Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It’s a great paper! The theme is important and the text was well constructed. I hope to collaborate with some suggestions:

- Insert in the method which was the theoretical framework that guided this review (ex.: JBI), since the PRISMA for scoping review is a checklist to help to report scoping reviews.

- Table 1: the first line, where the study designs are presented, is confused due to the words being very close. I suggest using abbreviations.

- Conclusions: present the answers to items 2, 3 and 4 of the objectives more clearly at the conclusion.

Author Response

Reviewer #1:

It's a great paper! The theme is important, and the text was well constructed.

RESPONSE: We appreciate the reviewer's comment regarding our study.

1) Insert in the method which was the theoretical framework that guided this review (ex.: JBI), since the PRISMA for scoping review is a checklist to help to report scoping reviews.

RESPONSE: As suggested by the reviewer, we changed the sentence, including the theoretical framework that guided this review (Lines 71-73).

2) Table 1: the first line, where the study designs are presented, is confused due to the words being very close. I suggest using abbreviations.

RESPONSE: We agree with the reviewer. Considering readability, we changed the first line in Tables 1 and 2 to make each column header clearer, suppressing the word 'quantitative' instead of abbreviations. In the text, we kept the full type of study description suggested by MMAT.

3) Conclusions: present the answers to items 2, 3 and 4 of the objectives more clearly at the conclusion.

RESPONSE: As suggested, we described the answers to our objectives more clearly in the conclusions. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper investigated the characteristics, strengths and gaps in research regarding the long-term care facilities in Brazil. The topic of the study is interesting and important for the readers of the  IJERPH. The manuscript is well written, the structute and methodology is strong.

I have only three small comments for this research:

1. In Discussion part more information based on international experience is needed.
2. Give more sugesstions/recomendations for future policy and strategies regarding the LCTFS in Brazil.
3. Maybe a list of inlcuded studies should be added in as a Supplemetary file. 

Author Response

Reviewer #2:

The manuscript is well written, the structure and methodology is strong.

RESPONSE: We appreciate the reviewer's comment regarding our study.

• In Discussion part more information based on international experience is needed.

RESPONSE: Thank you for this comment. We agree that international experience adds value to the discussion of this paper. In this paper, we included references to previous experiences in the UK (pg.12) and to the importance of international knowledge sharing and collaboration, as previously reported in a workshop supported by academics from across Brazil, UK, Netherlands, and Austria.

 

• Give more suggestions/recommendations for future policy and strategies regarding the LCTFS in Brazil.

RESPONSE: Thank you for this comment. In our previous version we touched on future recommendations, and in our revised version we have added more detail. We have provided more detail around the immediate next step, consulting with key stakeholders to set a research agenda in this area. We have expanded on this point in our revised version – see discussion, conclusions, and implications section, page p13, line 267-284.

 

 

• Maybe a list of included studies should be added as a Supplementary File. 

RESPONSE: We valued the reviewer's suggestion. The authors made the Dataset available publicly, including the reference list, through the Harvard Dataverse repository:

Wachholz, Patrick Alexander; Oliveira, Deborah; Hinsliff-Smith, Kathryn; Devi, Reena; Villas Boas, Paulo José Fortes; Shepherd, Victoria; Jacinto, Alessandro Ferrari; Watanabe, Helena Akemi Wada; Gordon, Adam Lee; Ricci, Natalia Aquaroni, 2021, "RESEARCH ON LONG-TERM CARE FACILITIES FOR OLDER PEOPLE IN BRAZIL FROM 1999-2018", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/TWQ9JL, Harvard Dataverse, V1.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper is a concise and well-supported scoping review.  It is a valuable study, and the discussion is thoughtful.  Scholars interested in research on LTCF in any country should find this worthwhile.

I have no substantive recommendations.  I just suggest a review of some of the language.  Two instances that I found awkward or unclear were "inward investment" (line 42) and "state of play" (lines 54-55).

 

Author Response

Reviewer #3:

This paper is a concise and well-supported scoping review.  It is a valuable study, and the discussion is thoughtful.  Scholars interested in research on LTCF in any country should find this worthwhile.

RESPONSE: We appreciate the reviewer's comment regarding our study.

1) I just suggest a review of some of the language.  Two instances that I found awkward or unclear were "inward investment" (line 42) and "state of play" (lines 54-55).

RESPONSE: As suggested by the reviewer, we changed both sentences to make it clear.

Line 42: the word inward was suppressed.

Line 54-55: the term "state of play" was changed by the expression "state-of-the-art"

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

 

This is an interesting paper which is well structured and written with a very robust review methodology. The methodology is very detailed and relevant to a scoping review. There are a couple issues that have to be considered:

 

Minor

• The title is a bit misleading. It should be about the characteristics of research and not about research in general. This is because as it stands the reader expects to read what the research shows.

 

Major

• The results section reflects the objectives. However, it is puzzling why the authors chose to focus on the characteristics of research and not on presenting what all these studies showed. The authors wrote: “This lack of coordination means that we are, as yet, unclear about the extent, quality, and impact of research in the sector or how it impacts on older adults’ care [7,11]”. But if we do not know about the impact of such research on older adults’ care then why did the authors chose not to show what all these studies found and focused only on their characteristics. With 327 studies one would expect to learn what the research revealed about LTCFs in Brazil and what the gaps were. Exploring the characteristics of research instead of the findings would make more sense if the findings were already published in another scoping or systematic review and therefore there was need to understand the characteristics of so much research on a specialized topic in one country. In order words, focusing on the characteristics of research instead of on the findings, is not currently well justified. Why do we have to know about the characteristics of this research before we know about what it has found?

Author Response

Reviewer #4:

This is an interesting paper which is well structured and written with a very robust review methodology. The methodology is very detailed and relevant to a scoping review.

 RESPONSE: We appreciate the reviewer's comment regarding our study.

• The title is a bit misleading. It should be about the characteristics of research and not about research in general. This is because as it stands the reader expects to read what the research shows.

RESPONSE: As suggested by the reviewer, we changed the title.

Before: Research on Long-Term Care Facilities for Older People in Brazil: A Scoping Review

After: Characteristics of research on Long-Term Care Facilities for Older People in Brazil: A Scoping Review

2) The results section reflects the objectives. However, it is puzzling why the authors chose to focus on the characteristics of research and not on presenting what all these studies showed. The authors wrote: "This lack of coordination means that we are, as yet, unclear about the extent, quality, and impact of research in the sector or how it impacts on older adults' care [7,11]". But if we do not know about the impact of such research on older adults' care then why did the authors chose not to show what all these studies found and focused only on their characteristics. With 327 studies one would expect to learn what the research revealed about LTCFs in Brazil and what the gaps were. Exploring the characteristics of research instead of the findings would make more sense if the findings were already published in another scoping or systematic review and therefore there was need to understand the characteristics of so much research on a specialized topic in one country. In order words, focusing on the characteristics of research instead of on the findings, is not currently well justified. Why do we have to know about the characteristics of this research before we know about what it has found?

Reviewer 4 commented that the results section reflects the review objectives. He/she questions why the review did not describe the study findings in more detail, and asks for more justification around this. We thank the reviewer for this comment. See below for more justification around this, and in the following places we have added text to the manuscript to add more clarity around this:

 

Funding for long term care-related research has not yet been funded in a strategic way. Our review is a first step to understanding the nature of research carried out in Brazilian long term care to date. The purpose here is to appraise the field to date, map out where in the country evidence is generated, and identify broad topic areas. The purpose of this is to give researchers, policymakers, and those commissioning research in Brazil a ‘big picture’ overview of long term care research conducted in Brazil over the past two decades. This overview can be used to design a coordinated plan of action for future research. For example, a clear finding is evidence in this area is predominately generated from Sao Paulo – illustrating the need to investigate LTCFs in other Brazilian states. Additional text has been inserted in the discussion section to emphasize this point, see discussion section, page 12, line 188 – 191.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

Thank you for taking into account my feedback. Two things:

1. The title in the revised manuscript and in your written response are not the same. You have to decide which one you will be using. I think both are fine but i think the one appearing in the manuscript (ie "Mapping research conducted...") better captures what you did.
2. The justification should appear in the Introduction somewhere before the Objectives and not in the Discussion. It is ok to briefly mention it in the Discussion too but the reader should not wait until there to find out why this scoping review is timely and justified. 

Author Response

RESPONSE TO REVIEWER COMMENTS

1. The title in the revised manuscript and in your written response are not the same. You have to decide which one you will be using. I think both are fine but i think the one appearing in the manuscript (ie "Mapping research conducted...") better captures what you did.

Response: We agree with the reviewer. We made a mistake keeping the suggestion of one of the co-authors and did not correct the final title in the reply to the reviewer. We agree that the adopted title (Mapping research conducted ...) fits better to the content of the manuscript.

 

2. The justification should appear in the Introduction somewhere before the Objectives and not in the Discussion. It is ok to briefly mention it in the Discussion too but the reader should not wait until there to find out why this scoping review is timely and justified. 

Response: We appreciate the reviewer's comment. We agree that the paragraph that justifies the study makes more sense in the introduction, before the objectives than in the discussion. The paragraph was replaced, and with that, the relevance and importance of the study were highlighted.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx