Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 16, 2019
Decision Letter - Chunfeng Zhao, Editor

PONE-D-19-19999

Relationship between scapular initial position and scapular movement during dynamic motions

PLOS ONE

Dear Mr Umehara,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Chunfeng Zhao, MD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors investigated the interaction between the scapular initial position and the scapular motions using the motion trackers. Although their findings that the scapular initial positions mostly correlated to the scapular movement were considered important, there are some comments for this study

#1

First, they adopted three motion trackers and secure them to the skin using the tapes. We should carefully consider how accurate they detect the motions. Especially the rotations, the authors demonstrated tiny differences during the motions. It would be helpful for us to understand the outcomes more clearly if the authors could demonstrate the accuracy of the device.

In addition, how did they assess the effect of subcutaneous fat on the outcomes. We can assume the authors selected young males without excessive obesity from the overall data. Please mention these parts more carefully at the Materials and Methods.

#2

They described their hyposthesis for this study: the initial position might correlate to the motions. The major problem of this study was the participants’ characteristics. They only assessed “young” “male” subjects. If the authors would like to prove it, I strongly recommend them to assess the participates including elder people and female people as well.

#3

The authors assessed three times for each motion. Regarding the methodology, please mention how the authors calculate each motions from triplicated data.

In addition, the authors mentioned the reliability of the measurement “the ICC(1,1) calculated from ten healthy men …”. Regarding the reliability, please explain the detail about the values for all motions and rotations, because these information would be helpful to understand the reliability of the methodology using the motion trackers with adhesive tapes.

#4

Regarding my understanding, the measurements using the surface motion trackers have disadvantage for the accuracy even they selected limited motion from 30 to 120 degrees. Some researchers used the percutaneous pinning or fluoroscopic measurement to address to the scapula. I suppose that only the upward/downward rotation of the scapula could be assessed with this measurement tool. I recommend the authors to explain the comparison of various techniques to assess the scapular and/or humerus motions with the accuracy values.

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Reviewer #1: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Revision 1

We thank the reviewer for their constructive comments on our manuscript, as well as for the suggestions provided. Our responses to your comments have been uploaded as the file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. Please find the file.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Chunfeng Zhao, Editor

PONE-D-19-19999R1

Relationship between scapular initial position and scapular movement during dynamic motions

PLOS ONE

Dear Mr Umehara,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Although in the revision, you have addressed some concerns from previous review, it is not fully satisfied with editor and reviewer for your response. Please carefully address the questions and concerns that have been raised. Otherwise, your manuscript will be rejected.

We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Nov 30 2019 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter.

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

  • A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). This letter should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
  • A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
  • An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Manuscript'.

Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Chunfeng Zhao, MD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: There are some comments for the revised manuscript.

Comment to Response #1

Page 7 Lines 111-112

Instead of using inches, I think the authors should use the unit of mm, cm, since they have used cm in the next sentence.

Page 5 Lines 79-80

If the authors described the sentence regarding the exclusion criteria for women, they should demonstrate scientific evidence that women have more measurement error because of the subcutaneous fat.

Comment to Response #2

Again, I recommend the authors to include others with additional characteristics such as elder populations, instead of adding the description of “healthy young men”.

Comment to Response #3

The authors modified the description regarding the methodology and its reliability.

Comment to Response #4

They modified the sentence regarding the limitation. I suppose they should have descripted how they justified the internal/external rotation as well as anterior/posterior tilt with scientific values in advance to this study.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Revision 2

Response to Reviewer

Itemized responses to the reviewer’s comments have been listed below in reference to our manuscript entitled “Relationship between scapular initial position and scapular movement during dynamic motions”.

Reviewer #1

We thank the reviewer for their constructive comments on our manuscript, as well as for the suggestions provided.

Our responses to your comments are listed below. For clarity, the parts quoted from the manuscript are in red, and the implemented changes are highlighted in yellow.

Comment #1

Page 7 Lines 111-112

Instead of using inches, I think the authors should use the unit of mm, cm, since they have used cm in the next sentence.

Response

We have changed the unit from inches to mm.

Revised manuscript

The accuracy of the sensor is 0.762 mm …

Comment #2

Page 5 Lines 79-80

If the authors described the sentence regarding the exclusion criteria for women, they should demonstrate scientific evidence that women have more measurement error because of the subcutaneous fat.

Response

In accordance with your comment, we have cited a previous study investigating sex differences in skeletal muscle, subcutaneous adipose tissue, bone, and so with use of magnetic resonance imaging (Abe et al., 2003). The study included Japanese healthy young men and women as subjects and showed women had higher percentage fat and fat mass than men. This result allows us to assume that women have more measurement error than men because of the subcutaneous fat.

Revised manuscript

…we also excluded women because they would have more subcutaneous fat than men [20], …

Comment #3

Again, I recommend the authors to include others with additional characteristics such as elder populations, instead of adding the description of “healthy young men”.

Response

Thank you for your suggestion. You recommend to include population(s) with additional characteristics such as women and the elderly. However, we beg to disagree that this is necessary. Herein there are two reasons.

1. Populations with additional characteristics such as older and women, to our knowledge, have a possibility to disturb our result, interpretation and conclusion. Previous studies showed the differences in scapular kinematics between asymptomatic older and young population (Saker, 2014) even when the comparison between men and women (Schwartz et al., 2016). These characteristics dependent on the population are due to several factor. For instance, muscle strength loss is inevitable with age and older people have less muscle strength than young (Larsson et al., 1979; Murray et al., 1985). Anthropometric parameter (Winter, 2009), bone shape (Paraskevas et al., 2008), and neuromuscular function (Anders et al., 2004) are different between gender. Namely, additional population in the current study done not make sense.

2. Inclusion of populations such as the elderly and women may create large measurement error between bone and skin due to the subcutaneous tissues. As described in response to your comment#2, women have higher percentage fat and fat mass than men (Abe et al., 2003) and older groups show thicker fat than young groups (Kanehisa et al., 2004).

Bearing in mind these difficulties, we decided to limit the population to healthy young men. As described in our limitations, it is not clear whether the findings can be applied to women, older adults, and individuals with shoulder disorders. However, the lack of inclusion of other populations does not imply that our data do not have scientific value. In the future we plan to conduct these experiment including populations such as older adults and women. In short, we believe that excluding such populations does not make our results invalid.

Since this is the second time you have raised this point, we understand that you feel it is important. However, you have not provided any scientific rationale to convince us of that importance. Moreover, thousands of studies have been published which consider just one population. Population comparisons is therefore clearly not a prerequisite for publication in general. While we agree that a population comparison would be useful, and would also be necessary to demonstrate general validity, we believe that these are separate issues that are tangential to our paper’s message.

If you still feel that it is necessary to add additional populations, we respectfully request that you clarify the scientific rationale for your recommendation.

Comment #4

They modified the sentence regarding the limitation. I suppose they should have descripted how they justified the internal/external rotation as well as anterior/posterior tilt with scientific values in advance to this study.

Response

We apologize, but we do not understand this comment. Please allow us to rephrase your comment as follows: “Authors should use a priori rational to explain why they used internal/external rotation and anterior/posterior tilt.”

If this is what your comment means, we believe that our Introduction and Methods already sufficiently detail the rationale for choosing these tasks.

If this is not what your comment means, we respectfully request clarification.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Chunfeng Zhao, Editor

Relationship between scapular initial position and scapular movement during dynamic motions

PONE-D-19-19999R2

Dear Dr. Umehara,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication.

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With kind regards,

Chunfeng Zhao, MD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #2: The authors have addressed the comments raised in the previous review. I think that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication.

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Chunfeng Zhao, Editor

PONE-D-19-19999R2

Relationship between scapular initial position and scapular movement during dynamic motions

Dear Dr. Umehara:

I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

For any other questions or concerns, please email plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE.

With kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Chunfeng Zhao

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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