Title: Precancerous lesion determinants in women attending cervical cancer screening at public
health facilities in North Shoa Zone, Amhara, Ethiopia: an unmatched case-control study.
Version: 0 Date: 11 Mar 2024
Reviewer's report:
GENERAL COMMENT:
- The text is not lined for ease of assessment.
- There are too many grammatical and spelling errors
The organizing of the manuscript did not follow the guidelines of this journal, which is
not acceptable. Even some structures are missed. (Thus, it needs organizing as per journal
guidelines).
- Overall, the manuscript needs major revision before further consideration!
TITLE:
- The title of this article lacked some considerations like period and study design.
ABSTRACT:
- It is too long (having 369 words)
- In the methods section, the reader left to dark as methods of data collection is not mentioned.
Measure of strength of association used?
INTRODUCTION:
- Change your headings of “Introduction” into “Background”
- What is known and not known about the problem is not well described.
- What interventions have been taken to subside the problem is not described.
- Background information is not focused and lacks pertinent contextual evidence and logical
arguments with current evidence.
- You are not studying cervical cancer, i.e. is a precancerous cervical lesion so you should rewrite
your background section by focusing on your problem under study.
- In your introduction, you said “In alignment with national strategies from 2016 to 2020,
Ethiopia”, Can we talk about it now as an ongoing strategy? can we talk about this strategy for
research done in 2020?
METHODS AND MATERIALS:
- Better to clearly state public health facilities and their cadre along with several facilities that
provide cervical cancer screening in North Shoa Zone.
- Points written under subheadings of “Study design and setting” are not pertinent to the title.
- The calculated sample size is based on factors frequently associated with cervical cancer
screening programs not “determinants of precancerous lesion”, as your citation indicates
“reference number 14 which is “Getachew S, Getachew E, Gizaw M, Ayele W, Addissie A,
Kantelhardt EJ. Cervical cancer screening knowledge and barriers among women in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia. Naanyu V, editor. PLoS One [Internet]. 2019 May 10;14(5):e0216522.
Available from: https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone”
- There are no subheadings “Data collection and analysis” in this particular journal.
- Therefore, write “Data collection tools and procedures” alone
- In general, the methods section described in this article does not allow the study to be repeated.
RESULTS:
- In “Table 1: Socio-demographic characteristics of study participants in North Shoa, Ethiopia,
2020” you mentioned “Wealth index” as Rich and poor”, what are your criteria to say an
individual is rich or poor?
DISCUSSION:
- The discussion section did not include some important papers and some considerations are not
justified by the results
- Your discussion does not show the implications of the findings in the context of existing
research.
- The limitation should be described at the final paragraph of your discussion instead of
describing it separately.
- In general, it should be rewritten for better understanding.
CONCLUSIONS
- First, Change “CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS” into simply “Conclusions”