so creating a true Representative Sample is difficult without access to advanced tools and metrics.

If you were to employ Systematic Sampling you could use each search engine’s Advanced Search features to categorize the results. For example, in Google’s Advanced Search you could limit by Site or Domain. You stratified the websites selected for analysis by dental or medical centers, commercial entities, non-profits and governments or universities. You could do this in Google by choosing domains like .com, .org, .gov and .edu. This would allow you to choose the top 100 (or whatever number you choose) websites from each domain. This may lead to a fairer comparison of the readability and quality of offerings from each type of entity.

Reviewer #2: The article provides a rigorous study of the websites in question using reasonable evaluation methodologies. The data is available, with the caveat that the authors say "All relevant data is within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files upon reasonable request from the corresponding author". According to the PLOS ONE data availability standards the supporting information files must be provided to PLOS ONE at the time of publication so that they can be added their Figshare Repository or uploaded to a public data repository.

While the article is strong, there are some areas that should be revised. In the Methods area the authors mention utilizing four search engines, while later only utilizing three. The Methods are largely repeated in the Discussion section, in a manner which is superfluous. On page 12 the authors note they intend to address how reader evaluate the data on the sites, although this is only addressed tangentially in the paper. Most of the evaluation information seems to be focused on professional evaluation. That reference should be clarified or removed unless the authors choose to add a substantive section addressing that point.

On page 16, where the authors present their keywords, they have placed them in parantheses. This has a special significance with those search engines (phrase searching) and may be confusing to some readers since I do not believe from the text that these were searched as a phrase. If they were this should be specifically pointed out. If they were not they should be emphasized with some other mechanism, such as italics.

On page 18, in the sentences "Since sensitivity is not usually an emergency situation,

people are more likely to search for online health information to rule out negative outcomes or

consult a dentist [30]. This preferred choice is based on people's tendency to accept positive

information about themselves, such as suggestions of good health, rather than negative

information derived from themselves, such as indications of illness [31]. This can be of huge

importance as patients are likely to take a more proactive role in managing their own healthcare

[32]." the authors make a number of broad assertions that are only supported by single sources per assertion. They should moderate that language or supply more substantive support for those statements.

There seems to be text missing at the beginning of page nineteen, resulting in an incomplete sentance at the beginning of the page.

Some additional items should be added to the limitations section. While three search engines are used for the evaluation, two of them (bing and yahoo) share the same indexing and much of the same technical back end. This results in similar, but not identical, search results. It should also be noted that Incognito mode does not block IP address information from being communicated to the search tool, meaning that search results are still influenced by data deriveable from IP address, such as geographic location.

In my judgement, when these revisions are made and the authors perform the appropriate data sharing steps this article will be suitable for publication.

Reviewer #3: The Introduction section needs clearer transitions, particularly: in the beginning where the authors describe information seeking behavior then abruptly change to describing tooth sensitivity and its potential causes; the middle section about pain tolerance (which doesn't seem particularly relevant to the manuscript); and then toward the end when the authors return to information seeking behavior. Adding paragraphs to the Introduction when a new concept its introduced would also be helpful.

There is a great deal of repetition in the Introduction and Discussion sections. I would edit down the repeated ideas to one or the other sections.

The conclusion does not include a recommendation for additional research in this area, which is a point the authors seem to be making in other areas of the manuscript. I suggest including explicit language that describes the weaknesses in the currently available literature on tooth sensitivity and how those may be strengthened.

The data and statistical analyses appear to be valid and are sound. It may be helpful to include a list of the 90 sites that met the review criteria.

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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

Reviewer #3: No

**********

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PLOS Peer Review.docx

PONE-D-24-10064R1An Infodemiologic Review of Internet Resources on Dental Hypersensitivity: A Quality and Readability Assessment.PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Alassaf,

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 03 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,

Shahabedin Rahmatizadeh, Ph.D.

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:

Most of the points requested by my reviewers have been addressed, and only one issue remains. Please submit the revised manuscript after making the necessary corrections.

[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 #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: (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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: I Don't Know

**********

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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: I feel the author has adequately addressed my feedback and I feel the paper is suitable for publication.

Reviewer #3: Minor error in Figure 2 - "Fair Eaesy" is mispelled. Will need to be corrected in the software that produced the figure.

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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 #2: No

Reviewer #3: 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-24-10064R2An Infodemiologic Review of Internet Resources on Dental Hypersensitivity: A Quality and Readability Assessment.PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Alassaf,

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 Nov 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,

Shahabedin Rahmatizadeh, Ph.D.

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:

Thank you for revising the article. Considering the reviewers' comments, please address the mentioned issues and submit the revised version to the journal.

[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 #4: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #5: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #6: (No Response)

Reviewer #7: All comments have been addressed

**********

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 #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Partly

Reviewer #6: Yes

Reviewer #7: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: I Don't Know

Reviewer #6: Yes

Reviewer #7: 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 #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: No

Reviewer #6: Yes

Reviewer #7: Yes

**********

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 #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

Reviewer #6: Yes

Reviewer #7: 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 #4: As demonstrated in the final manuscript, the authors have made a significant effort in applying the reviewers' corrections, and therefore, I believe this research deserves to be published.

Reviewer #5: The topic is interesting. However, I would like to recommend the author to-

1. explain why the instuments were chosen to use in this study

2. explain the technical terms specifically for those which are essential to the study such as the Kruskal-Wallis test, as the readers could more understanding.

3. specify in the meterial and method part regarding the websites that used to collect data and explain why they were chosen.

4. In discussion, the keywords "dentin sensitivity, cervical hypersensitivity, cemental

hypersensitivity, and root hypersensitivity" are different from the result in Meterial and Methods part.

5. For future study, it is recommend that the author should use the information sources that donot share the same index. So, this could be beneficial for the readers to choose the searche engine when they want more or different information since Bing and Yahoo share the same indexing.

6. It is stongly recommended that the significances-benefits or outcomes, of this study should be clearly highlighted in the conclusion.

Reviewer #6: This paper is well written and easy to read.

Font size or a couple of citations in references look inconsistent. This also happens to a couple of pages in the body of text.

Reviewer #7: In general, the author has answered the reviewer(s) ' questions, which improves the quality of the manuscript in this version. Some additional suggestions are listed below.

1. Author affiliation.

Changing an author's affiliation should be done according to the rules of the journal. In general, the unit that recognizes a researcher means that the research was completed during his tenure at that unit, not that it changed when he changed jobs.

2. Typos. The system shows that the author claims to use four search engines, but the article talks about three (i.e., Yahoo, Bing, and Google). Please correct this.

3. Limitation and direction.

The author(s) stated that they followed the literature guidelines regarding the three search engines used (Yahoo, Bing, and Google) and listed their limitations in terms of information coverage in the limitations section of the study.

In fact, due to Internet use regulations and other restrictions, some users in China may also use Baidu to search for English-language health information. Perhaps the researchers can list future research directions, such as comparing the results of search engines with different user bases.

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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 #4: No

Reviewer #5: No

Reviewer #6: No

Reviewer #7: Yes: Kai-Yu Tang

**********

[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.

An Infodemiologic Review of Internet Resources on Dental Hypersensitivity: A Quality and Readability Assessment.

PONE-D-24-10064R3

Dear Dr. Muath Saad Alassaf,

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,

Shahabedin Rahmatizadeh, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

I would like to express my gratitude for your attention to the points raised by the journal reviewers and for addressing the requested revisions. The article is deemed to meet the requisite standards for acceptance.

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 #6: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #7: All comments have been addressed

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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 #6: Yes

Reviewer #7: Partly

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

Reviewer #6: Yes

Reviewer #7: Yes

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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 #6: Yes

Reviewer #7: (No Response)

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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 #6: Yes

Reviewer #7: Yes

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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 #6: (No Response)

Reviewer #7: The authors have answered the reviewers' questions in this version. This improves the quality of the manuscript.

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Reviewer #6: No

Reviewer #7: Yes: Kai-Yu Tang

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