https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3005-2296
Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionMay 13, 2020 |
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PONE-D-20-14158 Assessment of undergraduate student knowledge, practices, and attitude towards COVID-19 in Debre Berhan University, Ethiopia PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Aynalem, 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 reviewers have appreciated the urgency required to generate evidence regarding an emerging global pandemic such as covid-19, and praise in particular the benefit of such data from African settings. However, they have raised key methodological concerns and in particular, I would urge to consider the reviewers' comments, concerns and suggestions regarding the methodological aspects of the study, and the required improvement in the reporting of the conduct (sampling, selection, etc) of the research. I would also like you to appraise the comments offered by Reviewer 4 regarding some of the analytical decisions that you have made in the paper, and ensure that a response to all the points raised by the Reviewer is included. Finally, I would suggest that attention to the novelty aspects of the paper are not really required, as PLOS ONE focuses on the technical quality of the submitted work. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 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, Enrique Castro-Sánchez Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 2. In the Methods, please clarify that participants provided oral consent. Please also state in the Methods: - Why written consent could not be obtained - Whether the Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved use of oral consent - How oral consent was documented For more information, please see our guidelines for human subjects research: " ext-link-type="uri" xlink:type="simple">https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-human-subjects-research" 3. Please include additional information regarding the survey or questionnaire used in the study and ensure that you have provided sufficient details that others could replicate the analyses. For instance, if you developed a questionnaire as part of this study and it is not under a copyright more restrictive than CC-BY, please include a copy, in both the original language and English, as Supporting Information." 4. We noticed minor instances of text overlap with the following previous publication(s), which need to be addressed: (a) https://www.ijbs.com/v16p1745.pdf (b) https://news.mb.com.ph/2020/02/06/who-crafts-global-strategic-plan-vs-ncov/ (c) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemic The text that needs to be addressed involves the Introduction section. In your revision please ensure you cite all your sources (including your own works), and quote or rephrase any duplicated text outside the methods section. Further consideration is dependent on these concerns being addressed." 5. 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) a table of relevant demographic details, d) a statement as to whether your sample can be considered representative of a larger population and c) a description of how participants were recruited." 6. Please provide a sample size and power calculation in the Methods, or discuss the reasons for not performing one before study initiation 7. Please amend your list of authors on the manuscript to ensure that each author is linked to an affiliation. Authors’ affiliations should reflect the institution where the work was done (if authors moved subsequently, you can also list the new affiliation stating “current affiliation:….” as necessary). 8. Please include a copy of Tables 1-5 which you refer to in your text. [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: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: No Reviewer #5: Partly ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: No Reviewer #5: Yes ********** 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 Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes Reviewer #5: No ********** 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 Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes Reviewer #5: Yes ********** 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: PONE-D-20-14158 Assessment of undergraduate student knowledge, practices, and attitude towards COVID-19 in Debre Berhan University, Ethiopia Many thanks for the opportunity to review this paper. There is a gap for the attitude to the pandemic, especially in Africa on the one hand, but also a flood of publications without a whole lot of purpose. I am slightly undecided whether this article enhances knowledge. Inclined to think to be publishable it needs a follow up element perhaps now or in 6 months time? Abstract I feel like the abstract doesn’t really give us key information on the findings – all I get from it is that some were less knowledgeable and there is a concern about educating them. Is that it? Hoping more specific as I read article. Background Some of the data is now 2 months old and outdated.. but I guess you had to draw line somewhere. Repeated this line twice “seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected[9]” The Chinese study [10] was it before/ during/ after the surge in China as to whether comparable to your data (before). I’m not sure quoting all the WHO strategies is helpful/ necessary. The whole 2nd last paragraph of the background is very much public knowledge at this stage and I don’t believe adds much. Methods. What is the intended faculty/ field of study of the students?? Questionnaire seems appropriate and rigorous. Results The field of study of the students?? I think this is vital. I would expect science/ health students to know more? Far more interested in this than their gender and age myself. No Table 1, 2 in the version I have been given to view. The results are succinct. Fine. I guess interesting in retrospect in years to come especially. But not remarkable – mostly as I would expect from educated students at this stage of the pandemic. Discussion I find this pretty superficial and repeating the results. Not a whole lot of interpretation. How does this compare even to the Chinese study you mentioned?? You don’t really express an opinion even.. Concl Recom Again you don’t really pull out what is novel/ surprising. What about recommendations for repeating this research later? All you give is rather vague “educate” messages. How? Social media seems to work?? Reviewer #2: Covid19 related research is timely and should be supported. The effort of the authors is therefore praise worth. However, • There are some grammatical errors that should be corrected. • At the discussion section, the authors should compare their findings with what others have written before. • The recommendations on educational campaigns should be made more explicit. • The reference section should be checked for consistency, e.g. some emboldens On the whole, the manuscript can be published after some major corrections. The suggested areas for correction can be seen in the attachment. Reviewer #3: The paper presents an interesting and relevant research about the association between knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) of Debre Berhan University students, towards COVID-19. The abstract presents the basic information regarding background, methods, results and conclusions, but the main objective of the paper is missing. To clarify the main aim of the article an objective needs to be included. Considering that the (KAP) towards COVID-19 is a central element, the title of the paper could be modified to adjust to that: “Assessment of undergraduate student knowledge, attitude and practices towards COVID-19 in Debre Berhan University, Ethiopia”. The background section provides the main contents regarding COVID-19. The study took place in March and for this reason references about COVID-19 are also from March-April. However, as far as possible, it could be positive to have more recent data regarding confirmed cases, number of deaths and the number of cases reported in Debre Berhan and Ethiopia. Just a brief comment regarding the information provided in the third paragraph regarding the countries that have been reporting COVID-19 cases. In this explanation the number of countries provided is 2214, but it is not possible, please revise the data. At the end of this section a direct link is made between one study in China and the (KAP) towards the disease. It could be relevant to provide more analysis about how this association is made in other studies, particularly because this relation is essential in your study. In the sub-section “study design, setting, and population” concrete and basic information regarding the population and the setting where the field work took place is included. However, little information about the study design is mentioned. Introducing here some explanation showing your design would be relevant for the article. The information regarding the study variables is clear, with the outcome variable and the two independent covariates. But there is no explanation establishing the relation between both types of variables. Establishing a link between both through a research question would be important, because later, a binary logistic regression analysis to select factors has been done. Data collection tool and procedure is correct in general terms, but the following aspects need to be improved: - The explanation about the questionnaire. There are two parts and the first one, based in socio-demographic variables, is clear. But at the beginning of the second one regarding KAP, it would be necessary to explain that there are three different type of questions and a different way to work with the data and after that, provide an explanation of the three of them. - The explanation about the knowledge about COVID-19 is correct, but it is important to justify why you have established three options per question when you are developing later a binary regression analysis. It is true that at the end you work with two - as you classify “No” and “I don’t know” as zero and “Yes” as one- but explaining the reasons why you decide to work in that way would be necessary. - In the case of attitudes towards COVID-19 a five-point Likert scale has been used (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree). However, at the end, and following previous studies, three categories (agree, neutral and disagree) have been established. First of all, it might be useful to specify which are these previous studies? and second, you need to clarify the content of each category. Rationally “strongly agree” and “agree” must be in the category “agree” and “disagree” and “strongly disagree” in the category “disagree”. This needs to be explained. - Information regarding participants’ practices needs more development. Which kind of questions are addressed to assess the participants’ practices? Are there dichotomic or is a Likert scale used? How many questions are included in this case? - Finally, a short explanation about how the questionnaire is administered could be introduced. Data processing and analysis section contains different types of statistics’ analysis. In the case of the descriptive statistics a relation between study participants and the “relevant variables” is suggested but insufficient information is provided concerning these relevant variables. In the case of the multivariable analysis, a binary logistic regression analysis to identify the factors associated with KAP is used. Later, the factors were selected using backward stepwise method, but there is no information regarding this process, the main factors selected for the study and how they have been selected. Results are presented by each type of statistics’ analysis, including the main information and being very clear in that way. The discussion section provides complementary explanations to the results. Finally, regarding conclusions and recommendation, including the main objective of the paper at the beginning would be positive and after that, the argumentation can follow. The recommendation about educational campaigns that are included just at the end is too short, more information could be provided on this. A final comment regarding the references: the title or sometimes the authors appear in bold in all of them. Please check all references and make sure that all of them follow the journal’s requirements in this matter. Reviewer #4: 1. The information provided about the data analysis is insufficient. In particular, coding of outcome variables in the regression models is unclear. 2. The authors do not provide reasons for using multivariate analysis with binary dependent variable. 3. The stepwise method is widely criticized in the literature. I do not find it appropriate either. 4. The strict use of 5% limit for discussing significance is not in line with current consensus in the literature of statistical analysis. Reviewer #5: Thanks for the opportunity to revise this paper. In this research, the authors present research on the knowledge, practices, and attitude towards COVID-19 amongst undergraduate students in a university of Ethiopia. My major concern with the article relates to the explanation of the sample obtained. There is a void of information at that stage, while the remaining, methods, variables, analysis, are correctly reported. In particular, no description at all is provided on how the sample was selected. What population does the sample represent? if any. As it is described, the sample seems to be a convenient sample (people ‘around’ were selected), not a representative sample of those 11000 undergraduate students. What were the response rates? The authors mentioned exclusions, but who were they and what were the reasons and how many of them were actually excluded. Did the authors conduct any power calculation? The authors claimed that the sample was of limited size, but it was above 500. What is large or small depends on the purpose of the sample, but this remains unclear without a power calculation. Why the authors reported to be of limited size remains unclear. What is missing is a good literature review and discussion of the state of the art in KAP against COVID19 in countries across the world, amongst different groups (health professionals, politicians, general population, young educated people [this study]) across countries and maybe within Ethiopia. The literature used by the authors remains thin, with a lot of focus and quite lengthy description of general advice by WHO. We should know why KAP is relevant in relation to other crises and what are the KAP levels in Ethiopia and other countries. I acknowledge that there is possibly many more papers published now, relative to the time of writing this paper. However, literature for other infectious disease crisis exist, such as for Ebola in Western Africa, and could be helpful to give more depth to this work. Note that this has implications for the Discussion, too. The discussion is clearly too short, was quickly put together, but more importantly, no links are made to any other literature. Some results such as a lower awareness in students from rural areas or an age effect should be discussed in light of other literature out there. Below I provide a few minor comments, Abstract, does not include essential methodological features, such as the sample. [Page 1, Introduction] ‘By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected[9]’ This is repeated in the paragraph above. Please avoid repetition [Page 1, Introduction] ‘A study in China showed that most respondents were knowledgeable about COVID-19 and the vast majority of the participants also held an optimistic attitude towards the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, 90.8% believed that COVID-19 would be successfully controlled, and 97.1% had confidence that China could win the battle against the virus [10].’ Add more studies. References 1, 4, 9 and 15 are incomplete or have typos. Please revise. Tables are not attached to the submission, so not evaluated. ********** 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: Yes: PW Hodkinson Reviewer #2: Yes: Dr John Bosco Azigwe Reviewer #3: Yes: Ramon Flecha Reviewer #4: No Reviewer #5: Yes: Jose Manuel Rodriguez-Llanes [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 1 |
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PONE-D-20-14158R1 Assessment of undergraduate student knowledge, practices, and attitude towards COVID-19 in Debre Berhan University, Ethiopia PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Aynalem, 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 reviewers have very much appreciated the effort the authors have made in considering and introducing the suggestion proposed- however, they still find the language unclear and in need of another grammatical revision. I understand that a professional proofreader reviewed the paper, but several sentences across the paper remain below an acceptable level of clarity. One of the reviewers identified so many unclear sentences and phrases that felt frustrated, and this may be something the readers may feel as well. Additionally, please note the comments by the reviewers about the new information introduced regarding the sampling strategy, and I would urge you to examine the responses offered previously about the justification for such sampling strategy, as I felt such response was not as detailed and robust as ideal. Finally, consider the suggestion by the reviewers to evaluate the Discussion and recommendations, as they remain short in length and unconnected to the aims and results of the paper, as well as existing literature. As PLOS ONE focuses on scientific quality rather than novelty or impact, consideration towards the clarity, thoroughness and addition to the existing body of evidence in the topic of the paper become even more fundamental. Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 11 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, Enrique Castro-Sánchez 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: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #4: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #5: (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: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes Reviewer #5: Partly ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes Reviewer #5: No ********** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy 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 Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes Reviewer #5: No ********** 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 Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes Reviewer #5: No ********** 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: Thankyou much improved I can see you have put a lot of work in and i think it is useful now. Still riddled with grammar and language issues. I started pointing out and then got frustrated so below list is not complete. Needs proofreading and correctig again please. Methods sample size first paragraph: Since there is no any study in our countries - correct 10%v non response rate?? That’s unheard of for most surveys…. Spelling collage - college Since there is no any study in our countries Results Table 1 can you indicate the correct answers somehow? Reviewer #2: The grammatical errors have been largely addressed. In the recommendation section, the authors should improve to include other dissemination strategies that can be more effective in rural context such as the study sight. See attachment Reviewer #3: Dear authors, You have made a great effort with this new article submission. You have included in your submission a marked-up copy of your manuscript highlighting changes and a rebuttal letter responding also to each point raised by the editor and reviewers. Both documents show clearly your new work based in all editor and reviewers’ previous observations. You have improved especially theoretical background and methodological aspects and analysis following our suggestions. The information regarding written informed consent for your participants and the explanation regarding ethical issues is now clear. The questionnaire in English is so helpful to understand more in depth the results. Following the suggestion of the editor and reviewers you have made extensive edition by a native speaker. The abstract has been improved following the reviewers’ suggestions. Authors have included the main objective of the article and now there is information regarding findings also in the abstract. The theoretical background has now new references giving the paper more consistency and comparativeness with other regional areas. Now you have used the latest report of data including different regions and you have modified the WHO strategies. In the Methods section there is new information answering many diverse comments from the reviewers. You have improved this section correctly, especially regarding participant recruitment method and demographic details. Tables about participants and the recruitment help in this way. The explanation on sample size and power calculation is also clear now. Information regarding how the variables were coded is now improved and the clarification about the multivariable regression instead of multivariate analysis is now clear. The information about the questionnaire is now improved and uploaded in the system. The discussion has now more in-depth analysis, including different finding around the world linked with your results. The conclusion and recommendation section needs more development. You have improved the conclusions, but it is to short and the recommendations are still so vague. You could start this section confirming (or not) if your main objective (included now in the abstract) has been reached with your research work. Later you could also comment if you have found some correlations or not in your work. Finally, you could provide more details in your recommendations. Reviewer #4: The authors have addressed my critiques regarding the presentation and analysis of the data. The revised presentation of the smaple, variables and tha analysis is clear and apropriate. Reviewer #5: The KAP Survey Model stands for Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices. The title may reflect this order. Also it is more logical. The manuscript lacks a more convincing argumentation on why COVID19' KAP is important amongst students. In other words, why to study that population and not another one, or the general population, where poverty is expected to be more prevalent and interventions high priority. In Methods (section entitled ‘Sample size determination and sampling procedure (procurement procedures’) The authors wrote as new text ‘Since we have used 50% proportion, our sample can be considered as a representative of a larger population’. This sentence makes no sense and the authors should remove it from the manuscript. Setting a 50% level for each of the variables in the survey is helpful as it is a conservative approach when no previous knowledge is available on expected levels of a variable within a population. Setting that level ensures that the sample size will be sufficient for any level as a 50% prevalence or proportion generates the highest requirement for sample, keeping other known parameters constant. Importantly, the authors mentioned several times (in manuscript and reply to reviewers) that they intended to represent the student population in that university. If that is so, then the described two stage sampling strategy selected by the authors is not self-weighted, and the authors need to calculate weights and incorporate those into their analysis. In addition there is attrition from the 'planned' sample to the 'collected' sample but little detail on circumstances (not present in dormitory at time of interview, refused to participate, provided incomplete answers or partial answers). In the Discussion section, the authors wrote the following new text: ‘A supportive results were reported in China [13],Jordan [15] and India [12]. However, finding from Saudi Arabia 31.9%[16], Middle Eastern Arabic countries 17.0%[17],India 19.36% [18],in Tanzania [19] and in Uganda [20] showed that most of the community had inadequate Knowledge .This might be due to the late confirmed case report of COVID-19 in Ethiopia which might gave a time to know about the disease. Additionally, the devastating news reported about the disease, and the WHO declaration of the disease as a pandemic due to its sever pathogenicity and communicability [7, 8]. might also have increased the students’ knowledge.’ The first sentence above is not good English but the authors claimed the paper to be edited and polished by professionals. It does not seem to be the case here. Another example is below. ‘This finding is in line with a study done in Indonesian[31], Nepalese[32], Sudan[30] and South Wollo Zone[33]’. Overall, the discussion is gaining some importance and becoming more balanced but requires better expression of the main ideas, and improving clarity. I see many punctuation errors. References no. 1, 10 and 11, seem incomplete. ********** 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: PW Hodkinson Reviewer #2: Yes: Dr John Bosco Azigwe Reviewer #3: Yes: Ramon Flecha Reviewer #4: No Reviewer #5: Yes: Jose Manuel Rodriguez-Llanes [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.
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| Revision 2 |
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PONE-D-20-14158R2 Assessment of undergraduate student knowledge, attitude, and practices, towards COVID-19 in Debre Berhan University, Ethiopia PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Aynalem, 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 reviewers have emphasised once more 3 different areas where the manuscript does require improvement and clarifications: - Presentation and overall writing quality of the paper, with references still incomplete, punctuation errors etc - please assume the paper is going to be read widely, and by many different readers which may include policymakers, government officials, other colleagues and patients/citizens, so I would encourage care on the overall appearance. - Further details so that readers understand how the authors made their design selfweighted. Bit more clarity is needed. The argumentation for a 50% proportion is not obvious for a non expert reader and should be better supported with an explanatory reference. - Review again the Discussion and recommendations section, because they remain short in length and not directly connected with the main objective included in the abstract. Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 14 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, Enrique Castro-Sánchez Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 1) We note that Table 2 appears to be mislabeled as a second Table 1. Please revise the table name for clarity. [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 #2: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #3: (No Response) Reviewer #5: (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 #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #5: Partly ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #5: I Don't Know ********** 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 #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #5: No ********** 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 Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #5: 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 #2: The authors in their recommendations should be more specific on community based strategies for information dissemination on covid19 Reviewer #3: Dear authors, I have seen the new version of your article (R2) with track changes and without it. You have made extensive edition in your manuscript using the free use of an artificial intelligence editing tool. The new extensive edited manuscript by a professional language editor is so valuable. You have worked hard in the final proposal in this third stage. I suggest to review again the Discussion and recommendations section, because they remain short in lenght and not directly connected with your main objective included in the abstract. Reviewer #5: Thanks for the opportunity to revise this MS. The references are yet incomplete. I can still see punctuation errors in the MS and the authors need to provide further details so that readers understand how they made their design selfweighted. Bit more clarity is needed. The argumentation for a 50% proportion is not obvious for a non expert reader and should be better supported with a explanatory reference. ********** 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: Dr John Bosco Azigwe Reviewer #3: Yes: Ramon Flecha Reviewer #5: Yes: Jose Manuel Rodriguez-Llanes [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 3 |
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PONE-D-20-14158R3 Assessment of undergraduate student knowledge, attitude, and practices, towards COVID-19 in Debre Berhan University, Ethiopia PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Aynalem, 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. I thank you for the revisions that you have conducted, but I would urge you once more to carefully review the manuscript in terms of clarity and grammar. This is not the usual request for authors to ensure that the English language in the manuscript is adequate, but to ensure that the manuscript is readable and understandable. The paper has had several rounds of reviews and opportunities for these issues to be resolved, so I would be grateful if you could ensure they are resolved. It is disconcerting to find so many issues despite assurances that they have been resolved. In addition to the comments and recommendations mentioned by the reviewers, I have read the manuscript again and I would like the authors to resolve these pending matters: Background 2nd para, why is the mortality compared with the flu? End of 2nd para, and start of 3rd para, the data does not match- please review and clarify. Ethics statement Review wording- "ethical approval commute" should be committee- please review across the manuscript. Review the paragraph for clarity. Please clarify authors contribution, currently 2nd and 6th authors, and 3rd, 4th, 5th are mentioned as contributing equally. Background 2nd para, says "2215 countries", must be a typo. Reference in pg 16 [9,10] appears in cursive font, please edit. End of page: "study conducted in different parts of there world" - say "international" or say which parts of the world. Methods Please remove "Abve sea level and temp" unless relevant to the study. Please edit "Collage of ..." To "College of..." Justify sociodemographic variables, marital status, religion - why collected? Sociodemographic appears in study variables and data collection tool. Was the data collection validated? "Additional data were collected through..." - what additional data? Was tool validated in students or only faculty? "Ensure genuine replies..." - how did they do that? Ethics consideration Commute = committee Paper says participation anonymous but later on it mentioned that collects personal details like phone? Please clarify Results What was the total number of participants approached, to give the 86.1% rate? Discussion End of 1st para: please add evidence that "Students get regular update through the medias" 2nd para: what educational program? How can severity of disease lead to increased knowledge? Any evidence 2nd and 3rd para need punctuation mark at the end. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 24 2021 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, Enrique Castro-Sánchez 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 #3: All comments have been addressed ********** 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 #3: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #3: 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 #3: 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 #3: 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 #3: Authors have adequately addressed my comments in this new version of the article. Discussion section provides more concrete information. ********** 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 #3: Yes: Ramon Flecha [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 4 |
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PONE-D-20-14158R4 Assessment of undergraduate student knowledge, attitude, and practices, towards COVID-19 in Debre Berhan University, Ethiopia PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Aynalem, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but once again, it 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. I have reviewed again, and annotated, the revised version of the manuscript. As you can see, several language and copyeditting issues remain, which I have highlighted. The reason why I am emphasising this aspect of the process is that PLOS ONE manuscripts are published as submitted by the authors, as per the accepted version. Additionally, some of the responses provided to justify some of the concerns and queries raised are not adequate as they really do not offer a justification. **************************************************************************************** 2nd para, why is the mortality compared with the flu? Response: Dear our respected editor thanks you very much. The reason for comparing COVID-19 with the flu is that to show the proportion of mortality as a new outbreak. At the time of seasonal flue outbreak the mortality rate were almost 1%.more over covid mortality rate is almost more than 7 percent .This death rate is particularly alarming. If you are still not comfortable with this sentence, we will remove it. Please remove or simply state that the mortality of covid is estimated at more than 7% Background 2nd para, says "2215 countries", must be a typo. Response: thanks our beloved editor We have rewritten it. Please See the color change The text still says 2215 countries. Please review once more, do you mean 215 countries? Justify socio-demographic variables, marital status, religion - why collected? Response: we would like to thanks our editor for raising these important concerns. The rational for collecting socio-demographic variables, marital status, and religion is as follows 1. In our country context, the distribution of COVID_19 is high among aged individual most of adult generation perceived that they are less risky of contracting with it. For that they didn’t want to get even information on it. Therefore, we have collected it as a factor.
Was the data collection validated? Was tool validated in students or only faculty? "Ensure genuine replies..." - how did they do that? The authors did not respond to the query - how did the interviewers ensured that genuine replies were give? Ethics consideration Commute = committee,Paper says participation anonymous but later on it mentioned that collects personal details like phone? Please clarify Response: Thanks .We has corrected it. See the color change There is still a mention to the collection of phone number. The authors did not respond to the query. Why was the phone number of the participants collected? Results What was the total number of participants approached, to give the 86.1% rate? 634 Response: Thanks dear editor.as we have stated in sample size determination, we have included approached to a total of 634 participate. The 634 number is not included in the manuscript, can you include? Discussion End of 1st para: please add evidence that "Students get regular update through the medias" Response: Dear editor thanks for raising the concern. We have given a possible justifications based o our experience of giving the student about the outbreak COVID-19. We have given to them a health education program for all faculty of the university before the school was closed. Possibly this may increase their knowledge In the Discussion, authors are allowed, and encouraged, to hypothesise about the reasons explaining their findings. However, the authors also need to make sure that the reader knows whether there is any data supporting such explanations. IF you say that "in your experience students get regular update through media", then you should include that in the paper. Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 05 2021 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, Enrique Castro-Sánchez Academic Editor PLOS ONE [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.] 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.
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| Revision 5 |
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PONE-D-20-14158R5 Assessment of undergraduate student knowledge, attitude, and practices, towards COVID-19 in Debre Berhan University, Ethiopia PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Aynalem, 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 following is an odd sentence and needs to be revised in the discussion: "This might be because of easily accessible to most students at home and everywhere through the mobile internet". Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 30 2021 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, Frank T. Spradley Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 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. [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 6 |
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PONE-D-20-14158R6 Assessment of undergraduate student knowledge, attitude, and practices, towards COVID-19 in Debre Berhan University, Ethiopia PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Aynalem, 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 COMMENT: I did not request that the sentence I questioned earlier be removed. It is important for one of the previous revisions. Please REVISE that sentence to proper English and make it understandable and resubmit this manuscript. Please submit your revised manuscript by May 07 2021 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, Frank T. Spradley Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 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. [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 7 |
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PONE-D-20-14158R7 Assessment of undergraduate student knowledge, attitude, and practices, towards COVID-19 in Debre Berhan University, Ethiopia PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Aynalem, 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. SPECIFIC ACADEMIC EDITOR COMMENT: That previous sentence in the discussion that I requested be revised is still not correct. Phrase as "This may be due to ease of access to readily updated information to most students via the internet and social media [34]." Please submit your revised manuscript by May 16 2021 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. 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-emailutm_source=authorlettersutm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Frank T. Spradley Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 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. [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 8 |
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Assessment of undergraduate student knowledge, attitude, and practices, towards COVID-19 in Debre Berhan University, Ethiopia PONE-D-20-14158R8 Dear Dr. Aynalem, 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, Frank T. Spradley Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-20-14158R8 Assessment of undergraduate student knowledge, attitude, and practices towards COVID-19 in Debre Berhan University, Ethiopia Dear Dr. Aynalem: 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. Frank T. Spradley Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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