Assessment of composition and spatial dynamics of weed communities in agroecosystem under varying edaphic factors

Anum Yousaf; Noreen Khalid; Muhammad Aqeel; Zarrin Fatima Rizvi; Haifa A. S. Alhaithloul; Wajiha Sarfraz; Khalid Al Mutairi; Tasahil S. Albishi; Saad Alamri; Mohamed Hashem; Ali Noman; Sameer H. Qari

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0266778

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 8, 2022
3 Feb 2022 Decision Letter - Ansar Hussain, Editor PONE-D-22-00689Assessment of composition and spatial dynamics of weed communities in agroecosystem under varying edaphic factorsPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Noman, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 20 2022 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, Ansar Hussain 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. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section. 3. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: "The authors extend their appreciation to the Government College Women University, Sialkot, Pakistan for providing lab facilities. Authors also extend their appreciation to the Deanship of Scientific Research, King Khalid University for funding this publication work through research groups program under grant number R.G.P. 1/241/41." We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: "yes" Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. 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. 5. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well. [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 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: Dear Authors, The article submitted for review: Assessment of Composition and Spatial Dynamics of Weed Communities in Agroecosystem under Varying Edaphic Factors, is a broad analysis of weed occurrence in wheat crop. From an agricultural point of view, weed structure is of great importance. The article is properly prepared and under the journal scope. Visualizations are of good quality. I have some comments needs to be addressed: 1) Abstract L3: Explain what you mean by "substantial" or use the correct term, perhaps "more noxious. 2) L46: use a more suitable term for composite such as yield, yield, etc. 3) L53: use 9 instead of 9.0 4) L55: Replace our with the 5) L70: use 28 instead of twenty-eight 6) L71: “Weeds are ubiquitous and…….” , delete “are ubiquitous and”, be shorter and direct. Avoid the use of unnecessary terms and expressions 7) L97-99: “The current research…………. cultivated”, move these lines to the beginning of the paragraph 8) L107: use herbicides instead of weedicides 9) L113-116: use the correct font size for all the equations 10) L121-122: these expressions are confusing; you mean 3 samples in the first and 3 in the third. Are you referring to the same samples at each site or are they different? 11) L146: Replace electrical conductivity with E.C., use the proposed abbreviations 12) L179-182: “Physio-chemical……….edaphic factors”. Interpretation for discussion. Focus on describing only results, any interpretation or conjecture about them make it in the corresponding section 13) L183-185: delete, this is Methodology 14) L205-239: abbreviate the genus that were already mentioned above: like Trifolium repens --- T. repens 15) L241-245: delete all unnecessary terms 16) L268: Correct like C. didymus (9 fields) and U. dioica (5 fields) 17) L273: replace alpha with α 18) The conclusions need to be corrected because the first paragraph repeats the research methodology and analysis of the results obtained. 19) Rewrite this conclusion in a shorter and clearer way, maybe: Furthermore, most soil factors were positively correlated with weeds, therefore, the competition and niche separation among them was negligible Final Recommendations: Overall, I think the experiments and various analysis carried out are interesting, and in general, the manuscript is well organized, but above mentioned correction must be addressed for acceptance. Reviewer #2: Title: Assessment of Composition and Spatial Dynamics of Weed Communities in Agroecosystem under Varying Edaphic Factors GENERAL EVALUATION: The manuscript titled as “Assessment of Composition and Spatial Dynamics of Weed Communities in Agroecosystem under Varying Edaphic Factors” deals with the investigation of weed distribution and its relation with some soil properties in 15 wheat fields in Pakistan. The subject of the manuscript is considered as quite suitable for the journal. Authors have great field, laboratory and computer-based job, but some aspects should be improved in this article to be fully suitable for publication. In general, the writing style and the use of English language are satisfactory. But there are some slight shortcomings. I listed some more corrections, recommendations and questions below for the authors to improve the manuscript. TITLE: Title is OK. ABSTRACT: - Second sentence must be deleted; it could be moved to Intro section. - Number of wheat fields (15) should be included. KEYWORDS - Change “Soil texture” with “Soil properties”. - Change “Weed control” with “Weeds”. INTRODUCTION 1. Page 1, Last line: What is “ESP”? If it is a reference, number it and list it in the Reference section. 2. Page 1, Last line: Change “most consuming yield” with “mostly-consumed agricultural product”. 3. Page 2, Paragraph 1, Line 2: Use a better term instead of “our crops”. 4. Page 2, Paragraph 1, Line 3: Use a better term instead of “folks”. 5. Page 2, Paragraph 1, Line 4: Delete commas. 6. Page 2, Paragraph 2, Lines 3-6-7: Change “percent” to “%”. Check whole manuscript. MATERIALS AND METHODS 1. Paragraph 1, Line 2: Change “ten square-shaped quadrats” to “ten square-shaped quadrats on each of the 15 wheat fields (a total of 150 quadrats)”. 2. Paragraph 1, Line 6: Use “herbicides” instead of “weedicides”. 3. Section Weed identification: Briefly explain how you identified the weeds. 4. Use smaller fonts for all three equations. 5. Section soil sampling:Change “Three soil samples” to “Three soil samples from each of the fifteen wheat field” 6. Section soil sampling- Line 3: Check the unit “gm-1 kg”. 7. Section soil sampling: Delete “Configuration”. Page 7, Paragraph 3, Line 2: Use “total dissolved solids (TDS)” instead of “TDS”. Page 8, Paragraph 1: Check the grammar of the sentence: “was established”, “was adopted”. Page 8, Paragraph 1: Use small letters for the software names (EXCEL, CANOCO). RESULTS Page 9, Last Paragraph, Line 2: Add “Figure 4” at the end of the first sentence. Page 9, Last Paragraph: Do not list all pairs, please summarize the top several pairs (3-5 pairs) with the highest correlation. Page 10, Last Paragraph: Do not list all pairs, please summarize the top several pairs (3-5 pairs) with the highest correlation. Include the figure number for this finding. Also, Latin names must be given in italic format. Figure 6 and Figure 7: Make the legend a little bit bigger. Include the full name for the acronyms (TDS, OM, EC) at the end of the caption in parenthesis. Section “Correlation between weed ….” Line 2: “different ecological factors” or “different edaphic factors”. Line 6: “and” should not be in italic format. Figure 9: Put a note what the asterisk signs () mean at the end of the figure caption. DISCUSSION Page 14, Line 297: Delete the comma in “Khattak, et al. [24]”. Page 14, Line 303: Delete the comma in “Hyvönen, et al. [31]”. Page 14, Line 304: Delete the two commas in “Marwat, et al. [32],”. Page 14, Line 306: Replace “along” with “along with”. Page 14, Line 307: Delete the comma in “Gupta, et al. [33]”. Page 15, Line 334:Delete the comma in “Zhang, et al. [38]”. Page 16, Line 345:Delete the comma in “Zhang, et al. [40]”. Page 16, Line 359:Delete the comma in “Stevens, et al. [42]”. Page 17, Line 365:Replace “Medagascar” to “Madagascar”. Table 1: Include the full names for the acronyms (TDS, EC, OM) at the bottom of the table. CONCLUSIONS - Number of wheat fields (15) should be included into the second sentence. - Use clear statements for the findings. Give your recommendations. REFERENCES Reference no 2: Check the typing (two dots) Reference no 24: Check the title (“Underunder”) Reference no 34: Check the title (Latin names must be in Italic) Reference no 40: Check the journal name Reference no 42: Check the journal name ******* 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266778.r001
Revision 1
3 Mar 2022 Author Response PONE-D-22-00689 Responses to reviewers’ comments We are really thankful to the reviewers who have taken their time to make this manuscript better. Track-change mode was adopted to make changes in the manuscript in this revision. Reviewer 1 Sr # Reviewer’s comment Response 1 The article submitted for review: Assessment of Composition and Spatial Dynamics of Weed Communities in Agroecosystem under Varying Edaphic Factors, is a broad analysis of weed occurrence in wheat crop. From an agricultural point of view, weed structure is of great importance. The article is properly prepared and under the journal scope. Visualizations are of good quality. I have some comments needs to be addressed: Thank you for appreciating the scope of our manuscript. We have addressed the concerns you mentioned in the best possible way. 2 1) Abstract L3: Explain what you mean by "substantial" or use the correct term, perhaps "more noxious. This line has been removed from the abstract now. 3 2) L46: use a more suitable term for composite such as yield, yield, etc. Correction has been made 4 3) L53: use 9 instead of 9.0 Corrected as suggested. 5 4) L55: Replace our with the Corrected as suggested. 6 5) L70: use 28 instead of twenty-eight Corrected as suggested. 7 6) L71: “Weeds are ubiquitous and…….” , delete “are ubiquitous and”, be shorter and direct. Avoid the use of unnecessary terms and expressions Corrected as suggested. 8 7) L97-99: “The current research…………. cultivated”, move these lines to the beginning of the paragraph. Corrected as suggested. 9 8) L107: use herbicides instead of weedicides Corrected as suggested. 10 9) L113-116: use the correct font size for all the equations Corrected as suggested. 11 10) L121-122: these expressions are confusing; you mean 3 samples in the first and 3 in the third. Are you referring to the same samples at each site or are they different? We have now explained it a little bit more to resolve the ambiguity. 11) L146: Replace electrical conductivity with E.C., use the proposed abbreviations Corrected as suggested. 12) L179-182: “Physio-chemical……….edaphic factors”. Interpretation for discussion. Focus on describing only results, any interpretation or conjecture about them make it in the corresponding section Thank you for the suggestion, we have modified the desired portion and follow the pattern. 13) L183-185: delete, this is Methodology Deleted. 14) L205-239: abbreviate the genus that were already mentioned above: like Trifolium repens --- T. repens We have now given abbreviated the genus names except their first use in the manuscript. 15) L241-245: delete all unnecessary terms Corrected as suggested. 16) L268: Correct like C. didymus (9 fields) and U. dioica (5 fields) Corrected as suggested. 17) L273: replace alpha with α Replaced. 18) The conclusions need to be corrected because the first paragraph repeats the research methodology and analysis of the results obtained. The extra detail from the conclusions is now omitted. 19) Rewrite this conclusion in a shorter and clearer way, maybe: Furthermore, most soil factors were positively correlated with weeds, therefore, the competition and niche separation among them was negligible. The conclusion is revised now. Final Recommendations: Overall, I think the experiments and various analysis carried out are interesting, and in general, the manuscript is well organized, but above mentioned correction must be addressed for acceptance. Thank you very much. Reviewer 2 Sr # Reviewer’s comment Response 1 GENERAL EVALUATION: The manuscript titled as “Assessment of Composition and Spatial Dynamics of Weed Communities in Agroecosystem under Varying Edaphic Factors” deals with the investigation of weed distribution and its relation with some soil properties in 15 wheat fields in Pakistan. The subject of the manuscript is considered as quite suitable for the journal. Authors have great field, laboratory and computer-based job, but some aspects should be improved in this article to be fully suitable for publication. In general, the writing style and the use of English language are satisfactory. But there are some slight shortcomings. I listed some more corrections, recommendations and questions below for the authors to improve the manuscript. Thank you for your appreciation. We have now revised the manuscript according to your suggestions. 2 TITLE: Title is OK. 3 ABSTRACT: - Second sentence must be deleted; it could be moved to Intro section. - Number of wheat fields (15) should be included. The 2nd sentence from the abstract is now deleted. 4 KEYWORDS - Change “Soil texture” with “Soil properties”. - Change “Weed control” with “Weeds”. Changed. 5 INTRODUCTION 1. Page 1, Last line: What is “ESP”? If it is a reference, number it and list it in the Reference section. 2. Page 1, Last line: Change “most consuming yield” with “mostly-consumed agricultural product”. 3. Page 2, Paragraph 1, Line 2: Use a better term instead of “our crops”. 4. Page 2, Paragraph 1, Line 3: Use a better term instead of “folks”. 5. Page 2, Paragraph 1, Line 4: Delete commas. 6. Page 2, Paragraph 2, Lines 3-6-7: Change “percent” to “%”. Check whole manuscript. We have Corrected as suggested all of these changes now. 6 MATERIALS AND METHODS 1. Paragraph 1, Line 2: Change “ten square-shaped quadrats” to “ten square-shaped quadrats on each of the 15 wheat fields (a total of 150 quadrats)”. 2. Paragraph 1, Line 6: Use “herbicides” instead of “weedicides”. 3. Section Weed identification: Briefly explain how you identified the weeds. 4. Use smaller fonts for all three equations. 5. Section soil sampling:Change “Three soil samples” to “Three soil samples from each of the fifteen wheat field” 6. Section soil sampling- Line 3: Check the unit “gm-1 kg”. 7. Section soil sampling: Delete “Configuration”. Page 7, Paragraph 3, Line 2: Use “total dissolved solids (TDS)” instead of “TDS”. Page 8, Paragraph 1: Check the grammar of the sentence: “was established”, “was adopted”. Page 8, Paragraph 1: Use small letters for the software names (EXCEL, CANOCO). We have Corrected as suggested all of these changes now. 7 RESULTS Page 9, Last Paragraph, Line 2: Add “Figure 4” at the end of the first sentence. Page 9, Last Paragraph: Do not list all pairs, please summarize the top several pairs (3-5 pairs) with the highest correlation. Page 10, Last Paragraph: Do not list all pairs, please summarize the top several pairs (3-5 pairs) with the highest correlation. Include the figure number for this finding. Also, Latin names must be given in italic format. Figure 6 and Figure 7: Make the legend a little bit bigger. Include the full name for the acronyms (TDS, OM, EC) at the end of the caption in parenthesis. Section “Correlation between weed ….” Line 2: “different ecological factors” or “different edaphic factors”. Line 6: “and” should not be in italic format. Figure 9: Put a note what the asterisk signs () mean at the end of the figure caption. We have Corrected as suggested all of these changes now. 8 DISCUSSION Page 14, Line 297: Delete the comma in “Khattak, et al. [24]”. Page 14, Line 303: Delete the comma in “Hyvönen, et al. [31]”. Page 14, Line 304: Delete the two commas in “Marwat, et al. [32],”. Page 14, Line 306: Replace “along” with “along with”. Page 14, Line 307: Delete the comma in “Gupta, et al. [33]”. Page 15, Line 334:Delete the comma in “Zhang, et al. [38]”. Page 16, Line 345:Delete the comma in “Zhang, et al. [40]”. Page 16, Line 359:Delete the comma in “Stevens, et al. [42]”. Page 17, Line 365:Replace “Medagascar” to “Madagascar”. Table 1: Include the full names for the acronyms (TDS, EC, OM) at the bottom of the table. We have Corrected as suggested all of these changes now. 9 CONCLUSIONS - Number of wheat fields (15) should be included into the second sentence. - Use clear statements for the findings. Give your recommendations. The 2nd sentence is modified now and recommendations have also been added to the end of the conclusion section. 10 REFERENCES Reference no 2: Check the typing (two dots) Reference no 24: Check the title (“Underunder”) Reference no 34: Check the title (Latin names must be in Italic) Reference no 40: Check the journal name Reference no 42: Check the journal name We have Corrected as suggested all of these changes now. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Responses to reviewers comments.docx* https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266778.r002
15 Mar 2022 Decision Letter - Ansar Hussain, Editor PONE-D-22-00689R1Assessment of composition and spatial dynamics of weed communities in agroecosystem under varying edaphic factorsPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Noman, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 29 2022 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,Ansar Hussain Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal 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. Thank you for stating the following in your Competing Interests section: (No competing interests) Please complete your Competing Interests on the online submission form to state any Competing Interests. If you have no competing interests, please state "The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.", as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 3. We note that Figure 1 in your submission contain map images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission: a. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figure 1 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license. We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text: “I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.” Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an "Other" file with your submission. In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].” b. If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only. The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful: USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/ Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/ USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/# Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ 4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. 5. 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. Additional Editor Comments: I have read your revised manuscript where most of the comments of reviewers have been addressed. However, the revised version has two major issues, one of them is formatting and other is language of the manuscript. Please incorporate tables and figures within the text and get your manuscript edited from a native speaker. One more issue is low number of references used in the introduction section, of which none has been used in the discussion. Please use the references used in discussion in the the introduction section and vice versa. Please improve your manuscript carefully and submit an improved version for further evaluation. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266778.r003
Revision 2
24 Mar 2022 Author Response PONE-D-22-00689R2 Responses to reviewers’ comments Authors wish to thank to the worthy Editor and reviewers who have taken their time to make this manuscript better. Track-change mode was adopted to make changes in the manuscript in this revision. Journal 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 RESPONSE: We have carefully revised the manuscript according to the journals style of formatting. Thank you for your help. 2. Thank you for stating the following in your Competing Interests section: (No competing interests) Please complete your Competing Interests on the online submission form to state any Competing Interests. If you have no competing interests, please state "The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.", as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now. This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. RESPONSE: Thank you for highlight this point. The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. 3. We note that Figure 1 in your submission contain map images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission: a. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figure 1 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license. We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text: “I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.” Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an "Other" file with your submission. In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].” b. If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only. The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful: USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/ Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/ USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/# Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ RESPONSE: Thank you for your suggestions. The previous map was not copyrighted, it was original made by the 2nd author, but now for more clarity and to avoid any complications, we have made a new map using QGIS. 4. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. RESPONSE: We have incorporated your suggestion into the revised MS. Thank you. 5. 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. RESPONSE: We have incorporated your suggestions into the revised MS. Thank you. Additional Editor Comments: • I have read your revised manuscript where most of the comments of reviewers have been addressed. However, the revised version has two major issues, one of them is formatting and other is language of the manuscript. • Please incorporate tables and figures within the text and get your manuscript edited from a native speaker. • One more issue is low number of references used in the introduction section, of which none has been used in the discussion. Please use the references used in discussion in the the introduction section and vice versa. • Please improve your manuscript carefully and submit an improved version for further evaluation. RESPONSE: Thank you for your comment. We have carefully revised the whole MS and addressed all these issues. Language has now been edited by native English speaker Professor Susan Anne Churchill who is working in Linguistic department of Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University China. Some of the relevant references in the introduction are now given in the discussion and vice versa. We have made a new map. We are hopeful you will like it and the manuscript in general. Thank you for your help. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Responses to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266778.r004
28 Mar 2022 Decision Letter - Ansar Hussain, Editor Assessment of composition and spatial dynamics of weed communities in agroecosystem under varying edaphic factors PONE-D-22-00689R2 Dear Dr. Noman, 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, Ansar Hussain Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Thank you for addressing the queries raised by the reviewers. I am pleased to accept your manuscript for publication in Plos One. Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266778.r005
Formally Accepted
13 May 2022 Acceptance Letter - Ansar Hussain, Editor PONE-D-22-00689R2 Assessment of composition and spatial dynamics of weed communities in agroecosystem under varying edaphic factors Dear Dr. Noman: I'm 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 let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Ansar Hussain Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266778.r006

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 .