Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Acceptability, simplicity, and relevance of the new Human
papillomavirus/DNA test among 35- year-old ever-married women in a district
of Sri Lanka: Focus group discussions
Version: 
2 
Date: 
14 Feb 2021
Reviewer's report:
Due to numerous errors in the manuscript I have decided to upload a reviewed
version with comments inside the manuscript. Ensure that corrections are
affected in the areas that need revision. 
This manuscript needs a complete overhaul in both contents and grammar to
help easy understanding. 
to help convey the An example is shown below
1. Title: Please kindly give the full meaning of this acronym HPV/DNA 
2. Authors and Affiliations -Limit abbreviations to two letters and make the
abbreviation uniform
Delete email addresses in the affiliations
3. Abstract: delete some of the words in this section. Also, re-phrase some
sentences in the methods section
Line 30: Does this believe translate to the actual sensitivity of the screening test?
Sensitivity should be obtained from actual testing. 
4. Line 32: These statements are more of speculations than realities. The result
deviated from the objective of the study which is to determine the acceptability,
relevance and simplicity of the test.
5. Background, line 60-69: This introductory part is not sharp and should be re-
written. So many different topics were mixed up here erratically
6. methods: line 104-118 - It is difficult to extract an information from here.
Please rephrase
7. lines 118-124 -Rephrase these sentences to convey the correct meaning
8. lines 125-132-Don't use bullet points.
9. Lines: 143-152- Rephrase these sentences to convey the appropriate meaning. 
10. lines 161-168 - Not clear, rephrase please
Please overwrite this text when adding your comments to the authors.
11: Results - so many wrong assumptions from the participants and the English
language was poorly written. The language understood clearly by the participants
should have been used for the FGD. the thematic areas identified were not clear
and they were poorly written. please re-organize and make clearer
12: lines 273-283- The whole of these comments did not really speak specifically
on the procedure
13line 292 -So once a test is " a Machine screened 
test" it will be accurate? This
assertion may not be true
14: lines 324-328- The language used by the participants were the ones they
were not familiar with. Hence lost I n meaning that is often seen in their
contributions/speeches
15: discussion: 335-358-Delete, it is related to introduction, methods and results
which have been done previously. This is no discussion.
16: lines 372-375 -The theoretical framework of this study can be discussed in
the introduction section this manuscript, so delete or transfer to appropriate
position.
17: lines 381 -388 -If the participants were biased with information before the
test, then what is the essence of this research?
18:lines 401-405 - This sentence is not related to the preceding sentence and was
not raised during the result section of this manuscript
19lines 415-419- Conclusion/recommendation -This recommendation may not be
valid as only one 
section out of 25 districts were studied and worse still a FGD
study was conducted
20: Abbreviations: Arrange in alphabetical order. I hope this list is
comprehensive
The whole manuscript needs grammatical review to enhance understanding of
the study.
Publons Reviewer Recognition
. Springer Nature can send verification of this
review directly to Publons (a subsidiary of Clarivate Analytics). If you would
like to take advantage of this service, please click on the “Yes” option below.
Your name, email address, title of the reviewed manuscript, name of the journal,
and date of your review submission (the “Review Data”) will then be transmitted
to Publons after the final decision on the manuscript has been made. If you have
already registered at Publons, they will notify you of the receipt of this review
and update your profile 
as per your settings and their policy. If you are not
registered with Publons, you will receive an email from them asking you to
register in order for them to be able to recognize your review on your new
profile page. Publons may use the Review Data to generate derivative metadata
for the benefit of Publons and you as a reviewer, carefully considering the
sensitivity of such information. For example, Publons may verify your record as
a reviewer by updating your profile published on its webservice if you have
registered for such service or help editors to identify candidate reviewers. Please
find the details of processing in Publons’ privacy policy
https://publons.com/about/terms
Yes
Declaration of competing interests
Please complete a declaration of competing
interests, considering the following questions:
1
. 
Have you in the past five years received reimbursements, fees, funding, or
salary from an organisation that may in any way gain or lose financially
from the publication of this manuscript, either now or in the future?
2
. 
Do you hold any stocks or shares in an organisation that may in any way
gain or lose financially from the publication of this manuscript, either now
or in the future?
3
. 
Do you hold or are you currently applying for any patents relating to the
content of the manuscript?
4
. 
Have you received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an
organization that holds or has applied for patents relating to the content of
the manuscript?
5
. 
Do you have any other financial competing interests?
6
. 
Do you have any non-financial competing interests in relation to this
paper?
If you can answer no to all of the above, write 'I declare that I have no competing
interests' below. If your reply is yes to any, please give details below.
'I declare that I have no competing interests'
Reviewer Publication Consent.
 I agree for my report to be made available
under an Open Access Creative Commons CC-BY License (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
) if this manuscript is accepted for
publication. Any comments that I do not wish to be included in the published
report have been included as confidential comments to the editor, which will not
be published.
If you are not happy for us to publish this report, please contact the
editorial office before completing the review.
If you wish, you can include your
name in your published report. Please note you must decide whether to include
your name at the start of the process and confirm this decision whenever
prompted. If you change your decision later, we will not be able to publish your
name.
I agree to the terms of the CC-BY 4.0 license; please 
do not
 publish my name
with my report. (default)
Is the study design appropriate to answer the research question (including the use
of appropriate controls), and are the conclusions supported by the evidence
presented?
No
Are the methods sufficiently described to allow the study to be repeated?
No
Is the use of statistics and treatment of uncertainties appropriate?
Yes
Is the presentation of the work clear?
No
Are the images in this manuscript (including electrophoretic gels and blots) free
from apparent manipulation?
Yes