Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 25, 2025
Decision Letter - Diogo Guedes Vidal, Editor

PONE-D-25-12586Practical strategies and best practices in co-designing virtual reality with Indigenous peoples and communities: A Scoping review protocolPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wong,

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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Kind regards,

Diogo Guedes Vidal, 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

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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

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

Descriptions of methods and materials in the protocol should be reported in sufficient detail for another researcher to reproduce all experiments and analyses. The protocol should describe the appropriate controls, sample size calculations, and replication needed to ensure that the data are robust and reproducible.

Reviewer #1: 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

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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 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: In terms of method, there is a lack of the following items required by Plos One in the study planning: hypothesis, sample size calculation, type of data and statistical analyses to be used and where and when the data will be made available.

Line 142: What will be the analysis period? Please, include.

Line: 189: I suggest improving the wording by stating that these will be published articles. The word "available" gives the impression that only open access articles will be analyzed.

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Reviewer #1: Yes:  Rodrigo Rodrigues de Freitas

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Revision 1

Academic Editor Comments - Response

1. We have revised our manuscript to align with the PLOS ONE formatting guidelines, including style and file naming conventions, as outlined in the templates provided. All files have been renamed and formatted accordingly.

2. We have completed the PLOS questionnaire on inclusivity in global research and uploaded it as Supporting Information (S4 Appendix) as per journal policy. We appreciate this important step in promoting transparency and ethical engagement in Indigenous research contexts.

3. We have included the following Data Availability Statement in the submission form: “All relevant data from this study will be made available upon study completion.”

4. Two authors (JW and KY) have thoroughly reviewed the reference list to ensure accuracy and completeness. We confirm that as of April 28, 2025, no retracted articles have been cited.

Reviewer 1 Comments - Response

1. Thank you for your comment. As this is a protocol for a scoping review, it does not involve primary data collection or hypothesis testing and therefore does not require a sample size calculation or statistical analysis plan. Scoping reviews are designed to “determine the scope or coverage of a body of literature on a given topic and give clear indication of the volume of literature and studies available as well as an overview (broad or detailed) of its focus” (Munn et al., 2018). Our data availability statement will be submitted through the submission system.

Reference:

Munn, Z., Peters, M. D. J., Stern, C., Tufanaru, C., McArthur, A., & Aromataris, E. (2018). Systematic review or scoping review? Guidance for authors when choosing between a systematic or scoping review approach. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 18(1), 143. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-018-0611-x

2.Thank you for the comment. As this is a scoping review, we interpret “analysis period” to refer to the expected timeframe during which study screening, data extraction, and synthesis will occur. We have added the following sentence to our manuscript to clarify this timeline:

Line 135: “Screening, data extraction, and analysis will be conducted between March and June 2025.”

3. We agree with this suggestion and have replaced “publicly available” with “published and unpublished” to better reflect the scope of our review. The revised sentence now reads:

Line 203: “As this scoping review draws on published and unpublished articles, research ethics board approval is not required. The review will be submitted to a peer-reviewed, open-access journal to ensure broad accessibility.”

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Diogo Guedes Vidal, Editor

Best practices and practical strategies for co-designing virtual reality with Indigenous peoples: A scoping review protocol

PONE-D-25-12586R1

Dear Dr. Wong,

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.

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Kind regards,

Diogo Guedes Vidal, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Diogo Guedes Vidal, Editor

PONE-D-25-12586R1

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wong,

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.

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Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Diogo Guedes Vidal

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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