PONE-D-19-20453

Ecological Risk Assessment and Source Identification of Heavy Metal Pollution in Vegetable Bases of Urumqi, China, using the Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) Method

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Balati Maihemutia,

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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ACADEMIC EDITOR:The manuscript needs considerable revision before publication. The authors have cited Table 3 in line no 471, 514, but the manuscript contains only Table 1. The authors should carefully revise the manuscript. 

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We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by October 4. 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Sartaj Ahmad Bhat, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: No

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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

Reviewer #2: 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: In reference to this manuscript, I consider that the theme is appropriate and within the scope of your journal, but there are too many errors and shortcomings in the work.

1. Please avoid using first person point-of-view terms (e.g., we, our, my, etc.)

2. Please rewrite Key words to highly summarize the main job of your article.

3. In lines 104-106, please check the terminology of source apportionment out twice.

4. In the Introduction section, you only mentioned the importance of receptor model (PMF). However, there is no implication about ecological risk assessment, which is very important in this work. Please involve it to your Introduction.

5. Please avoid irregular writing format like lines 145, 178 and 195, etc.

6. Why was the even lower value larger than the low value in lines 347-348?

7. In lines 425, authors said that the coefficient of variation of As was the largest value among the eight heavy metals, please discuss it in depth.

8. The conclusions must be written in accordance with the objectives and with the results obtained. Please improve this part.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript represents good quality of work. However, there are certain shortcomings which are to be incorporated to get the manuscript published in such reputed journal.

• First line of introduction is a repeat of same as in abstract. So it can be deleted in Introduction.

• The results of pH, Soil texture and SOM mentioned in Materials and Methods (Section 2.3) should be presented in Results and Discussion section and instead the methodology part should be made clearer. For example, How was SOM measured?

• The statement : ‘The results from several former researchers studies were listed in the Table S1’ . Table S1 could not be seen. If it is supplementary, it should be opened via link.

• In Line 390, 432, 471, 514, there is mention of Table.3, but the table does not exist in manuscript.

• In figure captions “5th and 95th and 5th and 95th percentiles of all data”, correct it as ‘5th and 95th percentiles of all data’,

• Although results are well written but discussion needs improvement. If other studies are mentioned in table S1 (which is missing here), these studies are also to be correlated to the present work.

Accepted only after minor revisions

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: 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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: review plos one.doc

PONE-D-19-20453R1

Ecological Risk Assessment and Source Identification of Heavy Metal Pollution in Vegetable Bases of Urumqi, China, using the Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) Method

PLOS ONE

Dear Balati Maihemuti,

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.

==============================

ACADEMIC EDITOR: I agree with the several very serious concerns of the Reviewer 1 who is in full agreement with the critics to this manuscript. Kindly revise the manuscript thoroughly. 

==============================

We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Jan 16 2020 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,

Sartaj Ahmad Bhat, Ph.D

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: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: (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

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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: No

Reviewer #3: 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: No

Reviewer #3: 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: Most of the comments that I sent previously were not answered/considered. Some problems still laid on this work, the first-person point-of-view terms are still used in this article, the key words are still cannot stand for this work, and the discussions are still in poor situation. Therefore, this article cannot be considered by this journal currently.

Reviewer #3: The research work presented in manuscript is important considering in increase in Pollution and thus heavy metals in biosphere. Though, some minor revisions are still required for the manuscript to be ready for publication.

• Use of Pronouns should be avoided in manuscript.

• Language needs improvement in the entire manuscript. Some sentences are incomplete, while others are not grammatically correct.

• Are you sure this is the first report on ecological risk associated with heavy metals in the vegetable bases, as mentioned in introduction? Or this is the first such report for the particular area?

• Probably you used SPSS 19.0 and not SPPS 19.0 as mentioned in line 242, please check.

• The sentence “The low (approx. 0-150) and even lower (approx. 150-300) RI values…….” Is still not clear. It can be rewritten as “in Liushihu village, where the density of human 351 activities and the amount of transportation were relatively low, groundwater was the 352 main source for irrigation and it was located far from urban and industrial areas, RI values exhibited light and moderate risk. Please modify.

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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

Reviewer #3: 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.

Ecological Risk Assessment and Source Identification of Heavy Metal Pollution in Vegetable Bases of Urumqi, China, using the Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) Method

PONE-D-19-20453R2

Dear Dr. Maihemuti,

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,

Sartaj Ahmad Bhat, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: