-->PONE-D-25-39248-->-->Use of Implementation Science Models, Theories, and Frameworks in Pediatric Rehabilitation: Protocol for a Scoping Review-->-->PLOS One

Dear Dr. Munce,

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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Protocol is well developed, methodologically sound, and aligned with established scoping review standards.

1. You include a broad range of MTFs and pediatric populations, which enhances inclusivity but may also introduce conceptual heterogeneity. Consider clarifying how the team will manage conceptual overlap and variability across frameworks during synthesis to ensure interpretive coherence.

2. You state that studies must report “application” of MTFs, but the criteria for determining meaningful use versus superficial citation are not fully specified. clarify how the reviewers will distinguish substantive application from nominal or symbolic reference to frameworks.

3. While deductive content analysis is described, details regarding coding procedures, analyst reflexivity, and consensus-building are limited.

4. You exclude formal quality appraisal, consistent with scoping review standards. However, the implications of this decision are not fully discussed. Consider briefly outlining how variation in study rigor will be considered during interpretation.

5.  Your proposed timeline is a little ambitious given the scope of databases and analytic plans. While its acceptable, a brief acknowledgment of potential timeline risks and mitigation strategies may enhance credibility.

6. Terminology related to “model,” “theory,” and “framework” could be briefly reiterated in the

7. The description of equity analysis could be slightly expanded to clarify anticipated outputs.

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

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 26 2026 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Udoka Okpalauwaekwe, MD, MPH, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Journal Requirements:

-->1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.-->--> -->-->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 is supported and funded by Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation. Dr. S. Munce holds a CIHR Implementation Science Chair in Human Development, Child and Youth Health. The funders did not have any role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. -->--> -->-->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 ://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. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: -->-->We would like to thank, Jessie Cunningham, a librarian at the Hospital for Sick Children, for their support in completing the PRESS Peer Review of Electronic Search Strategies for the search strategy developed for this review. The authors would also like to thank the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation for supporting this work.-->--> -->-->We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, 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 is supported and funded by Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital Foundation. Dr. S. Munce holds a CIHR Implementation Science Chair in Human Development, Child and Youth Health. The funders did not have any role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.-->--> -->-->Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.-->--> -->-->4. When completing the data availability statement of the submission form, you indicated that you will make your data available on acceptance. We strongly recommend all authors decide on a data sharing plan before acceptance, as the process can be lengthy and hold up publication timelines. Please note that, though access restrictions are acceptable now, your entire data will need to be made freely accessible if your manuscript is accepted for publication. This policy applies to all data except where public deposition would breach compliance with the protocol approved by your research ethics board. If you are unable to adhere to our open data policy, please kindly revise your statement to explain your reasoning and we will seek the editor's input on an exemption. Please be assured that, once you have provided your new statement, the assessment of your exemption will not hold up the peer review process.-->--> -->-->5. We notice that your supplementary table is included in the manuscript file. Please remove, leaving only the individual file, uploaded separately. Please ensure that each Supporting Information file has a legend listed in the manuscript after the references list.-->--> -->-->6. 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.

7. 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:

Protocol is well developed, methodologically sound, and aligned with established scoping review standards.

1. You include a broad range of MTFs and pediatric populations, which enhances inclusivity but may also introduce conceptual heterogeneity. Consider clarifying how the team will manage conceptual overlap and variability across frameworks during synthesis to ensure interpretive coherence.

2. You state that studies must report “application” of MTFs, but the criteria for determining meaningful use versus superficial citation are not fully specified. clarify how the reviewers will distinguish substantive application from nominal or symbolic reference to frameworks.

3. While deductive content analysis is described, details regarding coding procedures, analyst reflexivity, and consensus-building are limited.

4. You exclude formal quality appraisal, consistent with scoping review standards. However, the implications of this decision are not fully discussed. Consider briefly outlining how variation in study rigor will be considered during interpretation.

5. Your proposed timeline is a little ambitious given the scope of databases and analytic plans. While its acceptable, a brief acknowledgment of potential timeline risks and mitigation strategies may enhance credibility.

6. Terminology related to “model,” “theory,” and “framework” could be briefly reiterated in the

7. The description of equity analysis could be slightly expanded to clarify anticipated outputs.

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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: Yes

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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: Great protocol and very well written. My recommendations are:

- Adding the rationale for why a certain MTF was chosen in a paper and the fidelity of implementation of the MTF as a category for the data to be abstracted

- Consideration for analyzing the data to see if there are difference between low/medium income country vs. high income country

- Fleshing out the discussion and conclusion section - ex. adding details about how the results would be disseminated, strengths and limitations. It is currently only a paragraph

- A thought that I had when reading this protocol that it may become a case of "we don't know what we don't know". I don't know whether it is feasible to determine the extent of the literature on the use of MTFs. For example, what if someone wrote a paper detailing how they implemented a model of care, but didn't use implementation science MTF at all? I am not clear that the search strategy would pick it up.

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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

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

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Use of Implementation Science Models, Theories, and Frameworks in Pediatric Rehabilitation: Protocol for a Scoping Review

PONE-D-25-39248R1

Dear Dr. Munce,

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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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,

Udoka Okpalauwaekwe, MD, MPH, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

I believe most of the reviewer comments have been addressed at this point hence wold move it forward for publication.

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 #2: Yes

**********

-->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 #2: Yes

**********

-->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 #2: Yes

**********

-->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 #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 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 #2: Thanks for you attention to reiwer comments. I have no further comments at this time and look forward to reading from you in the future.

**********

-->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: Udoka Okpalauwaekwe

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