PONE-D-25-60484Interactions in dementia therapies: A systematic review protocol

PLOS 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.

The manuscript has been assessed by one peer reviewer and I ask the authors to consider the points raised by the peer reviewer and also take into account my additional comments below:

1) The abstract states two objectives, with the second objective aiming at the “relation between interactions and outcomes.”, which sounds like aiming at reporting the actual results of the relationships, while in the manuscript text, the fourth objective only states the description of whether this relationship is being investigated and, if so, how, without mentioning results. Please clarify.

(2) The review has been registered with the Campbell Database. Unfortunately, I am unable to access the specified registration. Please provide a link that allows to access to the registration. Furthermore, I do not understand why, as it is aimed to be a Campbell Review, the protocol should be published there but in this journal. Please explain.

(3) Only participants with dementia will be included and studies with mixed populations excluded. Is there a cutoff, for example, 80% of people with dementia for individual studies or are all papers excluded as soon as there is just one person without dementia among participants?

(4) The timeframe for the search and for the inclusion of studies should be updated. From my perspective, there is no reason, why only studies up to April 2025 should be included.

(5) The critical appraisal instrument for quantitative studies seems appropriate here. Please select an appropriate instrument for each (quantitative) study design. It is not clear from the manuscript to what extent the quality assessment will be actually connected with the study results. Please point out. It seems inappropriate to only list the study quality of included studies.

(6) As the reviewer noted, it is not entirely clear how the screening process actually works. As I understand it from the manuscript, not all full texts are reviewed by two independent reviewers, but only 10%, and if sufficient inter-rater reliability is demonstrated, this procedure is then carried forward. So in my understanding, only one reviewer reviews a given set of full texts at a time. However, this is reported differently in the PRISMA-P document, which states that the reviewers are independently checking full texts. Please clarify

(7) The PRISMA-P checklist contains methodological steps not reported in the manuscript, such as Subgroup Analyzes, Sensitivity Analyzes, and Meta-Regression or the application of “the SWiM or Popay et al. framework” or using GRADE. Please check and synchronize.

(8) Please avoid colloquial terms like "till" instead of "until". Also, the term "myriad" seems inappropriate, please use “plenty" or something similar.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 05 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.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A 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.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Sascha Köpke

Academic Editor

PLOS One

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

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

“This protocol is supported by the Health and Research Medical Fund of the Health Bureau of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (reference number: 22231471) and the General Research Fund of the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (reference number: 15602024).”

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 protocol is supported by the Health and Research Medical Fund of the Health Bureau of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (reference number: 22231471).”

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

3. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure:

“This protocol is supported by the Health and Research Medical Fund of the Health Bureau of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (reference number: 22231471).”

Please state what role the funders took in the study.  If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed.

Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in 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. 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.

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

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: Partly

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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: Dear Authors,

thank you very much for the opportunity to review your review protocol with the title "Interactions in dementia therapies: A systematic review protocol". I only have a few comments and hope the authors find these helpful.

General: Please avoid the use of an abbreviate for people living with dementia. Please see this recommendation: https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/sites/default/files/2018-09/Positive%20language%20guide_0.pdf

Please avoid the word elderly for older people. For this see this recommendation: Editor’s Message: Use of the Term “Elderly” in Journal of GERIATRIC Physical Therapy

Abstracts: Reading your definition of non-pharmacological interventions it seems you mean psychosocial interventions.

Introduction: Please take a look on the LANCET paper for risk factors for dementia and prevention programs. It is perhaps important to point out that age-related dementia is declining in Western countries. However, despite the number of older people, the number of dementia patients is increasing, and prevention could be an important lever here.

Methods: Please consider whether this is truly a systematic review or whether it is more of a scoping or integrative review.

Why didn’t you consider people with FTD?

How do you search for grey literature?

How do you conduct a citation tracking?

How do you proceed if you find a study of interested identified in a review?

Studies published after April 1, 2025 will not be included – I think you have to rephrase this sentence because if you need to conduct an update for publishing your review you will also include studies from 2025.

Was a library included in the development of the search string?

Entries will be divided into two parts? I think this sentence is misleading. Every study need to be screened by two reviewer or do you really mean that every study will be screened by one reviewer?

Don’t understand why a third reviewer is reviewing 10% of all titles.

**********

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: Yes: Mike Rommerskirch-Manietta

**********

[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.

PONE-D-25-60484R1Interactions in psychosocial interventions in dementia care: A systematic 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.

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

ACADEMIC EDITOR:

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE.

Before, we can assess the revision, please submit a proper point-by-point response, individually addressing the reviewers comments.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

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

Please submit your revised manuscript by May 09 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.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A 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.

As the corresponding author, your ORCID iD is verified in the submission system and will appear in the published article. PLOS supports the use of ORCID, and we encourage all coauthors to register for an ORCID iD and use it as well. Please encourage your coauthors to verify their ORCID iD within the submission system before final acceptance, as unverified ORCID iDs will not appear in the published article. Only the individual author can complete the verification step; PLOS staff cannot verify ORCID iDs on behalf of authors.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Sascha Köpke

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Journal Requirements:

1. 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.

2. Include with your response a letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s) in the earlier decision letter you received. You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. For your convenience, the comments from the academic editor and reviewer are copied below

Academic editor:

1) The abstract states two objectives, with the second objective aiming at the “relation between interactions and outcomes.”, which sounds like aiming at reporting the actual results of the relationships, while in the manuscript text, the fourth objective only states the description of whether this relationship is being investigated and, if so, how, without mentioning results. Please clarify.

(2) The review has been registered with the Campbell Database. Unfortunately, I am unable to access the specified registration. Please provide a link that allows to access to the registration. Furthermore, I do not understand why, as it is aimed to be a Campbell Review, the protocol should be published there but in this journal. Please explain.

(3) Only participants with dementia will be included and studies with mixed populations excluded. Is there a cutoff, for example, 80% of people with dementia for individual studies or are all papers excluded as soon as there is just one person without dementia among participants?

(4) The timeframe for the search and for the inclusion of studies should be updated. From my perspective, there is no reason, why only studies up to April 2025 should be included.

(5) The critical appraisal instrument for quantitative studies seems appropriate here. Please select an appropriate instrument for each (quantitative) study design. It is not clear from the manuscript to what extent the quality assessment will be actually connected with the study results. Please point out. It seems inappropriate to only list the study quality of included studies.

(6) As the reviewer noted, it is not entirely clear how the screening process actually works. As I understand it from the manuscript, not all full texts are reviewed by two independent reviewers, but only 10%, and if sufficient inter-rater reliability is demonstrated, this procedure is then carried forward. So in my understanding, only one reviewer reviews a given set of full texts at a time. However, this is reported differently in the PRISMA-P document, which states that the reviewers are independently checking full texts. Please clarify

(7) The PRISMA-P checklist contains methodological steps not reported in the manuscript, such as Subgroup Analyzes, Sensitivity Analyzes, and Meta-Regression or the application of “the SWiM or Popay et al. framework” or using GRADE. Please check and synchronize.

(8) Please avoid colloquial terms like "till" instead of "until". Also, the term "myriad" seems inappropriate, please use “plenty" or something similar.

Reviewer 1:

General: Please avoid the use of an abbreviate for people living with dementia. Please see this recommendation: https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/sites/default/files/2018-09/Positive%20language%20guide_0.pdf

Please avoid the word elderly for older people. For this see this recommendation: Editor’s Message: Use of the Term “Elderly” in Journal of GERIATRIC Physical Therapy

Abstracts: Reading your definition of non-pharmacological interventions it seems you mean psychosocial interventions.

Introduction: Please take a look on the LANCET paper for risk factors for dementia and prevention programs. It is perhaps important to point out that age-related dementia is declining in Western countries. However, despite the number of older people, the number of dementia patients is increasing, and prevention could be an important lever here.

Methods: Please consider whether this is truly a systematic review or whether it is more of a scoping or integrative review.

Why didn’t you consider people with FTD?

How do you search for grey literature?

How do you conduct a citation tracking?

How do you proceed if you find a study of interested identified in a review?

Studies published after April 1, 2025 will not be included – I think you have to rephrase this sentence because if you need to conduct an update for publishing your review you will also include studies from 2025.

Was a library included in the development of the search string?

Entries will be divided into two parts? I think this sentence is misleading. Every study need to be screened by two reviewer or do you really mean that every study will be screened by one reviewer?

Don’t understand why a third reviewer is reviewing 10% of all titles."

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

[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.

Interactions in psychosocial interventions in dementia care: A systematic review protocol

PONE-D-25-60484R2

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.

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,

Sascha Köpke

Academic Editor

PLOS One

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

**********

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

**********

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

**********

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

**********

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

**********

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: Thank you very much for your detailed response. I wish you the best of success in conducting the review.

**********

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: Yes: Mike Rommerskirch-Manietta

**********