PONE-D-24-45344Importance of Data Visualization of Exposure Dose Statistics for Radiological Workers in Korean Healthcare FacilitiesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Choi,

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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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Mohamad Syazwan Mohd Sanusi

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: N/A

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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

Reviewer #2: 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

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: Given that this article does not focus on scientific testing or original research, but rather on improving data presentation through visualization, it might not be suitable for a high-impact investigational scientific journal that prioritizes novel research findings. Instead, this article might be more appropriate for journals focusing on public health, epidemiology, or data visualization—especially those that focus on improving communication or safety practices in industries like healthcare. However, this may yet be amenable to PLOS publication in some formats.

The article discusses methods for enhancing the communication of radiation exposure data for healthcare workers, particularly radiological technologists (RT), through data visualization techniques. It focuses on improving the 2022 Annual Report by the KDCA, which provides data on individual exposure doses but is primarily in tabular form, making it difficult for non-experts to understand.

Key points include:

Dose Comparisons: The report highlights that RT workers have significantly higher radiation exposure than other healthcare professions, such as dental doctors and general doctors. Visual tools like box plots and radar charts were used to show these differences, with radar charts revealing higher doses in younger and male RT workers.

Trends in Workforce and Exposure: The number of radiological workers has increased, with growth particularly among nurses and radiology residents. Sparkline charts and treemaps were recommended to show trends in workforce growth and regional variations in exposure doses.

Multivariate Data Visualization: Chernoff Faces were used to visualize the distribution of radiation doses across multiple regions and professional categories. These visual representations allowed for quick identification of high-risk areas, although there is some variability in how these faces are interpreted based on the data assigned to facial features.

Regulatory Impact on Exposure: Despite a general decline in average radiation exposure since 2018, RT workers still experience higher doses. Regression analysis showed a decreasing trend in RT exposure, indicating that safety measures have had a positive effect.

Visualization as a Solution: The article argues that data visualization methods like radar charts, sparklines, and Chernoff faces can make complex exposure data more accessible, especially for readers without a technical background. Visualization can highlight key trends, patterns, and comparisons, making it easier to convey important information than raw tables alone.

Limitations and Accessibility: While Excel and R programming were used for creating the visualizations, the study acknowledges that R may be challenging for some users, though it is a powerful tool for advanced visualizations.

Conclusion: The article concludes that data visualization is crucial for improving the delivery and understanding of exposure dose information. It recommends supplementing traditional tables with visual tools to make the data more intuitive and actionable, supporting better safety management for radiological workers.

Overall, the article advocates for a shift towards using more accessible, clear, and engaging visual tools to communicate radiation exposure data effectively, enhancing comprehension and aiding decision-making in safety management

Limitations:

Lack of a Scientific Hypothesis or Research Question: The paper does not test a specific scientific hypothesis or research question. Instead, it largely presents a collection of visualization methods applied to existing data from the KDCA's 2022 Annual Report. There is little direct experimentation or data analysis aimed at answering a novel scientific question about radiation exposure itself. The article is more about how to present data rather than generating new insights from the data itself.

Absence of Original Data Collection or Experimental Results: The study doesn't collect new data or provide new findings about the radiation exposure trends. It uses already available public datasets and focuses on presenting them in a more accessible format. While this is a useful exercise, it's more of an informational study or tool development rather than a groundbreaking piece of research.

Limited Statistical Testing: While the paper mentions some statistical tests (e.g., regression lines for trends), it doesn’t appear to use statistical methods to draw conclusions from the data. It could benefit from a more robust statistical analysis or hypothesis testing around a scientific question to examine the impact of different variables (e.g., profession, age, sex) on radiation exposure more rigorously.

Limited Novelty in Visualization Techniques: While the article does a good job of applying existing techniques (radar charts, sparklines, etc.) to the problem, these methods are not particularly novel. There is limited innovation in the choice of tools or in how these tools are applied to the dataset.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript was good interesting and good written.

Introduction was good written and include the aim of the study.

Materials and methods were good designed.

Results were good illustrated.

Discussion was good written.

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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.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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PONE-D-24-45344R1Enhancing the Communication of Radiation Exposure Data for Radiological Workers Using Data Visualization TechniquesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Choi,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 28 2025 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,

Mohamad Syazwan Mohd Sanusi

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

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.

Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Authors,

Please find my comments below for your reference:

Title: Please include the state or country where the proposed method is applied. If this method specifically targets the health sciences community in a particular region (e.g., Asia), please indicate this in both the abstract and introduction.

Images and Tables: Improve the quality of the images presented in this work. All tables must be revised; some need to be enlarged with clearer text and color.

Column Titles: Highlight some column titles to improve visibility.

Captions: Ensure all figures have appropriate captions.

Capitalization: Maintain consistent capitalization for place names, using either title case or sentence case as appropriate.

Units: Provide appropriate units for all figures and tables (e.g., year, age, crime rate).

Typo: Correct "Categoty" to "Category."

Spacing: Ensure "0.38 mSv" includes a space between the number and unit.

Line 81: Remove the quotation ("") symbol.

Figure 5 Caption: Does it need to specify that it is a U.S. state map? If so, please cite the reference as well.

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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: (No Response)

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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: Generalizability:

The study is focused on data from South Korea and may not necessarily be generalizable to other regions or countries. Differences in healthcare infrastructure, radiation safety regulations, and exposure practices could lead to different results in other settings. Cross-country comparisons should account for these contextual differences when making conclusions about radiation safety on a global scale.

Visualization Over-reliance:

While the article advocates for using visualization techniques to simplify complex data, there is a risk of over-relying on visualizations without ensuring that they provide enough depth for decision-making. Visualization methods like radar charts or Chernoff faces are useful for highlighting patterns but may not provide sufficient statistical rigor or details required for comprehensive scientific analysis or policy development.

Ethical and Privacy Concerns:

Although not explicitly addressed in the article, the study uses individual exposure data from healthcare workers. It is important to ensure that privacy and ethical considerations are taken into account when handling and presenting sensitive data. The article does not mention any safeguards for ensuring that the data is anonymized or that privacy concerns are adequately addressed.

ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.

Reviewer #2: The revised version of the manuscript was good written and all comments of reviewers were addressed.

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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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[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.

Enhancing the Communication of Radiation Exposure Data for Radiological Workers in Kortea Using Data Visualization Techniques

PONE-D-24-45344R2

Dear Dr. Choi,

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,

Mohamad Syazwan Mohd Sanusi

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

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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

**********

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: Comments were addressed and placed in the document with tracked changes. Thanks for the opportunity to review.

Reviewer #2: The revised manuscript was good written and discussed.

All comments of reviewers were addressed in the manuscript.

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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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