Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Monthly Entomological Inoculation Rate Data for Studying Malaria Transmission Seasonality In Africa

 

General comment:

I want to commend the authors for putting the effort to collate this data that could aid development of spatio-temporal dynamic and stochastic models of malaria transmission in Africa. The manuscript is well written with detailed methodological approach. However, I have the following questions or comments.

 

• Why did the authors limit the data to when interventions were not implemented?

It would be interesting to see how seasonality has shifted over the years due to climate change and use of interventions. In this regard is it possible to include the data dropped due to condition (5) in the database with a flag showing the intervention periods for comparison?

Based on this condition, is it why the data used by (Amek et al., 2011) for example was not included in the database?

It would also be useful for the readers to know details of the inclusion /exclusion based on the five categories for all the articles considered.

• How accurate is the digitization process using the R package?

 

 

 

AMEK, N., BAYOH, N., HAMEL, M., LINDBLADE, K. A., GIMNIG, J., LASERSON, K. F., SLUTSKER, L., SMITH, T. & VOUNATSOU, P. 2011. Spatio-temporal modeling of sparse geostatistical malaria sporozoite rate data using a zero inflated binomial model. Spat Spatiotemporal Epidemiol, 2, 283-90.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Well written and of high interest to the malaria community. There were a moderate number of grammatical errors throughout the manuscript that I have noted below. I believe the manuscript is suitable for publication once these have been addressed. 

 

Line 14- provide statistics to support the claim of malaria as a major health problem. 

 

Line 50- human biting rate (HBR). Abbreviate following1st usage. 

 

Line 86- use abbreviations for terms already defined (HBR & CSPR)

 

Line 88- monthly value? instead of month value

 

Line 98- capitalization necessary?

 

Line 141- Table instead of Tab.

 

Line 174- Fig 3.

 

Line 174-175 italicize species names

 

Line 177 & 178- do not start sentence with an abbreviation

 

Line 200-202- Define abbreviations following first use (lines 98-99) not secondary uses. Human biting rate defined on line 86.

 

Line 205 & 207- Fig 1. Instead of figure 1.

 

Line 209 -just state CSPR

 

Line 239- List of abbreviations used in this study is incomplete. Missing CSPR, HBR, etc….

Author Response

Please see the attachement

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf