PONE-D-24-25071Cultivating clean sport environment with athlete support personnel (ASP): A study on anti-doping knowledge, attitudes, and practices of ASPPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Mhd Ali,

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.

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ACADEMIC EDITOR:

Thank you for your submission, "Cultivating clean sport environment with athlete support personnel (ASP): A study on anti-doping knowledge, attitudes, and practices of ASP." After careful review, both reviewers recommend minor revisions to improve clarity and completeness.

Key Revisions:

Data Availability: Ensure that all data underlying your findings are clearly available as per PLOS ONE’s data policy.

Language and Clarity: Address grammatical issues, such as subject-verb agreement and sentence structure, and remove redundancy in the text.

Introduction: Strengthen the focus on the relevance of anti-doping education in Southeast Asia by providing concrete examples of its regional impact.

Methods: Justify the exclusion of parents from the study and clarify inclusion criteria to enhance generalizability.

Results: Consider adding subheadings for better organization and readability.

Discussion and Conclusion: Improve citation linkage, compare findings with other studies, and emphasize key conclusions for stronger impact.

We appreciate your effort and look forward to your revised manuscript.

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Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 04 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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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Clementswami Sukumaran, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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

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2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: Ming Chiang, Gobinathan Nair, Eng Wee, Tuan Mazlelaa, Ahmad Fuad, Adliah

Social Science Research Grant Program (2021 A-9, NF-2023-002)

World Anti-Doping Agency 

https://www.wada-ama.org/en

Approval to publish was received from the funder, no amendment was done by the funder on the study protocol and final manuscript.  

Please state what role the funders took in the study.  If the funders had no role, please state: ""The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."" 

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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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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: No

Reviewer #2: 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: Data Availability: The manuscript does not clearly indicate whether all data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction.

Language and Clarity: The language in the manuscript is generally clear, but there are several grammatical errors that need to be corrected to ensure clarity and precision.

Below are a few examples:

Subject-verb agreement issues: For example, using "is" instead of "are" when referring to plural subjects.

Redundancy: Phrases such as "Ethical approval and approval to conduct the study..." are redundant.

Missing commas: Complex sentences lack necessary commas, making the text difficult to follow.

Other Comments

Introduction: The study clearly identifies the problem as worthless knowledge and participation of Athlete Support Personnel (ASP) regarding anti-doping education. However, a specific focus is needed to address why this issue is particularly important in the context of Southeast Asia.

The study provides a comprehensive overview of the existing literature, indicating a widespread lack of knowledge and participation in anti-doping education among ASP.

The study highlights a significant gap in participation and the appropriate dissemination of information among ASPs in Southeast Asian countries regarding anti-doping education. This section could be improved by providing more concrete examples of how negative outcomes have occurred for athletes in the region.

Discussion and Conclusion:

The summary could be strengthened by more clearly stating the broader scientific implications, particularly how it contributes to the existing body of knowledge or fills a specific gap in doping research.

The research could further develop this section by explicitly comparing its findings with those from other regions or with previous global studies, thereby placing the research within a broader scientific framework.

Reviewer #2: I would like to thank you for the opportunity to review this article. The manuscript presents a relevant study on anti-doping knowledge, attitudes, and practices among Athlete Support Personnel (ASP) in Southeast Asia and addresses an important and interesting issue in the field.

I find the abstract to be mostly correct. However, I suggest revising the first part, as there appears to be duplicated information (lines 25-27).

The introduction is thorough and provides context for the research problem, as well as relevant prior literature. Nonetheless, I recommend revising the following points:

- Line 60: Please review the expression "number of literatures," as this phrasing is awkward.

- Line 82: Consider revising the phrase "However, there is no excuse to their ignorance," to avoid informal language.

The materials and methods section is solid and presents most of the necessary information for replicating the study. As a suggestion for improvement, it would be enriching to include clearer and more detailed inclusion criteria. Additionally, the exclusion of parents due to time, resource, and language limitations is mentioned, yet, given their recognized significant influence, it would be important to provide a more in-depth explanation of this decision. Consider how their exclusion might affect the results and generalizability of the study, especially since the role of parents is briefly discussed in line 368. Overall, it would be beneficial to justify this decision more thoroughly and consistently. Moreover, in line 129, it seems that the "%" symbol is missing after "60".

The results section is detailed, precise, and scientific. My only suggestion here would be to improve the structuring of the information, perhaps by using subheadings or clearly beginning each paragraph with the specific results being presented.

While the information is accurate, these suggestions would enhance readability for a potential audience. Also, in the results section, there appears to be a missing comma between lines 241 and 242.

For the discussion, I recommend improving the linkage between the text and citations, especially with previous works mentioned in the paragraph between lines 293 and 301. Additionally, the references mentioned in lines 339-341 should be explicitly cited.

In the conclusions section, I believe it would be beneficial to include clearer conclusions. While the limitations, future research directions, and practical implications are presented, I feel there is a need for stronger emphasis on the final conclusions of the study. Specifically, the key findings should be highlighted in a way that leaves the reader with clear, concise ideas at the end of the article.

I would like to congratulate the authors on their hard work and hope that my comments are helpful in improving the quality of the manuscript.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Cultivating clean sport environment with athlete support personnel (ASP): A study on anti-doping knowledge, attitudes, and practices of ASP

PONE-D-24-25071R1

Dear Dr. Mhd Ali,

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,

Clementswami Sukumaran, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: 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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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 #1: Upon reviewing the revised manuscript, I confirm that the authors have sufficiently addressed the critical points from the prior review.

Reviewer #2: Dear Authors,

Thank you for the revised version of your manuscript and for your responses. I appreciate the attention given to the previous feedback. I feel the main points have effectively been addressed. Overall, I consider the manuscript is now better structured and clearer.

Best regards.

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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 #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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