PONE-D-24-09846Expected Features of the Course Leader in the Rehabilitation Healthcare Professionals’ Higher Education: A Qualitative Study on Students’ PerspectivesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Battista,

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.

The reviewers have highlighted several areas where minor clarifications and additional details would enhance the paper's clarity and methodological rigor. Key points to address include providing more specific information on the sampling strategy and participant demographics, clarifying certain methodological aspects, and expanding the discussion to further contextualize the findings and their implications. 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 23 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 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,

Weifeng Han, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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. When completing the data availability statement of the submission form, you indicated that you will make your data available on acceptance. We strongly recommend all authors decide on a data sharing plan before acceptance, as the process can be lengthy and hold up publication timelines. Please note that, though access restrictions are acceptable now, your entire data will need to be made freely accessible if your manuscript is accepted for publication. This policy applies to all data except where public deposition would breach compliance with the protocol approved by your research ethics board. If you are unable to adhere to our open data policy, please kindly revise your statement to explain your reasoning and we will seek the editor's input on an exemption. Please be assured that, once you have provided your new statement, the assessment of your exemption will not hold up the peer review process.

3. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well.

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

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

**********

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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 have reviewed your manuscript and would like to provide some additional comments and raise concerns regarding potential dual publication.

Firstly, I want to commend you on the thoroughness and clarity of your work. Your research presents valuable insights into [insert topic]. The methodology is well-described, and the results are both robust and significant. Your manuscript has the potential to make a significant contribution to the field.

However, I noticed that there may be some overlap with another publication or work. It's crucial to ensure that your manuscript does not violate the principles of dual publication. Dual publication occurs when substantial parts of a manuscript are published in more than one journal, which can lead to issues such as copyright infringement and academic misconduct.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper about the student expectation of course leaders. I have a few comments outlined below which focus primarily on transparency and clarification. The written flow of this article is very clear throughout and well written - well done.

Minor comments

Participants (row 84).

'purposive sampling (row 86) ensured maximum variation' in experiences and reach for different work'. Consider noting how you arrived at 10- participants - was snowballing or other considerations used to identify this number?

The terms ' experiences and reach for different work'. The results noted each profession. I am wondering if the authors may note or expect a difference between those who work privately or publicly in this setting?

The authors noted in row 92 that 'participants had to work as health professionals in rehabilitation, be recent graduate students'. It would be useful to quantify 'recent' - eg. graduated within the last x years. In the results the average age (SD) of the graduates is provided - consider adding in the number of years since completing the MSc.

Line 112 noted Interviews were recorded and transcribed. It would be worth noting if these were transcribed by a third party or by one of the authors. I am unsure if participants were able to review transcripts for accuracy prior to coding. Consider including this detail.

Table 2 (Line 144/ 145) provided details on the authors. I wasn't sure if this was meant to link to the table as all abbreviations were not used in the table (though this was useful for other parts of the manuscript). There may be another place more appropriate for this detail. Gender identity was well considered both in context and presentation.

Discussion

Line 293 - noted most of the participants 'were women'. I concur that this could introduce bias (as the authors have well noted). I am wondering if in particular, women are more common in these professions, so the gender spread may be representative of the wider population.

Line 295 noted 'white women' - it may be worth noting how this data was collected.

Overall this is an interesting piece of work. I hope that the above comments aid to support this work and I wish the authors all the best.

Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript.

Reviewer #3: PLOS ONE Peer-review

Article title: Expected Features of the Course Leader in the Rehabilitation Healthcare Professionals’ Higher Education: A Qualitative Study on Students’ Perspectives

Manuscript ID: PONE-D-24-09846

Thank you for providing me the opportunity to review this manuscript. This article is a much-needed reflection on the multi-faceted and often underappreciated role of Course Leaders teaching in rehabilitation science. I feel this manuscript could make a meaningful contribution to this under-recognized, but important conversation. I have included some feedback below for your consideration.

1. Lines 52-53:

• Recommend editing this sentence for enhanced clarity of meaning.

“The environment in which the CLs operate within the rehabilitation healthcare professionals’ 53 higher education (encompassing undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses for healthcare 54 professionals in rehabilitation) is challenging.”

2. Line 72:

• Delete ‘starting’ as this is the only perspective explored in this article, correct?

3. Line 91:

• Provide definition (length of time) for ‘recent’ graduate or include in demographic information in results section.

4. Lines 112- 114:

• At the beginning of this paragraph you only mention three researchers: SB, LF, student. Then in these lines you state:

“This folder was accessible from all researchers but LF and SB, so they would not know the names of the students who decided to take part in the study and the content of their interviews until they had been transcribed and anonymised.”

Are there other researchers or should this state: This folder was accessible only to the student researcher, to provide anonymity from LF and SB who are members of faculty.

5. Line 125

• Participants’ experiences

6. Line 129:

• This is the first mention of ‘BG’. Please provider earlier – I assume this is the initials of the student? Also remove ‘a’ before ‘BG’.

7. Lines: 125- 129 and 132- 137:

• I feel the methodology could be more clearly articulated in these lines.

• I commend your commitment to reflexivity and keeping a reliable audit trail.

• Table 2 is also a clear and helpful way to document your qualitative methods and the contribution of each author.

8. Line 234:

• an MSc – edit to a MSc

9. Line 235

• Experiences

10. Line 244:

• priories - priorities?

11. Line 267:

• Students’ perspectives

12. Line 286- 287:

• “However, it must be noted that the academic and clinical roles should not 287 overcome the CL role [20].”

It is not clear to me what this statement means. How would these roles ‘overcome the CL role”? Please revise and add a little more explanation for clarity.

13. Discussion:

• You have done a nice job of summarizing and discussing your findings in the context of the literature. I would be very interested to learn what application you feel this information will provide to those in higher education (faculty and leadership) and where to from here. Perhaps another paragraph or two to flesh this out would be very meaningful to the progression of the conversation around this research topic.

14. Line 313- 314

• In live 109, it is stated only one researcher gathered information. Were those acknowledged also involved in data gathering?

**********

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: Nigar Arif-Poladlı

Reviewer #2: Yes: Dr Kelly Gray

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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Manuscript PLOS One Manuscript PONE-D-24-09846 feedback.docx

Expected Features of the Course Leader in the Rehabilitation Healthcare Professionals’ Higher Education: A Qualitative Study on Students’ Perspectives

PONE-D-24-09846R1

Dear Dr. Battista,

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,

Weifeng Han, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE