PONE-D-21-29416Optoelectronic analysis of technical factors and performance of top elite‐level air pistol shooting.PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Mon-López,

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.

 Specifically, both reviewers considered that MINOR REVISIONS are needed in order to accept your manuscript.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 30 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're 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.

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). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Carlos Balsalobre-Fernández

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. 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 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability.

"Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized.

Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.

We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

[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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: 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: Review: Optoelectronic analysis of technical factors and performance of top elite‐level air pistol

shooting.

L. 33: “classificatory” - classification instead

L. 35: “distributed” – classified

L. 51: “simultaneously and sequentially” – can this be unpacked for the reader?

L. 100: “In this line, small relations…” – not clear.

L. 99-100: “Interestingly, there is some controversy regarding the relevance of cleanness of triggering on performance. Olsson and Laaksonen (6) showed that cleanness of triggering was negatively related to performance (r = -.48).” – this study based on the subsequent ones cited seems like an aberration rather than the rule and thus I would insert it after the studies which did find the association rather than first in line.

L. 117: “absolute shot displacement” - ?

L. 259: “Last,” should be “lastly”

L. 265-267: “suggesting that the total variance in all shooting modalities is similar regardless of the number of the main technical elements. In addition, these small differences could be due to the participants’ sport level (11), gender (23) or modality (14). – while I understand, this may require a rewrite to avoid confusing the reader.

L. 272-273: “Accordingly, stability of hold could explain up to 54% of the score variance in air rifle shooting (11) and 33% (7, 12), from 24% to 36% (6) or 28% (8) for pistol shooting” –these findings are in contrast to the current study and are attributed to expertise. Can the sample of (11, 7, 12, 6 and 8) be elaborated on?

L. 292: “weapon sights (open vs close)” – can you explain?

L. 305-306: “Nonetheless, cleanness of triggering would explain less variance for air pistol (23%) (6) or between 1 and 2% (7, 12). Hence, our results (9%-20%) would be in accordance with that of a previous study (6).” – within one modality this seems like a huge difference?

L. 317: Mason et al.

L. 326: “collectives” – collectively instead.

L. 329: Could the authors utilize an extrapolation statistical technique for the 8-score shots as currently this measurement may be unreliable.

General comment:

Possibly embed the descriptions in Table 1. Descriptions of the shooting technical variables. in the body of the text for ease of understanding when the reader is introduced to these elements.

The stats analyses are comprehensive.

Reviewer #2: The aim of the study was to capture technical factors of one elite pistol shooter using the SCATT system to investigate whether and to what extent technical factors influence pistol shooting performance. Therefore, the authors analyzed 360 shots by one elite pistol shooter (6 competitions) and showed in particular that aiming accuracy and cleanness of triggering determined shooting performance.

Title / Abstract

1) Line 25: The designation of the performance level of the pistol shooter “top elite-level shooter” sounds like a double designation to me. Elite-level or top-level is easier to understand, especially since you explicitly explain in the methods section how this term is to be classified with regard to the performance of the shooter – this is very important! Later in the methods section when describing the test subject, you only use the term elite-level. I would recommend choosing one name and use it consistently.

Introduction

1) Line 57 ff and lines 62 ff: I would rather put these two paragraphs at the end of the introduction in the paragraph from line 118 ff, since this shows weaknesses of previous studies, which you can use to reinforce your study.

2) Lines 76 ff: If possible, I would write a brief explanation of how each technical parameter (stability of hold, aiming accuracy and so on) was quantified. E.g. in line 92/93 you explained that the aiming accuracy is the percentage of aiming time spent inside the 10-ring during the last second. I would recommend doing this for every parameter.

Materials and Methods

1) Line 145: You adjusted the F coefficient to 12. Is this common in pistol shooting? Is this a high or low number?

2) Line 180: I think the statistical methods chosen are good. Have you ever thought about calculating multilevel modelling, because there you can observe individual shots within your athlete, which means that you’re not dependent on the mean value and you take into account that competitions turned out differently?

Results

3) Line 219 table 3:

a. Does table 3 display the mean values and standard deviations for all 360 shots?

b. Perhaps you can start the result section at line 201 with a sentence that table 3 shows the results of…! The text was very long and table 3 gives a better overview of your results.

4) Line 236 table 5: Maybe you can mark significant correlations so that the reader can see at a glance what became significant. You did this in table 3 and 6.

Discussion

1) Line 253: Please write in a first sentence briefly what the aim of the study was and then start with your main results.

2) Line 339 ff: Here you describe that there have been few studies that used the SCATT system. This is not a limitation of your study. For me, using the SCATT system is a strength of your study, since as I understood it right, the Noptel system is much more imprecise.

**********

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: 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.]

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 PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Optoelectronic analysis of technical factors and performance of elite‐level air pistol shooting.

PONE-D-21-29416R1

Dear Dr. Mon-López,

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

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. 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 help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- 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.

Kind regards,

Carlos Balsalobre-Fernández

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: