Dear Dr. DRAMAN,

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.

==============================

ACADEMIC EDITOR:-->The submission reflects scientific relevance as adjudged by the reviewers. However, some fundamental issues limit its quality for publication in the current form. For instance, the absence of adequate discussion of the results with appropriate references has watered down the reproducibility of the methodologies, results and the overall chance for publication of the current submission. Additionally, the authors need to justify the significance of the study, relate it to the literature and identify the gap in the existing knowledge that this study aims to address. Again, what are the limitations of this study, and how can the authors recommend future research on the study? Moreover, some other major concerns have been raised by the reviewers affecting pivotal sections of the study. Kindly pay close attention to these and address them critically before resubmission.. ?>

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 22 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.

• 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,

Yusuf Oloruntoyin Ayipo, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf .

2. Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement:

“This work was supported by the Universiti Sains Malaysia, Research University

Team (RUTeam) Grant Scheme with Project No: 1001/PPSP/8580083, Project Code:

TE0034 (Reference No: 2022/0501]

The funding provided covered the author’s role as a research assistant and facilitated access to the Universiti Sains Malaysia library’s electronic databases and resources”

Please provide an amended statement that declares *all* the funding or sources of support (whether external or internal to your organization) received during this study, as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now. Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement.

Please include your amended Funding Statement within your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf.

3. We note that your Data Availability Statement is currently as follows: [All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.]

Please confirm at this time whether or not your submission contains all raw data required to replicate the results of your study. Authors must share the “minimal data set” for their submission. PLOS defines the minimal data set to consist of the data required to replicate all study findings reported in the article, as well as related metadata and methods (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-minimal-data-set-definition).

For example, authors should submit the following data:

- The values behind the means, standard deviations and other measures reported;

- The values used to build graphs;

- The points extracted from images for analysis.

Authors do not need to submit their entire data set if only a portion of the data was used in the reported study.

If your submission does not contain these data, please either upload them as Supporting Information files or deposit them to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of recommended repositories, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories.

If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. If data are owned by a third party, please indicate how others may request data access.

4. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript:

“This work was supported by the Universiti Sains Malaysia, Research University

Team (RUTeam) Grant Scheme with Project No: 1001/PPSP/8580083, Project Code:

TE0034 (Reference No: 2022/0501]”

We note that you have provided additional information within the Acknowledgements Section that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. Please note that funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form.

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows:

“This work was supported by the Universiti Sains Malaysia, Research University

Team (RUTeam) Grant Scheme with Project No: 1001/PPSP/8580083, Project Code:

TE0034 (Reference No: 2022/0501]

The funding provided covered the author’s role as a research assistant and facilitated access to the Universiti Sains Malaysia library’s electronic databases and resources”

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

5. If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

The submission reflects scientific relevance as adjudged by the reviewers. However, some fundamental issues limit its quality for publication in the current form. For instance, the absence of adequate discussion of the results with appropriate references has watered down the reproducibility of the methodologies, results and the overall chance for publication of the current submission. Additionally, the authors need to justify the significance of the study, relate it to the literature and identify the gap in the existing knowledge that this study aims to address. Again, what are the limitations of this study, and how can the authors recommend future research on the study? Moreover, some other major concerns have been raised by the reviewers affecting pivotal sections of the study. Kindly pay close attention to these and address them critically before resubmission.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

Reviewer #1: Dear authors: After reviewing your manuscript, I found that it follows the template and meets the PLOS ONE style requirements, including file naming. The PLOS ONE style template can be found at:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

The presentation of research data should be well-synthesized, with the aim of summarizing the number of pages and displaying it with attractive tables and graphs, following the PLOS ONE template.

Therefore, authors should further enhance their literacy by reading high-impact journals, as they reflect the quality of their research and publications.

Reviewer #2: Dear authors,

Thank you for your well-structured and timely review on mobile applications for diabetic kidney disease self-management. With diabetes and its renal complication being a major clinical and public health burden, your work will play a pivotal role in both management and prevention of diabetes-related kidney diseases.

Following my review, I have identifed a few areas that require your attention in other to Improve clarity and enhance impact.

1. Grammatical error and Language Inconsistency

Please ensure tense consistent (kindly review every section of this work with this point in mind), correct few grammatical errors, and vet included sentences for redundancies.

i. "However, because DKD is closely linked to both diabetes and CKD, mobile apps built for either condition often include overlapping features...”

Concern: Overly repetitive of the idea in subsequent sentences.

ii. “Looking across all three conditions helps provide a complete picture...”

Concern: "Looking across..." Please use a scientific language.

iii. “Studies was included if they describe...”

Concern: Review the your choice of verbal in relation to the plural subject, "Studies".

iv. “Two reviewers have independently screened...”

Copncern: You inclusion of "have" was not necessary.

v. “Table 3 shows four recurring core functional domains of self-management features were identified…”

Concern: Awkward phrasing.

2. Lengthy Discussion section.

I consider the discussion paragraphs unnecessarily lengthy and wordy. Kindly condense it.

3. The claim in this statement, “Our study is among the first to comprehensively explore mobile health apps spanning DKD, T2DM, and CKD.” is considered an overstatement because of your use of he word "first". Please, substitute with other words, e.g. "few"

Thank you once again for the privilage to review your submitted manuscript.

Reviewer #3: Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript which is of high public and clinical relevance.

In your work titled, which is a scoping review on the features of mobile apps supporting self-management among individuals with diabetic kidney disease, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease, you demonstrated a good command of scoping review methods and gave a vital descriptive synthesis of the functionalities of existing app. However, there are major issues in the Methodology and Discussion that will need further attention.

Methodology.

Issue 1. Absence of pilot testing which has affected Reproducibility.

Refer to this statement, "Data charting was conducted using a standardised extraction form developed by the review team, which included predefined fields based on the review objectives and PCC framework."

Recommendation: Please include a well coordinated pilot testing or validation to enhance reproducibility.

Issue 2. Data synthesis.

Recommendation: Please include a description of how features were categorized into the four functional domains.

DIscussion.

Issue 1: Structural concern.

I consider this section's paragraphs to be too long.

Recommendation: Please split this by theme; e.g. Self-management features, Integration with care teams, Regional variations, Limitations and implications. This will potentially increase depth of discussion but you do need to avoid wordiness.

Issue 2: Shallow limitation and Implications discussion.

Recommendation: Kindly include a subsection that will summarize the implications of your study for app developers and clinical practice. Similarly, expand on limitations of database coverage.

Issue 3: Data security and ethical implications.

Recommendation: Please expand on how data security and ethical concerns can be safely protected.

Issue 4: Minor tautology.

“Interactive, behaviorally informed, and patient-centred app design”

Recommendation: Kindly omit one of “behaviorally informed” and “patient-centred” as they have semantic overlap.

Issue 5: Potential Inconsistency.

Earlier, you stated under the subheading, Integration with Care team and Outcome Measure: "The included studies reported a range of outcome measures encompassing adherence metrics (such as medication compliance and goal tracking), biometric improvements (including blood pressure, HbA1c, and weight), and patient-reported outcomes related to usability and satisfaction [11,21]". However, this statement in the Discussion section, "Although outcomes such as adherence, glycemic control, or usability were reported in several studies, this review did not evaluate their effectiveness" can be seen as a contradiction. This is because the indices alluded to are key effectiveness indicators.

Grammatical Errors.

I encourage you to go through the whole manuscript and carefully look out for typographical errors, missed areas of punctuation, wordiness, awkward phrasing and overstatement with the aim of correcting them.

Reviewer #4: The work was done well, just a few corrections, In table 4, kindly stay consistent with how your sentences are written; that is, are you using lowercases all through or title cases? Therefore ensure consistency. spell check: there was a point where the word "through" is written as "thru". Lastly, what are the other methods/frameworks for conducting scoping reviews, and what influenced your decision for choosing the framework that was used in this review?.

Reviewer #5: The submitted scoping review is well-written and scientifically sound. This review successfully identifies and synthesizes the key features of mobile applications for self-management in DKD, DM, and CKD. The methodology appears robust, and the analysis provides a valuable contribution to the field of digital health.

It is clear and focuses well on identifying features of apps for kidney disease and diabetes; however, including data on downloads or active users would show which apps are truly engaging and have a proven track record. Also, clarifying the cost models of the reviewed apps (e.g., free, freemium, one-time purchase, subscription-based) is essential for assessing equity and practical utility. This information could be added as a new section in the results, or discussed as a key point for future research in the conclusion. Acknowledging this as a limitation also shows the authors have thought carefully about the bigger picture.

A minor editorial point was noted regarding citation style. It is recommended to use an en dash (–) for ranges of three or more consecutive numbers (Line # 172, #207, #250, #255).

**********

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: Kirean Kelechi Eze

Reviewer #3: Yes: Jessica Tochukwu Nzeadibe

Reviewer #4: No

Reviewer #5: No

**********

[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.]

To ensure your figures meet our technical requirements, please review our figure guidelines: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures

You may also use PLOS’s free figure tool, NAAS, to help you prepare publication quality figures: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures#loc-tools-for-figure-preparation.

NAAS will assess whether your figures meet our technical requirements by comparing each figure against our figure specifications.

Features of mobile apps for diabetic kidney disease self-management: a scoping review

PONE-D-25-44415R1

Dear Dr. DRAMAN,

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. For questions related to billing, please contact billing support .

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,

Yusuf Oloruntoyin Ayipo, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The submission meets the level of scientific rigour required for publication in this title, and all the concerns raised by the respective reviewers have been addressed satisfactorily. I hereby recommend the manuscript for publication in the current version.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #4: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #5: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions??>

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: No

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

Reviewer #4: All corrections were adequate and addressed. This shows good academic resilience. Well done, authors.

Reviewer #5: (No Response)

**********

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 #4: Yes: OLAMIDE AWOLAJA

Reviewer #5: No

**********