Global, regional, and national survey on burden and Quality of Care Index (QCI) of orofacial clefts: Global burden of disease systematic analysis 1990–2019

Ahmad Sofi-Mahmudi; Erfan Shamsoddin; Sahar Khademioore; Yeganeh Khazaei; Amin Vahdati; Marcos Roberto Tovani-Palone

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0317267

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 9, 2024
9 Apr 2024 Author Response Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: rebuttal_letter.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317267.r001
30 Jul 2024 Decision Letter - Kumar Chandan Srivastava, Editor PONE-D-24-10176Global, Regional, and National Survey on Burden and Quality of Care Index (QCI) of Orofacial Clefts: Global Burden of Disease Systematic Analysis 1990–2019PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Sofi-Mahmudi, 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. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: Based on the reviewer reports, the manuscript needs "major revision". Kindly revise the manuscript meticulously. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 13 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, Kumar Chandan Srivastava, BDS, MDS, PhD, MFD RSCI, MFDS RCPS, MFDS RCSEd MDT 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. We suggest you thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar. If you do not know anyone who can help you do this, you may wish to consider employing a professional scientific editing service. The American Journal Experts (AJE) (https://www.aje.com/) is one such service that has extensive experience helping authors meet PLOS guidelines and can provide language editing, translation, manuscript formatting, and figure formatting to ensure your manuscript meets our submission guidelines. Please note that having the manuscript copyedited by AJE or any other editing services does not guarantee selection for peer review or acceptance for publication. Upon resubmission, please provide the following: The name of the colleague or the details of the professional service that edited your manuscript A copy of your manuscript showing your changes by either highlighting them or using track changes (uploaded as a supporting information file) A clean copy of the edited manuscript (uploaded as the new manuscript file) 3. We note that Figures 2 and 4 in your submission contain [map/satellite] images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission: a. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figures 2 and 4 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license. We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text: “I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.” Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an "Other" file with your submission. In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].” b. If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only. The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful: USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/ Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/ USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/# Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ Additional Editor Comments: Dear Authors, Based on the reviewer reports, the manuscript needs "major revision". Kindly revise the manuscript meticulously. Best Wishes [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: Yes 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: Yes 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: No 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: The links provided are null. Also, why authors decided to upload the code again to another repo while it is already on PLOS ONE? Moreover, QCI has been used for many other pathologies and none of them are cited. GBD 2021 is released and new data should be used. CREDIT statement is missing. Reviewer #2: The presented work addresses an important subject but can benefit from the following improvements: 1. A thorough English language edit is strongly recommended. For example, in the abstract, "optimize gender disparity ratio (GDR)" might be intended to mean "optimal" or "optimum" as the imperative verb does not make sense in this context. 2. The tone of the manuscript should be more academic. For instance, "These include things like how often a health issue occurs" can be revised for a more scholarly tone. 3. Regarding the "average per capita incomes," please specify whether these are in PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) exchange rates or local currencies. A simple exchange rate does not capture the purchasing power and its effects adequately. 4. The validation section could be expanded to include data sources for healthcare utilization and the proportion of countries with available utilization data. 5. Please elaborate on the scale of the QCI. For instance, if all countries fall within the range of 80-100 and only five countries are in the >60 range, why is the index defined in a range of 0-100 where almost 60% of the index is never used? 6. The discussion section needs significant revision. The current discussion on page 20 reads more like an introduction and highlights the importance of the subject rather than discussing the results. 7. Include more analysis and discussion on the significance of the results. What is the importance of this study? What policies should be developed based on these findings? What gap in the literature does this study fill? ****** 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317267.r002
Revision 1
6 Oct 2024 Author Response 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. We suggest you thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar. If you do not know anyone who can help you do this, you may wish to consider employing a professional scientific editing service. The American Journal Experts (AJE) (https://www.aje.com/) is one such service that has extensive experience helping authors meet PLOS guidelines and can provide language editing, translation, manuscript formatting, and figure formatting to ensure your manuscript meets our submission guidelines. Please note that having the manuscript copyedited by AJE or any other editing services does not guarantee selection for peer review or acceptance for publication. Upon resubmission, please provide the following: The name of the colleague or the details of the professional service that edited your manuscript A copy of your manuscript showing your changes by either highlighting them or using track changes (uploaded as a supporting information file) A clean copy of the edited manuscript (uploaded as the new manuscript file) 3. We note that Figures 2 and 4 in your submission contain [map/satellite] images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission: a. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figures 2 and 4 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license. We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text: “I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.” Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an "Other" file with your submission. In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].” b. If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only. The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful: USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/ Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/ USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/# Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ Authors: Dear Editor; Thank you for your comments regarding Figures 2 and 4 in our submission. We appreciate your attention to copyright matters and would like to clarify the origin of these figures. We want to assure you that these map figures are original creations and do not contain any copyrighted satellite imagery or proprietary map data. As you can verify through our shared codes, we generated these map figures ourselves using the rnaturalearth package in R, which uses Natural Earth (https://www.naturalearthdata.com/), a public domain map dataset including vector country and other administrative boundaries. The data used is from our original research and not from any copyrighted or proprietary sources. The resulting figures are entirely our own work, created through our data analysis and rnaturalearth and ggplot2 mapping functions, without reproducing or modifying any existing copyrighted maps or images. Given this, we believe these figures fully comply with PLOS ONE's copyright policies and the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0). We're happy to provide any additional information if needed. We also added the following paragraph to the Methods section: “All the maps were created using the rnaturalearth package (17) in R (18), which uses the Natural Earth, (https://www.naturalearthdata.com/), a public domain map dataset including vector country and other administrative boundaries.” Additional Editor Comments: Dear Authors, Based on the reviewer reports, the manuscript needs "major revision". Kindly revise the manuscript meticulously. Best Wishes Reviewer's Responses to Questions 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: The links provided are null. Also, why authors decided to upload the code again to another repo while it is already on PLOS ONE? Moreover, QCI has been used for many other pathologies and none of them are cited. GBD 2021 is released and new data should be used. CREDIT statement is missing. Authors: Null links: Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have double-checked all links in the manuscript and ensured they are working correctly in the revised version. Code repository: We appreciate your concern regarding the code repository. Our decision to upload the code to an additional repository aligns with PLOS ONE's data sharing policy and the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). PLOS guidelines state: "All data and related metadata underlying reported findings should be deposited in appropriate public data repositories, unless already provided as part of a submitted article." By sharing our code on OSF, a widely recognized platform in our field, we aimed to enhance its discoverability and accessibility. In the revised manuscript, we will clearly indicate both locations where the code is available to ensure transparency and ease of access for other researchers. QCI use in other pathologies: We appreciate you pointing out this oversight. In our revised manuscript, we have include a more comprehensive literature review, citing relevant studies that have applied QCI to other conditions. We added the following sentence: “The QCI has previously been implemented in several other publications, including lethal (13, 16-18) and non-lethal (19-21) conditions.” GBD 2021 data: We appreciate the reviewer's suggestion to use the latest GBD 2021 data. However, our study was designed, conducted, and analyzed using the most current data available at the time of our research. Updating our entire analysis with GBD 2021 data would require substantial reanalysis that goes beyond the scope of typical revision. Importantly, our interpretations and conclusions are strictly based on and limited to the data we used, ensuring the validity of our findings within the context of our study period. To address this point, we will add a statement in our discussion acknowledging the availability of newer GBD data and suggesting it as an avenue for future research to extend and compare with our current findings. CREDIT statement: We have added a CREDIT statement to the revised manuscript, clearly outlining the contributions of each author according to the established taxonomy. Reviewer #2: The presented work addresses an important subject but can benefit from the following improvements: 1. A thorough English language edit is strongly recommended. For example, in the abstract, "optimize gender disparity ratio (GDR)" might be intended to mean "optimal" or "optimum" as the imperative verb does not make sense in this context. Authors: Thanks for your keen comment. We revised the manuscript and checked for any grammatical errors. 2. The tone of the manuscript should be more academic. For instance, "These include things like how often a health issue occurs" can be revised for a more scholarly tone. Authors: Thanks for your comment. We revised the manuscript and corrected the tone. 3. Regarding the "average per capita incomes," please specify whether these are in PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) exchange rates or local currencies. A simple exchange rate does not capture the purchasing power and its effects adequately. Authors: Thanks for your keen comment. We added PPP to the text. 4. The validation section could be expanded to include data sources for healthcare utilization and the proportion of countries with available utilization data. Authors: Thanks for your comment. Since this section is not the focus of our study, we decided not to go into the details of it, similar to other published QCI studies. However, we added more details as requested. 5. Please elaborate on the scale of the QCI. For instance, if all countries fall within the range of 80-100 and only five countries are in the >60 range, why is the index defined in a range of 0-100 where almost 60% of the index is never used? Authors: Thanks for your comment. This is because of the favourable results of the countries. 0 means the worst QCI and 100 means the best and there may not be any countries with 0 or 100 QCI. Just like university ranking which may not any university be 100 or 0 but the scale is from 0-100. 6. The discussion section needs significant revision. The current discussion on page 20 reads more like an introduction and highlights the importance of the subject rather than discussing the results. Authors: Thanks for your comment. We revised the whole Dicsussion section. 7. Include more analysis and discussion on the significance of the results. What is the importance of this study? What policies should be developed based on these findings? What gap in the literature does this study fill? Authors: Thanks for your comment. As noted in the response to your comment, we revised the Discussion section and added the explanations as requested. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers_rev2.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317267.r003
26 Dec 2024 Decision Letter - Tao Huang, Editor Global, Regional, and National Survey on Burden and Quality of Care Index (QCI) of Orofacial Clefts: Global Burden of Disease Systematic Analysis 1990–2019 PONE-D-24-10176R1 Dear Dr. Sofi-Mahmudi, 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, Tao Huang Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317267.r004
Formally Accepted
28 Dec 2024 Acceptance Letter - Tao Huang, Editor PONE-D-24-10176R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Sofi-Mahmudi, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Tao Huang Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0317267.r005

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .