Changes in ocean health in British Columbia from 2001 to 2016

Casey C. O’Hara; Courtney Scarborough; Karen L. Hunter; Jamie C. Afflerbach; Karin Bodtker; Melanie Frazier; Julia S. Stewart Lowndes; R. Ian Perry; Benjamin S. Halpern

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0227502

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 31, 2019
8 Oct 2019 Decision Letter - Andrea Belgrano, Editor PONE-D-19-24580 Changes in ocean health in British Columbia from 2001 to 2016 PLOS ONE Dear Mr. O'Hara, 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. In your revision it would be interesting if you could include some information regarding the point raised by reviewer #1 on management in terms of stakeholder's participation including local government administrators in the OHI process for this region. We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Nov 22 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, Andrea Belgrano, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 1. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: I really enjoyed reading this interesting piece of work. I found it appropriate and necessary, specially to address the regional scale of the OHI. However, I think that the paper would benefit from explaining in more detail the incomplete datasets. For example, in lines 149-151 authors say "In such cases, datasets were chosen based on careful consideration of the tradeoffs among spatial resolution, temporal resolution, and how well the data represented the needs of the assessment." Could you provide a specific example of how you did it? Again, in lines 169-172 the authors state that "To address incomplete data sets, we applied two gapfilling procedures. For periodic data, we estimated intervening years using a linear interpolation between available data years. For truncated data, we typically expanded the time series using last observation carried forward and/or first observation carried back methods". How you did it? By using expert consultation? Did other stakeholders validated the results? How? Lines 525-528: the lack of cultural availability of data is an important gap, but at the same time, an excellent window of opportunity to collect data through, e.g., in-depth interviews or deliberative mapping. Management: did the authors discuss the process of the OHI with regional/local representatives of the administration? Would be really strong to include this in more detail into the discussion, because it will help policy makers to encourage them to use the OHI. Looking forward to the next version of the manuscript. ****** 6. 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: Yes: Sebastian Villasante [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227502.r001
Revision 1
18 Nov 2019 Author Response See "response to reviewers"; text pasted below: Thank you for the thoughtful feedback on our manuscript, “Changes in ocean health in British Columbia from 2001 to 2016.” We have addressed all the reviewer’s concerns and suggestions, and feel that the resulting manuscript is now much stronger. Below, we outline the changes we have made in response to the reviewer’s suggestion. Reviewer #1: I really enjoyed reading this interesting piece of work. I found it appropriate and necessary, specially to address the regional scale of the OHI. However, I think that the paper would benefit from explaining in more detail the incomplete datasets. For example, in lines 149-151 authors say “In such cases, datasets were chosen based on careful consideration of the tradeoffs among spatial resolution, temporal resolution, and how well the data represented the needs of the assessment.” Could you provide a specific example of how you did it? We have now included details on this process in the Supporting Information Methods, in its own section titled “Data selection criteria” starting on line 559. We rank spatial resolution and extent, temporal resolution and extent (and baseline where appropriate), and thematic “fit” and “resolution” of each dataset to its particular status, pressure, or resilience calculation. Each dimension is scored on a 0.0/0.5/1.0 scale based on criteria described in the supporting methods. In S13 Table, the relevant scores are averaged for each dataset as a heuristic for selection and comparison. As an example of using this method as data selection criteria, we compare two datasets included in the OHIBC assessment against two that we considered, but decided against. In S14 Table, we aggregate dataset scores to calculate scores for each goal status, pressure, and resilience layers. Within the manuscript itself, we have included notes referring to these SI Methods in several locations: • Lines 150-153: “In such cases, datasets were chosen based on careful consideration of the tradeoffs among spatial extent and resolution, temporal extent and resolution, and how well the data represented the needs of the assessment (see SI methods, S13 and S14 Tables).” • Lines 610-612: “Giving explicit voice to ideals of ocean health, and to reference points against which these ideals can be measured, highlights in many cases the gaps and lack of critically important data (see SI methods, S13 and S14 Tables).” • Lines 673-675: “…we encountered challenges in accessing environmental, social, and economic data at spatial, sectoral, and temporal resolutions relevant to conservation policy makers (see SI Methods, S13 and S14 Tables).” Note also changes in lines 248-252 to include both spatial and temporal extent and resolution (original text just mentioned resolution.) Again, in lines 169-172 the authors state that “To address incomplete data sets, we applied two gapfilling procedures. For periodic data, we estimated intervening years using a linear interpolation between available data years. For truncated data, we typically expanded the time series using last observation carried forward and/or first observation carried back methods”. How you did it? By using expert consultation? Did other stakeholders validated the results? How? We chose linear interpolation and Last Observation Carried Forward/Next Observation Carried Back (LOCF/NOCB) as simple, transparent gapfilling procedures that are commonly used including in global OHI assessments. To make our methods more transparent, we have explicitly noted in the SI Methods where linear interpolation and/or LOCF/NOCB extrapolation have been used for each goal. In the line-numbered version of SI (attached for convenience), see lines 83, 103, 141, 161, 172, 195, 204, 209, 221, 226, 267, 281, 295, 325, 349, 368, 375, 388, 397. The text of these additions is omitted here for brevity. Note also minor changes to the manuscript text in lines 272-275: “To address incomplete data sets, we applied two gapfilling procedures chosen for simplicity and transparency. For periodic data, we estimated intervening years using a linear interpolation between available data years. For truncated data, we typically expanded the time series using last observation carried forward and/or next observation carried back extrapolation methods.” Lines 525-528: the lack of cultural availability of data is an important gap, but at the same time, an excellent window of opportunity to collect data through, e.g., in-depth interviews or deliberative mapping. This is an excellent point - we have added a reference in line 626 to highlight this opportunity: “…may indicate an opportunity to refine goal models, redefine reference points, conduct assessments at even finer scales, or generate relevant data and insights through methods such as in-depth interviews or deliberative mapping.” Management: did the authors discuss the process of the OHI with regional/local representatives of the administration? Would be really strong to include this in more detail into the discussion, because it will help policy makers to encourage them to use the OHI. This is an excellent suggestion, but we do not wish to overstate the role of administrators in the process. In the initial phases of this assessment, we discussed the OHI process with representatives of First Nations and the Province of British Columbia via MaPP, engaging them to help define the goals and align them with local and regional needs and priorities. Beyond this planning phase, our engagement with administration has primarily been in a scientific advisory role through DFO scientists (including coauthors Karen Hunter and R. Ian Perry) rather than policymakers. Because our funding source is also involved in MaPP, we wished to maintain a degree of independence between the planning efforts of MaPP and the resulting calculations of OHIBC, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Thank you for your time and effort in reviewing our manuscript. We believe our revisions have addressed all comments thoroughly. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: response_to_reviewers.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227502.r002
20 Dec 2019 Decision Letter - Andrea Belgrano, Editor Changes in ocean health in British Columbia from 2001 to 2016 PONE-D-19-24580R1 Dear Dr. O'Hara, 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. Shortly after the formal acceptance letter is sent, an invoice for payment will follow. To ensure an efficient production and billing process, please log into Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, you must inform our press team as soon as possible and no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. 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. With kind regards, Andrea Belgrano, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Thank you for addressing ALL the comments and suggestions in your revised manuscript https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227502.r003
Formally Accepted
6 Jan 2020 Acceptance Letter - Andrea Belgrano, Editor PONE-D-19-24580R1 Changes in ocean health in British Columbia from 2001 to 2016 Dear Dr. O'Hara: 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. Andrea Belgrano Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227502.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .