All reviews of published articles are made public. This includes manuscript files, peer review comments, author rebuttals and revised materials. Note: This was optional for articles submitted before 13 February 2023.
Peer reviewers are encouraged (but not required) to provide their names to the authors when submitting their peer review. If they agree to provide their name, then their personal profile page will reflect a public acknowledgment that they performed a review (even if the article is rejected). If the article is accepted, then reviewers who provided their name will be associated with the article itself.
Thank you for submitting a clear response document outlining the responses to reviewer comments alongside edits that were made.
I believe you have satisfactorily addressed all reviewer comments, therefore as handling editor I am happy with the current version be accepted.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Jafri Abdullah, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
My views regarding reviewer comments:
Reviewer 1:
- I perceive the suggestion to change the title as optional, as the title appears clear enough to me in current form. You may wish to mention within the title the countries that the review covers research from (to be clearer regarding the scope of the review), as I notice it is only a small handful of countries, however I also perceive this as optional.
- Please check citations as per suggested by R1 for their points 2 and 3.
- I don't necessarily perceive there to be a need for a citation for the sentence highlighted by the reviewer for their point 4, however you may edit if you wish.
- I think changing any subtitles is optional.
- I think modification of statement as per reviewer 'meta analysis' comment is optional, as I do believe a review article does enable you to provide comment on such matters (i.e., it is not a necessary condition for the article to be a meta-analysis paper to make such observations/suggestions from the reviewed articles).
Reviewer 2:
- I disagree with R2 comments that the validity of the manuscript is compromised via not focusing on the last few months. I am aware that the COVID pandemic has no longer been nearly as impactful in 2022 as it was in 2020/2021. You may wish to clarify this point in the manuscript, however I perceive this as optional.
- You may wish to consider some of the R2 comments regarding making clearer some of the methodological aspects for the reader. I perceive this as optional.
[# PeerJ Staff Note: Please ensure that all review and editorial comments are addressed in a response letter and any edits or clarifications mentioned in the letter are also inserted into the revised manuscript where appropriate. #]
[# PeerJ Staff Note: It is PeerJ policy that additional references suggested during the peer-review process should only be included if the authors are in agreement that they are relevant and useful #]
Basic reporting is good.
Study design is correct and adequate.
The findings are valid.
Thanks for opportunity to review manuscript entitled ‘‘“Double whammy”: A rapid review of rural vs urban psychosocial cancer experiences and telehealth service during the COVID-19 pandemic’’ for Peerj Journal. The author/authors examined internet addiction and potential correlates during the COVİD-19 pandemic. The strength of the manuscript includes examining variables of interest in a country where such studies are scarce during the COVİD-19 pandemic as well as examining adolescents. Overall, although the article is generally well written and deserves to be published in this journal some minor revisions must be made before the publication of the article. Because my main philosophy of reviewing a manuscript as reviewer and sometimes an editor to improve the manuscript and not punishing the authors, I provided very specific and detailed peer review of the manuscript to increase its quality and citation potential. I hope authors of the manuscript may benefit from my review. Necessary revisions reported section by section with the page and line number and when possible with suggestions.
Necessary Minor Revisions
1. The title is difficult to understand and I think subject is missing in the title. Authors must revise the title of the manuscript.
2. Page 7, Line 53: Following citation is wrong as per APA 7 rules and must be corrected. WHO (World Health Organisation, 2020b). As its first use it must be WHO (World Health Organisation [WHO], 2020a)
3. Page 7, Line 62: Following citation must be corrected ‘ ‘WHO (World Health Organisation, 2020b)’’
4. Page 8, Line 110-11: The citation/citations needed for following sentence ‘ ‘Defining what is rural differs from country to country, with varying synonyms and location-
specific definitions (e.g. reginal, remote, non-urban, non-metropolitan) utilized in the literature.
5. Page 9, Line 157: No need Aim subtitle.
6. I think second aim ‘ ‘ii) whether these impacts are equivalent amongst people affected by cancer in urban versus rural locations’’ must remove from manuscript as this study is not a meta-analysis and without meta-analysis it is difficult to compare them.
i. The Methods are not clearly described before the presentation of results. For instance, in line 193, the number of articles are results of this project and therefore should be included in the results section. Similarly, the numbers of papers by country (lines 203-204) are results not methods. Results are inappropriately reported throughout the methods section.
ii. The rates of “survivorship” isn’t correctly articulated
iii. Reference list line 574 is indecipherable
i. In the introduction, the declaration of the pandemic (by WHO) occurred in March 2020. Why then were search results limited back to December 2019? Could ineligible results be included as a result? This is particularly relevant to achieve Aim 1.
1. For a rapid review method, the search results are extremely outdated (August 2021). As such, it is possible that these findings are outdated given the rapidity of publications related to COVID-19. As a result, the search needs to be re-run in order to be considered a rapid review, especially since the Tricco (2017) guidance used by authors cites the time to completion as between 1-4 months (see page 10 and 24 in Tricco [2017]).
2. Although guidelines and recommendations (line 174) were indicated (see my critique of this in iii below), please use a reporting guideline (see https://www.equator-network.org/). These recommendations would help with the transparency of reporting, which is not apparent in many instances, For example:
a. It’s unclear how authors were involved. For instance, on lines 176 and 207 “one author” is referred to. Please indicate initials throughout the paper about who did what.
b. The search strategy lacks sufficient detail to be replicated by readers. Please include a detailed search strategy for one of the databases within the body of the paper.
3. Based upon the methods presented in the paper, I am not convinced that the guidelines presented by Tricco (2017) were followed. For instance, registration of the protocol is not indicated in this manuscript (Tricco [2017] pp. 26-27). Although a since reviewer is permissible for rapid reviews, the authors do not explain the rationale for a single reviewer. Why was a PRISMA flow diagram not included?
4. The inclusion and exclusion criteria are not explicitly stated. As such, readers cannot clearly know the parameters of the study.
5. The rationale for a rapid review needs to be strengthened. In the final sentence of the introduction, the authors reference the WHO to “build back better”, but the link to pre-pandemic services isn’t clear.
All text and materials provided via this peer-review history page are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.