-->PONE-D-25-69050-->-->Wildlife-vehicle collisions, roadkilled animals, and human health: A scoping review protocol-->-->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?

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Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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.

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

Reviewer #1: The manuscript describes a scoping review protocol for understanding the various kinds of impacts of wildlife-vehicle collisions on humans. This is a relatively understudied aspect of roadkill, and I congratulate the authors for devising this study. I look forward to reading the results of the completed study, as it potentially has important repercussions for human health, and can also help argue for safer roads for wildlife.

The review protocol is well-written, and well-described. I have a few comments, specifically pertaining to the flow and readability of the text. Certain things need to be described and clarified, for the manuscript to be understood by the wider scientific readership.

Below are my detailed comments:

Abstract

Background: include physical (injury, fatality)

Search strategy: I suggest detailing the process of managing screening (in the methods in detail) instead of prescribing a paid software, which may not be accessible to some researchers trying to replicate the process.

Introduction:

Page 4, para 1,2: Are you including domestic animal collisions too? It would be prudent to specify this at the beginning (since you also use the term ‘roadkilled animals’). Although the term ‘WVC’ indicates the study is concentrated on wildlife species only, a lot of domestic/free-ranging animals are also killed on roads, and can affect humans similarly. Alternately, define WVC at the beginning (wild animal fatalities resulting from collisions with vehicles).

Para 2: I suggest reorganising the second paragraph to direct the narrative towards human-impacts of WVCs, from the relatively well-studied aspect i.e., ecological impacts.

Page 5, para 2: “prior reviews have examined WVCs and roadkilled animals more broadly” suggest defining ‘broad’ (mainly ecological, patterns etc).

Paras 2,3: I understand the rationale behind the review (to be conducted) and how the scoping process is designed to achieve that. I believe separating the two would make for easier reading and comprehension for readers, and strengthen the introduction. I suggest: first state the merits/novelty of the proposed review framework, and then the perceived benefits of the resulting review results (or vice versa).

Page 8 (Study Selection): same comment regarding the software. Consider excluding the name, except if it is central to your review process, or no other alternatives exist (including open-source or free ones).

Page 8 (inclusion and exclusion criteria): “Records may be cross-sectional or longitudinal.” needs clarification

Page 10: Please describe the rationale behind independent coding of findings by reviewers, and not based on agreed upon codes and pre-defined categories. If I understand correctly, ‘open coding’ means it is up to the reviewers to interpret and code findings independently. On what basis will the discrepancies be resolved? Are the categories and sub-categories pre-defined? This section needs a little clarification and restructuring. Can the authors define what ‘code’ and ‘categories’ mean (maybe through examples) for readers unfamiliar with content analysis?

Reviewer #2: Main review:

This manuscript describes a scoping protocol (to assess the literature landscape, rather than to systematically review it) to assess the impacts of wildlife-vehicle collisions and exposure to roadkill on various factors of human health. The authors will be focusing on physical, social, and emotional impacts in their review. The protocol follows PRISMA-SrC for reviews and the results will be descriptive of the distribution of the literature rather than a systematic review of what the literature describes (as is appropriate for a scoping review).

I believe that the proposed study would be important and of interest to sociologists, ecologists, and policymakers alike. The protocol is generally thorough and includes most of the necessary components (some are discussed by the authors but were not included in the submission). The citations all appear to be sound and properly formatted. I feel like the protocol does a decent job describing the study but can be tightened up in a few ways:

Major comments:

1. I am a little surprised at the sparseness of the citations regarding the ecological consequences of roadkill given the ubiquity and significance of roadkill around the world. I am not a roadkill expert by any means, but even a cursory search yields several other ecological reviews that seem relevant to the problem at hand. For example (amongst many others):

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2006.11.006

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10344-019-1357-4

https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12942

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0166941

I understand that the purpose of the proposed review is to focus on the human impacts (especially the psychological/emotional impacts) rather than ecological factors. However, I feel that a stronger engagement with the ecological literature would benefit the authors regarding the various avenues through which roadkill yields emotional impacts (and thus the various ways of categorizing their findings in a review). For example, roadkill may also be a vector for contaminants/disease which (1) could be a significant physical impact of interacting with roadkill and (2) creates an entirely different collection of stressors than those caused by an initial collision.

Especially given that the authors intend to use an open coding approach, the more familiarity and understanding of the possible categories various studies may fall under, the better. I would be far more confident in the eventual choices of the authors if there was a clearer demonstration of engagement with the literature at this stage.

2. If the scoping search has already been conducted (which is the case here), then I believe all of the search strings, their relevant databases, and the results at the time of the search should be reported, rather than the one example given in Supplemental File 2. If the string in Supplementary File 2 is the only string that was used across all databases, then the first full sentence on page 8 (“An example…”) should be updated to say so. A simple table could summarize these strings, databases, and results effectively. Doing so would also give reviewers (both like myself for this protocol and for the potential full manuscript) a good idea of if there is enough literature or ‘critical mass’ for a scoping review to be effective.

3. The section ‘Charting the Data’ describes a standardized extraction form. The authors should if able include this form as a supplementary document.

4. The authors provide no plan for posting their data publicly upon completion of the review. The authors have also not registered with PROSPERO.

Other minor comments:

1. Throughout, I believe the in-text citations need to be in square rather than standard brackets for PLOS ONE.

2. Key terms (page 7) could be summarized in a table. For example, take each core concept as a column and include synonyms down the rows. Such a table would also help readers intuit how the search strings function (per the Boolean operators).

3. Does Covidence have/need a citation?

4. “Afterwards, the titles and abstracts of each included record will be independently screened by two of three reviewers. That is, three reviewers will participate in the title and abstract screening but each record will only be reviewed by two of the three reviewers.” – On page 8, this could be one sentence. This whole paragraph (‘Study Selection’, p. 8) reads a little confusing.

5. What happens if authors are unresponsive for those papers behind paywalls/that are inaccessible? (under ‘Study Selection’, p. 8)

6. In ‘Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria’ on p. 8 & 9, many of the statements are redundant (e.g. “Also, records must be available in English” and “Records unavailable in English will also be excluded”). These criteria could be summarized as a list. It may also be worth mentioning that results can come from anywhere in the world (if that is the case).

7. Then, data from the key findings section of the extraction form will be coded inductively and independently by two reviewers. That is, no codebook will be developed. Instead, two reviewers will use open coding to code the extracted data. Afterwards, the three reviewers will meet to discuss the codes and resolve any discrepancies. – is there any particular reason why the authors are choosing to not use a codebook? If there are specific justifications for having each reviewer use open coding instead of something more standardized, I highly recommend including them explicitly. Otherwise, the choice appears somewhat arbitrary.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Eden J Forbes

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Animal-vehicle collisions, roadkilled animals, and human health: A scoping review protocol

PONE-D-25-69050R1

Dear Dr. Doherty,

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,

Vitor Hugo Rodrigues Paiva, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: