Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 28, 2023
Decision Letter - Luis Felipe Reyes, Editor

PONE-D-23-08595Researching COVID to enhance recovery (RECOVER) adult study protocol: Rationale, objectives, and designPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Horwitz,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Luis Felipe Reyes, M.D., Ph.D., MSc.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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

"We would like to thank the National Community Engagement Group (NCEG), all patient, caregiver and community representatives, and all the participants enrolled in the RECOVER initiative.

Membership of the RECOVER Initiative is provided in a supplemental appendix file."

We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. 

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: 

"National Institutes of Health (NIH) Agreement OTA OT2HL161847 (SDK, LIH), OT2HL161841 (ASF), OT2HL156812 (LTN). https://www.nih.gov/

The funders did not and will not have a role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

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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 If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references.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 If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Descriptions of methods and materials in the protocol should be reported in sufficient detail for another researcher to reproduce all experiments and analyses. The protocol should describe the appropriate controls, sample size calculations, and replication needed to ensure that the data are robust and reproducible.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

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

Reviewer #1: Sample size: The primary aims of this study are more focused on characterizing the prevalence, symptoms, and other factors related to PASC. Therefore, the sample size should not be based solely on comparisons between infected and non-infected individuals. Additionally, the effect sizes used in the calculation were not clinically justified. It is unclear how the targeted sample sizes were determined for subgroups in Table 2.

The purpose and technique details of the machine learning model are not clearly described.

It is unclear how the PASC subgroups will be analyzed.

A longitudinal model may be considered for analyzing repeated measures.

Reviewer #2: It is a well written protocol. It has ambitious but achievable objectives. The methodology is adequate. The large number of participating centers ensures the achievement of the sample size. The most important limitation is the lack of a standardized definition of long COVID-19. However, with the findings of this study a better characterization could be achieved.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Revision 1

please see Response to Reviewers document, attached

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Luis Felipe Reyes, Editor

Researching COVID to enhance recovery (RECOVER) adult study protocol: Rationale, objectives, and design

PONE-D-23-08595R1

Dear Dr. Horwitz,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Luis Felipe Reyes, M.D., Ph.D., MSc.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Luis Felipe Reyes, Editor

PONE-D-23-08595R1

Researching COVID to enhance recovery (RECOVER) adult study protocol: Rationale, objectives, and design

Dear Dr. Horwitz:

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. Luis Felipe Reyes

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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