PONE-D-24-23935Addressing the immigrant screening gap: A protocol for a systematic review on interventions to enhance colorectal cancer screening among immigrants in the United StatesPLOS ONE

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Udoka Okpalauwaekwe, MD, MPH, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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: No

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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 and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This is a very solid systematic review protocol. I have one suggestion regarding the data analysis and synthesis plan. Given the expected heterogeneity and the possibility of not conducting a meta-analysis, I recommend that the authors consider incorporating a visual illustration of their qualitative findings using alluvial charts. This method is a powerful way to report overall trends across all studies included in the systematic review. For reference, you may want to look at a recent example of this approach here: PMC9683573 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36417344/).

Reviewer #2: It was a pleasure reviewing this work which is a systematic review protocol to explore patterns and gaps in CRC screening. While the authors made a strong attempt in being rigourous in their delivery there are areas that need addressing to improve the rigour and quality of this work.

1)Firstly, the format for submission to PLOS ONE should be reviewed and adhered to. the referencing styles are mismatched (with superscripts and numbered styles used). The numbers are placed after the punctuation marks (which should be for superscripts). Eitherway stick to author guidelines and be consistent.

In the Eligibility criteria, provide further description for what will be considered screening behaviour to warrant exclusion. Also provide rationale for exclusion of review studies from inclusion. Would protocols be excluded too as you cite on line 214 "conducting searches forward from relevant, peer-reviewed research protocols to find articles discussing study results." Why is that?

What will be the grading system for consideration of moderate to good inter rater agreement for your Kappa scoring?

From Line 211 to 215, I don't understand the rational for the 3 steps itemized. I find it redundant if you already did that in your screening. Except it is any different from what is already described I advise further explaining your rationale or removing it. For example, why will you conduct searches again in step (c) to find articles discussing results? and what is the point of reviewing bibliographies again when you already mentioned it in your eligibility criteria on line 164.

What would you use to appraise cross-sectional studies. ROBINS-I?

Line 263: "If consensus cannot be reached after discussion with both reviewers, the supervising author will be consulted (AR)" is redundant. It has been described before in Line 204.

Line 264:"We will report on themes that contribute to a higher risk of bias rating in the full review (i.e., unmasked outcome assessment, differential awareness of trial participation)." what does this mean? what is the aim vis a vis your core objectives.

Line 228: "Missing data in publications that are requested on the extraction form will be elicited by contacting the listed contact author once by email at the email address listed on the publication." This is a bit vague and I am unsure if contacting corresponding authors would significantly benefit the design of your study, which relies on secondary data. If the purpose is to clarify already published data, this should generally be acceptable. However, if the intent is to collect additional data, such as missing information, this would likely require an ethics application for secondary use of data. I recommend confirming the ethical requirements with your institution to ensure compliance.

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Reviewer #1: Yes:  Dr. Jean C. Bikomeye

Reviewer #2: Yes:  Udoka Okpalauwaekwe MD, MPH, PhD

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Submitted filename: Review notes.docx

Addressing the immigrant screening gap: A protocol for a systematic review on interventions to enhance colorectal cancer screening among immigrants in the United States

PONE-D-24-23935R1

Dear Dr. McCready,

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,

Udoka Okpalauwaekwe, MD, MPH, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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

**********

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

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Please considering citing one good papers that has an alluvial chart since you are proposing to use it for visual allustration.

Reviewer #2: Thanks for the opportunity to review this work again. I believe all comments seem to be sufficiently addressed. I have no further comments and look forward to reading your work in the nearest future.

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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: Yes:  Udoka Okpalauwaekwe MD, MPH, PhD

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