PONE-D-25-02185 The Pandemic Journaling Project: A new dataset of first-person accounts of the COVID-19 pandemic PLOS ONE

Dear Dr.  Karcher,

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Line 82-85: "When the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading rapidly around the globe, experts struggled to understand the epidemiology of the virus; to produce narratives that anxious publics could understand; and to generate practical guidelines that could interrupt viral transmission and minimize morbidity and mortality." There are no references to support this statement. More references should be cited, with the following one as an example (citing is optional):

Liu BM, Yao Q, Cruz-Cosme R, Yarbrough C, Draper K, Suslovic W, Muhammad I, Contes KM, Hillyard DR, Teng S, Tang Q. Genetic Conservation and Diversity of SARS-CoV-2 Envelope Gene Across Variants of Concern. J Med Virol. 2025 Jan;97(1):e70136. doi: 10.1002/jmv.70136. PMID: 39744807.

"As this new virus jumped across borders, countries, and continents, it quickly became clear that different regions, communities, and individuals would be affected in vastly different ways": There are no references to support this statement. More references should be cited, with this one (PMID: 40137747) as an example (citing is optional)

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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

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

Reviewer #1: 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

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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

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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: The COVID-19 epidemic has changed the lives of people in different regions and backgrounds for a long time, especially their views and corresponding ways on medical, health and other public fields.

Unlike professional research papers in virology, basic medicine, or clinical medicine, this paper focuses more on introducing the methodology of the innovative multimedia dataset of The Pandemic Journalism Project, baseline characteristics of the included population, and prospects for future applications.

Thanks to the advancement of computer technology, human society has ushered in the era of artificial intelligence, and the discourse power of traditional social media has gradually become more accessible to the general public. People have the opportunity to obtain equal access to the possibility of information dissemination. This may enable researchers with different purposes in the future to objectively face the views and choices of individuals in major historical events, as well as the phased results of the real world that have arisen from them.

The paper provides a detailed description of the reasons for the initiation of the dataset, inclusion principles, salient features, goals and objectives, implementation methods, data collection, data security, baseline characteristics of the population, population mobility, promotion and application areas, and future possibilities. The logic is clear and the description is sufficient, which helps people who are interested in this project to understand, participate, and apply it.

But this does not mean that there is no room for discussion in the paper.

1. Although Figure 1 is a very detailed project directory, it needs to be reconsidered whether it is suitable as a figure format for publishing scientific papers. If readers are encountering tables for the first time, although they understand that they are the framework and content of the project, in order to truly understand, they must read the entire paper or operate in the application to have a chance to understand such a rich and comprehensive system document.

2. Figures 2 to 7 are all descriptions of population baseline characteristics. In other words, from line 396 to line 559, such a long content is only a general description of population baselines in scientific research papers. In other words, it is possible that a table can present all the content more concisely. Of course, as a detailed introduction to interdisciplinary writing or projects, this arrangement may not be unreasonable.

3. Traditional research is either prospective or retrospective, but how does this study ensure the authenticity of the records? What does it mean that if someone records documents or videos that do not match reality, how is the project identified? After all, people may have different appearances in front of the camera and in real life.

4. As stated in the paper, the project has already begun to be applied in areas such as population mental health, protection of women's and children's rights, vaccine injection, reproductive decision-making, and even immigration and family impact. How are these data quantitatively applied? For example, how is video information converted into data that can be used for textual research?

5. As an open bidirectional database, how is data security guaranteed? Does it mean that the original creator can change the original record?

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Reviewer #1: No

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The Pandemic Journaling Project: A new dataset of first-person accounts of the COVID-19 pandemic

PONE-D-25-02185R1

Dear Dr. Karcher,

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.

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Kind regards,

Benjamin M. Liu, MBBS, PhD, D(ABMM), MB(ASCP)

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

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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

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

Reviewer #1: 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

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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

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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: Thanks the author team for their detailed responses to each of the review comments.

As the authors noted, different disciplines and fields may interpret the same data from different perspectives and using different methods to display. However, this is precisely the charm of interdisciplinary research.

In particular, the integration of traditional medical experimental fields such as virology with new directions in news communication fields like new media may enable researchers, and even those affected by the pandemic, to objectively understand the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the real world from diverse perspectives. This could also facilitate the development of public health policies to better address future unknown pandemics.

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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

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