PONE-D-24-60655Spatial distribution of effective coverage of modern contraceptive service in EthiopiaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Alemu,

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,

Yitagesu Habtu Aweke, Ph.D

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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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: Abstract

� Avoid using acronyms at this section

� Please include the clear gap beyond the coverage.

� It would be better if you included keywords

Introduction

• There is an idea stated “Therefore, this indicates the prevalence of unmet need for modern contraceptives among married or in-union women is around 10% [7].” in paragraph 2.

� It is not clear how the unmet need was calculated

� And even it is better to focus on the study area like sub-Saharan, Ethiopia

• Try to include the figures how the poor quality affects the quality of health.

• Try to include how poor quality related with effective coverage.

• Despite it was not adjusted with quality of service, I recommend you to include the figure of the coverage.

• There are acronyms without any elaborations in their first stand

Methods

1. Measurement

� How did you measure the frequency and or duration of contraceptive use? Is it a history/ever used or a current use?

� How the quality of measurement was determined? When did you say poor quality or good quality?

2. There are missed components that had to be reported despite it was a secondary data analysis.

� What was the study design?

� What was the study population?

� What was the sampling technique?

� How did you assure the data quality?

� Ethical consideration

3. Data analysis

� Spatial autocorrelation, spatial interpolation, and hotspot analysis had to be written separately as subheadings.

� What model was used? How the model chosen?

� How the samples weighted?

� What way of measurement was used to measure variations between regions?

Result

� Your text report regarding “Age” is inappropriate. It says 42.25% below 42 and 21.74% above 36: What does it mean? Does it mean 0-24 and 36 to ……….?

� The total number of participants (n) is not the same as that you stated in some variables. For example marital status (n=7619).

Why this happened?

Better to include “total” as a category for each variable

� Categories of some variables are not logical sequenced. For example region

I recommend you to sequence variables in logical manner using their frequency either ascending or descending

� Some graphs lacks the minimum standard that should contain like Legend, caption

� The footnote for table 5 is not written in a recommended way.

Better to state it under the table in text form with a specific note (to attract the reader)

Discussion

� In some points you tried to discuss other’s study rather than yours which is not a recommended scientific way of writing.

� In some points you said various studies/many studies/different studies but you cited only a single reference.

� In some points you said other’s finding low coverage and or quality.

Why preferred to report or compare and contrast in this way?

Why didn’t you compare and contrast in a quantitative way (or why didn’t you show their difference and or similarity rather than concluding others?) which is measurable to judge for the readers.

It even difficult to conclude other’s finding

� You discussed with a study done on counseling quality which is not similar with yours.

� There is an idea which says “Moreover, Facilities in urban areas had higher quality (68.54%).”

Is it your finding or others’?

Whether it is your or others’, it is not a recommended scientific ways of writing.

Conclusion

� “The study found that, Ethiopia had a poor effective coverage of modern contraceptives services”

This idea is a copy paste of the first sentence.

� “Somalia and Afar regions had less effective coverage of modern contraceptive service.”

This is also repeated

� “Policymakers and responsible bodies should focus on improving the quality of the facilities in rural areas and the facilities in Gambela, Somali and Afar”

This is also repeated

Reviewer #2: Dear author,

Thanks for your kind attention to the different factors for client satisfaction. I think you need to update some of the definitions to well accepted ones. Also you need to provide definition of some words like poor, low and high in your manuscript.

While an indicator defined low in your manuscript, could be moderate or even high in somewhere else.

I provided my comments on the text and will attach two files to this review.

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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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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: Yes:  Yitayal Ayalew Goshu

Reviewer #2: Yes:  Mohammad Eslami

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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.]

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Comment as a reviwer for EDHS data.docx

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-24-60655 MEslami 20250312.pdf

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-24-60655 ME 20250312.pdf

PONE-D-24-60655R1Spatial distribution of effective coverage of modern contraceptive service in EthiopiaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Alemu,

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 Jul 05 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'.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Yitagesu Habtu Aweke, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments :

• Please check writing issues in all of your sections or subsection of your manuscript, specifically in your discussion section. Eg. punctuation marks in your abstract section, methods subsection line 4^th line, “… 1.92 with (p< 0.001)”, results subsection “…contraceptive” or contraceptives? of your abstract …
• Check that all of your references are according to PLoS citations, and references
• Check the journal’s outstanding criteria from the authors guideline. E.g. “Patient and public involvement?”
• Check that your figures are a per the submission guidelines  

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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 #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 #2: Partly

**********

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

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

**********

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 #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 #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 #2: Thanks for addressing the comment. Unfortunately I couldn't find some revisions in the text. In your responses, you mentioned the lines number which there is no line number in the revised version.

It will be useful if you provide the exact revised line numbers for each response also, use a version with line numbers which make finding the revisions easier.

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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 #2: Yes:  Mohammad Eslami

**********

[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.

PONE-D-24-60655R2

Mapping the effective coverage of modern contraceptive services in Ethiopia

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Alemu,

Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit and about to meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore,  we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses a very minor point raised during the review process.

• 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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 17 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.

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,

Yitagesu Habtu Aweke, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

•  "Patient and public involvement" is not typically part of the journal's criteria for manuscripts of this type, as the study did not include active participation from patients or the public, despite the obvious relevance of its findings to them. 

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.

Mapping the effective coverage of modern contraceptive services in Ethiopia

PONE-D-24-60655R3

Dear Dr. Samrawit Alemu,

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,

Yitagesu Habtu Aweke, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE