PONE-D-21-24189Can Forensic Radiological Skeletal Age Estimation be Performed by Examining Ischiopubic-ilioischial-iliopubic synchondrosis in Computed Tomography Images?PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Gümüş,

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: 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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 paper is in a very raw stage, it needs extensive revision.

There are no page numbers in the manuscript? Please take upmost care in preparing the manuscript and please double check every part of the manuscript.

1. In the abstract, why the 'Instrument and methods' was used? Is there any instrument?

Please give some more pictures as examples of the CT images showing various stages of fusion of the synchondrosis. Please explain more methods in the abstract.

"Two hundred sixty-three children (118 girls and 145 boys) between the ages of 8 and 16 without any health problems participated in the study"- this is a part of methodology and not the results. Please change '8 and 16' to '8 and 16 years'

Why are you mentioning "Discussion and results', why not 'Results and Discussion' . Please use standard format given by the journal.

2.The introduction is very superficial, please write detailed introduction. Please use recent relevant studies and expand the introduction.

"Age is one of the physical features, along with gender,.... Age is not a feature? and please replace gender with 'sex'. Please use appropriate words throughout as the inappropriate words may change the meaning of the sentences.

3. In the methodology, 'According to the defined UNICEF age limits...',you have made different age specific groups, but the sample size guidelines were not followed, statistically, these are not valid without sizable sample.

Please mention dates/years of the examination of the patients.

4. Please discuss the sex differences as obtained in the study in light with other studies.

5. The conclusion should contain concrete findings of the study according to the title as well the objective of the study. Also mention, What is the percentage of accuracy of the determination of age from these dimensions for the mentioned ages?

Why are you mentioning 'results' in stead of 'conclusion'?

6. In the reference section, The format of the references is not uniform, please use journal's guidelines for the same. Please do not use papers from predatory journals such as reference no. 6, 13 etc. Use only which are indexed in PUBMED, SCOPUS and SCI journals.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for presenting this significant study for forensic age estimation.

Please find below some suggestions to help improve the article.

The language needs to be evaluated in further detail. Please use consistent tense forms.

The results needs to be further elaborated. What were the significance values for the Chi-square tests. The p-values should be correlated along with the significance values.

Discussion should focus on comparison with other studies and their findings and discussing the relevance of similarities and differences in these studies.

Most of the presently submitted discussion section, including validating Age estimation as well as CT studies, legal provisions, ability of pelvis to withstand trauma, etc should all be detailed in the Introduction and referenced in brief in discussion, if required.

Please make the suggested changes and resubmit.

Reviewer #3: The manuscript is technically sound with appropriate statistical analysis. Manuscript is in good standard English. Data underlying the findings in the manuscript is fully available. Please do strict in research ethics.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Rijen Shrestha

Reviewer #3: No

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Can Forensic Radiological Skeletal Age Estimation be Performed by Examining Ischiopubic-ilioischial-iliopubic synchondrosis in Computed Tomography Images?

PONE-D-21-24189R1

Dear Dr. Gümüş,

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.

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Kind regards,

Qingzhong Liu, PhD

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 #1: All comments have been addressed

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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: Yes

**********

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

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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

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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: (No Response)

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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