Peer Review History
Original SubmissionDecember 18, 2019 |
---|
PONE-D-19-35065 Healthcare practitioner experiences and willingness to prescribepre-exposure prophylaxis in the US PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Leech, 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 respond to all of the reviewers' comments, with which I agree. Please focus in particular on thier comments on the study methods and the clarity of presentation of the methods, results, and conclusions. All of their comments will need to be addressed in order for the journal to consider this manuscript for publication. We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Apr 24 2020 11:59PM. When you are 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 you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Douglas S. Krakower, MD 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 http://www.plosone.org/attachments/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.plosone.org/attachments/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified (1) whether consent was informed and (2) what type you obtained (for instance, written or verbal). If your study included minors, state whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians. If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information. 3. In your Methods section, please provide additional information about the participant recruitment method and the demographic details of your participants. Please ensure you have provided sufficient details to replicate the analyses such as: a) the recruitment date range (month and year), b) a description of any inclusion/exclusion criteria that were applied to participant recruitment, c) a table of relevant demographic details, d) a statement as to whether your sample can be considered representative of a larger population, e) a description of how participants were recruited, and f) descriptions of where participants were recruited and where the research took place. 4. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially identifying or sensitive patient information) 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. b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. Please see http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c181.long for guidelines on how to de-identify and prepare clinical data for publication. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. We will update your Data Availability statement on your behalf to reflect the information you provide. [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? 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: Partly Reviewer #2: No ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: No ********** 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 ********** 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: Yes Reviewer #2: No ********** 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: This manuscript presents self-reported PrEP experiences and attitudes from a large survey sample of providers attending HIV-focused CME courses across 5 major US cities. The manuscript has several strengths, including its large sample size and response rate, particularly for a provider survey. I also appreciated the authors’ initial framing of the introduction and discussion with respect to the new HIV policy and USPSTF recommendations. However, several aspects of the study dampened my overall enthusiasm for the work. I have several comments and suggestions for the authors’ consideration: Major Comments/Suggestions 1. The vignette component of the study is problematic for several reasons: a) The vignettes do not address the stated research aim corresponding to the vignettes (identifying risk groups perceived to be important) To address the aim as stated, the survey would need to ask about perceived importance of the various groups for PrEP or willingness to prescribed PrEP to the groups. The vignette items in their current form only ask for the “best first step”; referring a person who injects drugs to a harm reduction program as a “best first step” before PrEP may be clinically appropriate for the patient’s immediate needs and does not tell us whether or not the provider perceives PrEP as important for this group (whether they may consider PrEP a second or concurrent step). b) The vignettes also do not address the stated hypothesis corresponding to the vignettes (differences between practitioner willingness to prescribe PrEP across indications). To address the hypothesis about differences in prescription willingness across risk indications, the researchers would have needed to use parallel vignettes manipulating only risk indication. Instead, the vignettes vary in multiple ways, including nature of risk (serodiscordant male same-sex sexual activity with unknown drug use, serodiscordant heterosexual condomless sex with unknown drug use, or drug injection with unknown sexual risk); the HIV and viral load statuses of partners (positive/detectable, positive/undetectable, unknown); number of partners (one vs. multiple); the relationship status of partners (e.g., married vs. unspecified); and patients’ implied intentions related to future risk behavior (unclear vs. condomless sex vs. unclear). Furthermore, the response options are not parallel. For example, the MSM vignette offers condoms and PrEP+condoms as response options, but neither are options for the woman. Also, the MSM condition refers to PrEP as an option for an “HIV-negative partner” rather than the patient himself, which may be a point of confusion. c) The analyses performed with the vignette data (logistic regressions examining the association between prioritization of PrEP in one vignette is associated with prioritization of PrEP in another) do not appear to address either the vignette-related research aim or the vignette related hypothesis. Minor Comments/Suggestions [Abstract] 2. The final analytic sample size should be specified in the abstract. Right now only the size of the participant pool is stated and can be easily mistaken for sample size. 3. While I understand the authors’ desire to highlight the non-significant trend related to differences in prescription experience by provider type (IM vs. ID) and appreciate that they included the p-value for transparency, I encourage them to delete the nonsignificant trend related to willingness to prescribe in the MSM scenario vs. conception scenario. Figure 2 suggests it was very far from being significant and any difference should not be interpreted as meaningful. 4. When discussing any vignette-based comparisons in the abstract, I think it’s important for the authors to appropriately contextualize (e.g., “Based on clinical vignettes describing different hypothetical prescribing scenarios…”) [Introduction] 5. Given Comment #1 above, I highly recommend reframing the intro, research question, and hypotheses to match the analyses. [Methods] 6. Given the centrality of the vignettes to the paper, I strongly recommend including them and the associated instructions in the main text rather than a supplemental appendix. [Results] 7. I recommend reporting the aOR for the non-significant association between the MSM and conception vignette. [Discussion] 8. “…only 54% reported ever prescribing PrEP. While this proportion is substantially higher than that reported in surveys of other providers, it demonstrates that even among the most motivated clinicians, who are clearly focused on HIV care and seeking up-to-date information about HIV infection, only approximately half are actively implementing current PrEP guidance.” This is not technically accurate, as providers who have not prescribed may have discussed PrEP and offered to prescribe to patients and patients declined. Also, there is the possibility that providers lacked opportunity to offer PrEP (e.g., because they only see patients living with HIV in their practice, not HIV-negative individuals). 9. The following text does not accurately reflect the findings and should be cut “Our results indicating… PWIDS than previously indicated.” Additionally, the text around targeting risk groups later in the paragraph seems irrelevant given that differences in risk groups were not actually assessed (and cannot be because of the differences in vignettes; see Comment #1.) 10. It’s a bit surprising that prioritization of PrEP in the MSM vignette was positively associated with prioritization of PrEP in the PWID vignette, and prioritization of PrEP in the PWID vignette was positively associated with prioritization of PrEP in the conception vignette, but there was no significant association between prioritization of PrEP in the MSM vignette and the conception vignette. What do the authors make of this? 11. “Finally, model-based estimates for age and length of practice… extrapolation.” It’s unclear to me what the authors are saying here, but it seems to suggest that they did not code their data correctly or treat them correctly in the analyses. I recommend rewording for clarity. 12. I’m not sure what the authors are referring to when suggesting financial restrictions as a barrier to prescribing. Do they mean patients not accepting prescriptions because of patients’ financial limitations? Or health centers not offering PrEP due to limited capacity/funding to support PrEP-related care? 13. An important limitation to add is acknowledgment that the vignettes and their response options were not parallel and therefore cannot be used to infer differences in PrEP prioritization by risk group (see Comment 1). Reviewer #2: This is a very important topic, and given the limited data and information available about prescribing behaviors and practices among providers, this study has the potential to contribute important information. The authors conducted a relatively large survey among a sample of providers attending HIV CME conferences. Given that these providers "should" be among the most comfortable and experienced prescribing anti-retroviral medications, this is an important population to consider in understanding their views about prescribing PrEP. The manuscript as written however would benefit from a more thorough editing, especially in regards to organization, being very explicit with phrases and definitions. There are many phrases used in the paper that are not clear to me what the authors mean (e.g., “HIV motivated” or “independent prescribers.” The introduction would benefit from being better framed to indicate explicitly why this population of providers were being studied/or the need/importance to study this set of providers. The methods need more details of what the variables were, the exact outcomes. Additionally, it would be helpful specify what the actual analytic sample was – although there are 519 participants, there seem to be missing data for most variables (although small), and then results being presented in the text are hard to follow due to shifting denominators. Additionally, for the regression models, I am assuming that all missing cases were not included in the models? Would be helpful clarify all of these issues, and use a consistent denominator. Also, the results are not clear – there are discrepancies between the figures and what is presented described in the text. The authors should consider presenting all the output data (OR, CI) for all variables in the model (e.g., both the unadjusted and adjusted analysis). Overall, this seems to be a commendable study - and could provide information that is sparse among providers. However, the methods and results need to be reworked/reorganized as it is difficult to follow and unclear why the results are presented in the way they are and if conclusions are supported by the data. I would encourage the authors to thoroughly editing the paper and check the analysis, and presenting more of the data as it could be helpful information to the field. Abstract: 1. What is meant by “HIV motivated” – it would be helpful to define this explicitly 2. In the results, this sentence is not clear: “Practitioners who viewed PrEP as a first recommended clinical step for MSM were less likely to have also considered PrEP as the first recommendation for conception purposes, albeit not significantly less likely.” 3. What is meant by clinical step vs. first option? 4. The first sentence of the conclusion is not explicitly supported by th results presented – i.e., for PrEP to have a significant impact on incidence … as this study did not examine models of incidence following increased prescribing by this group of providers. 5. The 954 sample is misleading as it appears the analytic sample was also 954 (vs. 519 mentioned in the results section of the manuscript). Financial Disclosures: Seems like the Grant # is incomplete (P30…). INTRODUCTION: It would be helpful to further explicitly delineate in the introduction why it was important to focus on “HIV motivated” prescribers, and how “HIV motivated” was determined and what this phrase means in this paper. (was there a scoring system, etc. used to determine motivation or assumption that they’re attending a CME course therefore should be automatically “motivated”? METHODS: 1. The survey measures would benefit from being described in more detail, e.g., providing the actual text of the primary/secondary outcomes. 2. What does conditional scenarios mean? What are the scenarios conditioned upon? 3. Sentence starting at Line 117, “The fields included….” Could perhpas provide an example of a case vignette or options for recommended clinical steps. 4. It would be helpful to specific the exact outcomes being modeled/analyzed. RESULTS 1. Who were not independent prescribers or what types of providers were excluded? 2. In Table 1, what is meant by “anticipated conception exposure”? may be helpful to define/mention these categories in the methods. 3. Was harm reduction and “substance use treatment program” defined for participants – as many times these could be the same, or that substance use treatment programs incorporate harm reduction – would be helpful to define these categories in the methods. 4. What are the “salient control variables”? 5. It is difficult to follow the willingness to prescribe paragraph. It also appears to be missing data for MSM? 6. It would be more clear and perhaps helpful to describe factors associated with willingness to prescribe and to then list the results in that way. 7. FIGURE 2. – there are two rows that show the same variable (willingness to prescribe PrEP as first best step for MSM” under outcome “willingness to prescribe for conception � which variable has the correct data – in this figure, it seems that willingness to prscribe for MSM IS associatd with willingness to prescribe for conception (rather than what is stated in the text). Discussion - it may be that ID providers especially don’t see HIV-negative patients and therefore they’d never even have the opportunity to prescribe PrEP and thus efforts to “target” ID specialists may not necessarily be as fruitful given their lack of HIV-negative patients in their practices. ********** 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. 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: 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 be viewed.] 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 us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
Revision 1 |
PONE-D-19-35065R1 Healthcare practitioner experiences and willingness to prescribe pre-exposure prophylaxis in the US PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Leech, 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. ============================== Acceptance will be conttingent upon revising the manuscript in accordance with the two reviewers' recommendations. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 24 2020 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:
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: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Douglas S. Krakower, MD Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: (No Response) ********** 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 #1: Partly Reviewer #2: Partly ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 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 #1: Yes 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 #1: Yes 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 #1: This manuscript presents a survey-based study of US providers’ PrEP attitudes and experiences. I reviewed an earlier version of the manuscript as Reviewer #1. Overall, I am pleased with the authors’ responsiveness to my and the other reviewer’s feedback and I believe the manuscript has been strengthened considerably. I have just a few remaining comments and suggestions, all of which are fairly minor: 1. P. 3/Lines 80-81: When first using the new language replacing “HIV-motivated” (i.e., “focused on providing HIV care and seeking up-to-date information about HIV…”) I suggest adding the following parenthetical clarification: “(as evidenced by their attendance of an advanced HIV continuing medical education course)” 2. There are 4 places where the wording still seems to imply that direct comparisons were made in providers’ judgments across risk scenarios. As noted in my original critique, this is not appropriate given that the vignettes and their response options were not parallel. Furthermore, this is not what was done in the analyses, which instead examined associations between perceptions of PrEP being a “best first step” in different risk scenarios. I highly recommend rewording the following: (a) [Abstract] “…how their clinical opinions on offering PrEP as a “best first step” varied across risk scenarios” (b) [Intro] P. 3/Lines 81-83: “assessed…. how their clinical opinions on offering PrEP as a “best first step” varied across risk scenarios.” (c) [Intro] P. 3-4/Lines 83-87: “We hypothesized that there would be differences… between practitioner opinions on offering PrEP as a “best first step” across risk scenarios (MSM, at-risk heterosexuals seeking conception, and PWID). (d) [Conclusion] P. 12/Lines 281-282: “…and practitioner willingness to prescribe PrEP varied across high-risk categories.” (also see my original critique about inferring “willingness” when not actually measuring it) 3. I believe one of my earlier comments (R1.3) may have been misinterpreted. I did not intend to suggest that non-significant findings be deleted from the Results section in the main text, but rather that a non-significant finding be omitted from the abstract because the wording suggested an association where there was none. In the main text, it is appropriate to specify the stats (OR, CI, and p) for the non-significant association between belief in PrEP as a 1st step for women and belief in PrEP as a 1st step for MSM. 4. On a related note, I agree with Reviewer 2’s suggestion that the authors include all statistical output for their unadjusted and adjusted logistic regressions. A table organizing this information might be a helpful addition. 5. P. 11/Lines 265-269: “Model-based estimates for age and length of time in practice should also be interpreted with caution, for two reasons: First, length of time in practice was available in categorical format only; and second, there were practitioners up to the age of 41 years in the “in training” group and practitioners as young as 49 years in the “21+ years’ experience” group”: I appreciate the authors’ attempt to clarify these limitations; however, I’m still having trouble understanding them. Re: the first, I assume time in practice was appropriately treated as a categorical variable in the statistical model? And so the author is saying that the categorical measurement approach that was used is less precise than if years in practice was measured as a continuous variable? It seems like this could be deleted as it doesn’t strike me as especially noteworthy. However, if the authors wish to retain it, I recommend clarifying. Re: the 2nd limitation, I don’t see why the variation in age within practice categories is a problem. Again, I would delete or clarify. Reviewer #2: Overall, the paper is improved and authors have been responsive. There are still a few important issues to clarify/address as noted below, which should help strengthen the paper. For the whole paper, I would suggest the authors use "people first language" whenever possible, consistent with recommendations from NIH, UNAIDS, and PLHIV advocacy organizations: https://impaactnetwork.org/DocFiles/News/NIAID%20HIV%20Language%20Guide%20-%20March%202020.pdf e.g., instead of high risk categories, can consider writing: groups at high risk e.g., in DISUCSSION: consider changing “…all individuals in high-risk categories for HIV including MSM, PWID, and heterosexually active men and women with certain risk profiles (2).” To: “…MSM, PWID and heterosexually active men and women at high risk for HIV…” e.g., at-risk populations could be changed to “people/groups at risk” e.g., “targeting at-risk populations” could be changed to “ engaging populations/groups/individuals at risk” e.g., “target individuals in each high-risk category”, could change to “ engage individuals at high risk” e.g., “high-risk categories” � “groups at high risk” METHODS: While the survey instrument is included as a supp file, it would be helpful to the reader to include a sentence about how exacrtly the response categories were dichotomized for each of the vignettes, as it seems in some cases there are multiple options which include PrEP as part of the first step. Line 139-140, it would be helpful to specify which outcomes the 1% and 3% refer to specifically. In methods – the grouping of the following categories, seems odd: “conception, MSM, or PWID” as MSM and PWID refer to people and conception refers to an act. Consider replacing conception with people first language (e.g., individuals trying to conceive) RESULTS: Line 174-175, what was the aOR for age and the 95% CI? It would be helpful to include at the least the output of the multivariable logistic regression as a supplementary file (e.g., what were the aOR and CI for the other categories of years in practice, other practitioners, etc.). Figure 3: would be helpful to include reference groups for each category. As the last comment, it’d also be helpful to include the actual model output/results in a supplementary table if not the main paper. DISCUSSION: Lines 225-236 I think it would be helpful to explicitly mention that ID specialists are likely infrequently encountering individuals without HIV compared to IM/FM as an explanation for disparate prescribing. This issue may not be obvious to many readers and also there isn’t data about the extent to which ID specialists in this sample have patients without HIV or such patients referred to them. But, it is probable that there is a likely large difference between ID an FM/IM. Lines 236 – 250. While this paragraph is improved, based on the vignettes presented, it is not really possible to compare willingness to prescribe between categories. The Conception vignette, indicated a low risk situation (sero-different relationship AND undetectable viral load) compared to MSM (sero-different AND detectable viral load). The detectable viral load scenario makes these two vignettes very different and thus challenging to extrapolate results to make a head to head comparison. I think it would be an over-reach given the vignettes/results to interpret the data as “…it might indicate hesitation among prescribers in considering PrEP for conception than the more familiar indication for MSM…” Also, the model was statistically insignificant. “This result might suggest that infectious disease practitioners vary from other practitioners in prioritizing other preventive interventions before PrEP such as safe needle exchange programs or substance use treatment.” This sentence in the discussion is unclear overall, and particularly the phrase “harmonized responses.” “…and PWID aligned with our intuition that the group of practitioners who might be more willing to prioritize PrEP for the less common indications of conception and PWID could vary from those willing to prioritize PrEP for the more familiar indication of MSM, and therefore, have more harmonized responses.” ********** 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 Reviewer #2: 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.] 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. |
Revision 2 |
Healthcare practitioner experiences and willingness to prescribe pre-exposure prophylaxis in the US PONE-D-19-35065R2 Dear Dr. Leech, 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 for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. 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, Douglas S. Krakower, MD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-19-35065R2 Healthcare practitioner experiences and willingness to prescribe pre-exposure prophylaxis in the US Dear Dr. Leech: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Douglas S. Krakower Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
Open letter on the publication of peer review reports
PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.
We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.
Learn more at ASAPbio .