A multivariate analysis to propose linear models for the stature estimation in the Sabahan young adult population

Hasanur Bin Khazri; Sadia Choudhury Shimmi; M. Tanveer Hossain Parash

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0273840

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 10, 2022
8 Jul 2022 Decision Letter - Naji Arafat Mahat, Editor PONE-D-22-16753A Multivariate Analysis to Propose Linear Models for the Stature Estimation in the Sabahan Young Adult PopulationPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Parash, 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 Aug 22 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, Naji Arafat Mahat, PhD 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. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: "The authors are grateful to the Pusat Pengurusan Penyelidikan dan Inovasi (PPI), UMS for the grant to conduct this study and Bahagian Perkhidmatan Akademik (BPA), UMS for providing the student information" 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: "SCS and MTHP received grant.The Centre for Research and Innovation (PPI), Universiti Malaysia Sabah, funded this research work under the grant "Skim Geran Acculturation" (SGA0041-2019). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 3. 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. 4. Please include a copy of Table 5 which you refer to in your text on page 11. [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 Reviewer #3: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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 Reviewer #3: 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: No Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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 have some major concerns over the scientific basis of the article. Stature is not the definite parameter in biological profiling since it follows normal distribution in each population. It will be more useful if the targeted individual is very tall or very short. Plus the best stature estimator is the femur (lower limb). The article should be written with these facts in mind without 'over-emphasizing' hand anthropometry. Other comments are as outline below. 1. Replace the word "gender" to "sex" throughout the article. Gender should not be used in such studies as gender is a social construct, the correct term is biological sex. 2. Line 71. "Hand morphometry offers crucial evidence in investigating crime scenes"- This statement is not true and needs to be rephrase. 3. Line 81. "The right hand length has precise parameters.."- How precise? 4. Consider diurnal variation - state what time of the day did you took the stature measurements. 4. Line 193. Rephrase the findings of the t-test. 5. Line 204-205. It is acknowledged in the literature that males are taller than females. Rephrase the sentence. 6. Fig 6 should be replaced with a simple correlation table to present the correlation between those five hand dimensions to stature. 7. Ethnicity has to be determined first before application of the formulae developed in this study. Provide demographic data for the people in Sabah. 8. Comparison with hand morphometric data of other ethnic groups in Malaysia. Are they significantly different that warrant specific formulae? Or are they similar that a general formulae for the whole population will be sufficient? 9. Language editing throughout the article, and especially on how to present and discuss the results. 10. Revise the article for grammatical errors, punctuation, and translation to English (Bahagian Perkhidmatan Akademik, Pusat Pengurusan Penyelidikan dan Inovasi). 11. Revise Table 4 and its caption. 12. Line 312-319. Include SD or SEE for each formula. 13. The formulae developed in this study are sex-dependent, what can we do in cases where the sex is unknown? 14. What other areas that may find hand morphometric data valuable? Include in discussion. 15. Line 408-409. Revise the statement. Reviewer #2: Dear Author, Thank you for the article. I enjoyed reading it. There are few items which needs to be addressed before the article is publishable. Issues need to be addressed are: 1. Missing stature abbreviations meanings. Example, LHL is not stated anywhere in the text. Not everyone will know left hand length is. 2. Minor grammar issues in Introduction and discussion. Line 74, 76, 81, 332. 3. Table 5 missing from manuscript. 4. Choice of Methodology: Stratified random sampling is acceptable, though I don't think it is suited here. The sample size data collection showcases a fixed amount of participants for each racial group. This is simple random sampling. There is nothing wrong with this methodology as well-when the analysis for each group is conducted in silo. It seems that all analysis are valid except for Table 9. In order to use stratified in this case, you will need to have the correct proportion amount of samples in the group based on the percentage in Sabah's demography to avoid over and under representation of population data. Good luck. Reviewer #3: Abstract line 21- handspan, handbreath, hand?, middle finger length Introduction line 68- what kind of personal identification? for individualisation. line 81- define SEE limitation and impact of stature due to ethnic variation should be emphasised. Methodology why was only the middle fingers were chosen? justify inclusion criteria - is there any difference between Malay and Malay (Bruneian)? line 105- it means that the model only applicable for 'pure' ethnic? Discussion how did the randomization of sample occur? line 332, 375 - 18 to 25 line 333 - Western Europe has the tallest countries? line 399 - COVID-19 or Covid-19, standardize. line 400 - university Any example or evidence that show malnutrition or disease cause growth retardation? and how does this correlate with the Sabah ethnic? Limitation of the proposed formula should be indicated. ****** 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 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.] 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.0273840.r001
Revision 1
22 Jul 2022 Author Response 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: The revised manuscript meets PLOS ONE’s requirements. 2. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: "The authors are grateful to the Pusat Pengurusan Penyelidikan dan Inovasi (PPI), UMS for the grant to conduct this study and Bahagian Perkhidmatan Akademik (BPA), UMS for providing the student information" 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: "SCS and MTHP received grant.The Centre for Research and Innovation (PPI), Universiti Malaysia Sabah, funded this research work under the grant "Skim Geran Acculturation" (SGA0041-2019). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Response: The authors agreed to remove the sentence having funding statement in the acknowledgement section. The authors do not have any amendment in the current Funding Statement. 3. 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. Response: The authors have included the Ethics statement in the methodology section. 4. Please include a copy of Table 5 which you refer to in your text on page 11. Response: The authors have included Table 5 near the table cited. Review Comments to the Author Reviewer #1: I have some major concerns over the scientific basis of the article. Stature is not the definite parameter in biological profiling since it follows normal distribution in each population. It will be more useful if the targeted individual is very tall or very short. Response: The authors also agree that stature is not the definite parameter in biological profiling. That is why the opening remark is “Stature is one of the significant parameters to confirm a biological profile besides sex, age, and ancestry (Asadujjaman et al., 2019)” Plus the best stature estimator is the femur (lower limb). The article should be written with these facts in mind without 'over-emphasizing' hand anthropometry. Response: The authors also agree that lower limb parameters are better compared to the upper limb parameters to estimate stature. The authors have included this notion in the discussion. (414-416) Other comments are as outline below. 1. Replace the word "gender" to "sex" throughout the article. Gender should not be used in such studies as gender is a social construct, the correct term is biological sex. Response: The authors have amended accordingly. 2. Line 71. "Hand morphometry offers crucial evidence in investigating crime scenes"- This statement is not true and needs to be rephrase. Response: The authors have omitted the statement 3. Line 81. "The right hand length has precise parameters.."- How precise? Response: The authors have revised the above quoted part as “right hand length is the most reliable for estimating the stature among these hand measurements”. (Line 82-83) 4. Consider diurnal variation - state what time of the day did you took the stature measurements. Response: The authors added the statement in the methodology regarding the diurnal variation as “The measurement was taken in the fixed period of 10 am to 12 pm to avoid the possible diurnal variation.” (Line139-140) 4. Line 193. Rephrase the findings of the t-test. Response: Rephrased as “An independent sample t-test was performed to investigate the statistical significance of the observed difference.” (Line 203) 5. Line 204-205. It is acknowledged in the literature that males are taller than females. Rephrase the sentence. Response: amended as “Therefore, the result demonstrates that male participants had a higher stature than females.” (Line 215) 6. Fig 6 should be replaced with a simple correlation table to present the correlation between those five hand dimensions to stature. Response: Authors have replaced Fig 6 with Table 7 (Line 299-303) and subsequent figure number and table number has been amended. 7. Ethnicity has to be determined first before application of the formulae developed in this study. Provide demographic data for the people in Sabah. Response: The authors have provided demographic data for the people of Sabah (Line:97-105) 8. Comparison with hand morphometric data of other ethnic groups in Malaysia. Are they significantly different that warrant specific formulae? Or are they similar that a general formulae for the whole population will be sufficient? Response: The hand morphometric data of the participants of the current study are different from other ethnic groups of Malaysia but there was difference in between the major ethnic groups of Sabah. The reasons have been elaborated in the introduction (Line:97-105). 9. Language editing throughout the article, and especially on how to present and discuss the results. Response: The authors have taken professional service in this regard. 10. Revise the article for grammatical errors, punctuation, and translation to English (Bahagian Perkhidmatan Akademik, Pusat Pengurusan Penyelidikan dan Inovasi). Response: The authors have amended accordingly. (Line 445) 11. Revise Table 4 and its caption. Response: The authors have amended accordingly. (Line 248) 12. Line 312-319. Include SD or SEE for each formula. Response: The authors have mentioned the root mean square error (or RMSE for a regression model is similar with the SD for the ideal measurement model) in Table 8. 13. The formulae developed in this study are sex-dependent, what can we do in cases where the sex is unknown? Response: The authors have mentioned this issue in the limitation as “The formulae developed in this study are sex dependent which implies that inability to determine the biological sex would affect the predictability of the formulae.” (Lines-430-432) 14. What other areas that may find hand morphometric data valuable? Include in discussion. Response: The authors have included in the discussion (Line 417-420) 15. Line 408-409. Revise the statement. Response: The authors revised the statement as “The study proposes linear models for the stature estimation in the Sabahan young adult Population.” (Line 437-438) Reviewer #2: Dear Author, Thank you for the article. I enjoyed reading it. There are few items which needs to be addressed before the article is publishable. Issues need to be addressed are: 1. Missing stature abbreviations meanings. Example, LHL is not stated anywhere in the text. Not everyone will know left hand length is. Response: The authors have tried their best to find all the missing abbreviations and provided accordingly. 2. Minor grammar issues in Introduction and discussion. Line 74, 76, 81, 332. Response: Authors have amended accordingly. 3. Table 5 missing from manuscript. Response: The authors have inserted Table 5 in the appropriate place. 4. Choice of Methodology: Stratified random sampling is acceptable, though I don't think it is suited here. The sample size data collection showcases a fixed amount of participants for each racial group. This is simple random sampling. There is nothing wrong with this methodology as well-when the analysis for each group is conducted in silo. It seems that all analysis are valid except for Table 9. In order to use stratified in this case, you will need to have the correct proportion amount of samples in the group based on the percentage in Sabah's demography to avoid over and under representation of population data. Response: As the subjects were first stratified by ethnicities and then by gender, and then they were randomly selected, this is a stratified random sampling. In the assumption for conducting multiple linear regression, the subjects should be selected through any of the random sampling techniques (Sullivan III, 2017) and each stratum should have the minimum sample size of 25 (Jenkins and Quintana-Ascencio 2020). As this study included samples (46 per stratum) more than the minimum sample (25 per stratum) required for multiple linear regression and having same number participants facilitates homogeneity of the stratum which is more desirable than sample being proportion to the population. As the subjects were included in the study through stratified random sampling, every person within the sampling frame had the equal probability to be included in the study which addressed the representation of the population. Good luck. Reviewer #3: Abstract line 21- handspan, handbreath, hand?, middle finger length Response: The authors have inserted the missing word “length”. (Line 20) Introduction line 68- what kind of personal identification? for individualisation. Response: When DNA fingerprinting requires a large data to compare with the crime scene findings. By estimating stature, it would narrow down the focus point which would aid to identify the victim. (Krishan et al.,2012) line 81- define SEE Response: Authors have included the definition. (Line 87) limitation and impact of stature due to ethnic variation should be emphasised. Response: The authors have followed the suggestion and amended accordingly (Line 96-106) Methodology why was only the middle fingers were chosen? Justify Response: The anatomical axis of the hand passes through the middle finger. Other than that compared to other fingers the middle finger demonstrated higher relationship with the stature. That is why the researchers chose the middle finger. inclusion criteria - is there any difference between Malay and Malay (Bruneian)? Response: The authors have mentioned the difference in the introduction (Line 100-102) line 105- it means that the model only applicable for 'pure' ethnic? Response: Yes. The researchers included the participants whose parents and grandparents belonged to the same ethnic group. Discussion how did the randomization of sample occur? line 332, 375 - 18 to 25 Response: Through stratified random sampling. The subjects were first stratified by ethnicities and then by gender, and then they were randomly selected. line 333 - Western Europe has the tallest countries? Response: The literature review shows that Western Europeans are comparatively taller than other part of the world. line 399 - COVID-19 or Covid-19, standardize. Response: The authors have standardized to Covid-19. line 400 – university Response: The authors have amended accordingly Any example or evidence that show malnutrition or disease cause growth retardation? and how does this correlate with the Sabah ethnic? Response: Kyle UG, Shekerdemian LS, Coss-Bu JA. Growth failure and nutrition considerations in chronic childhood wasting diseases. Nutr Clin Pract. 2015 Apr;30(2):227-38. doi: 10.1177/0884533614555234. Epub 2014 Nov 6. PMID: 25378356. This article mentioned about malnutrition and various diseases that cause growth retardation. The conditions and disease that are related to growth retardation are applicable to all population and ethnicities. This is how this correlated with Sabah ethnic groups. Limitation of the proposed formula should be indicated. Response: Authors have indicated the limitations of the proposed formula. (Line 431-433) Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: response to reviewers .docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273840.r002
15 Aug 2022 Decision Letter - Naji Arafat Mahat, Editor PONE-D-22-16753R1A Multivariate Analysis to Propose Linear Models for the Stature Estimation in the Sabahan Young Adult PopulationPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Parash, 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 Sep 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, Naji Arafat Mahat, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 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. 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: (No Response) Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed ******** 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 Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: 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 Reviewer #2: Yes 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 #2: Yes 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: Dear authors, Content-wise, I am happy with the revised manuscript. However, the manuscript needs to undergo another round of language editing. Revise the usage of past tense and past perfect tense in the manuscript. Grammatical errors need to be corrected: 1. Replace "gender" with "sex". 2. Replace "scoping down" with "narrowing down". 3. Line 86: There is no Reference no. 132. 4. Line 123 5. Line 136 6. Line 139 7. Line 156 8. Line 168 9. Line 253-254 10. Line 352 11. Line 355 12. Line 439 and throughout the manuscript. Reviewer #2: The author has addressed the issues raised by the current reviewer previously and the paper is now acceptable for publication. Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed. It is a pleasure to read the manuscript. It is a very interesting field to enhance the forensic investigation. Thank you. ****** 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 #2: 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.] 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.0273840.r003
Revision 2
15 Aug 2022 Author Response Dear editor and reviewers, Please accept our sincere gratitude for your volunteerism to review our manuscript to polish it to be fit for the renowned journal. We do appreciate your valuable time and critical thinking for the purpose to enrich the manuscript. Each of your comments are very crucial and we have tried our best either to incorporate into the manuscript or to answer to your queries. The following are the responses prepared by the authors and have been inserted issue by issue: Review Comments to the Author Reviewer #1: Dear authors, Content-wise, I am happy with the revised manuscript. However, the manuscript needs to undergo another round of language editing. Revise the usage of past tense and past perfect tense in the manuscript. Grammatical errors need to be corrected: 1. Replace "gender" with "sex". Response: All "gender" have been replaced with "sex" 2. Replace "scoping down" with "narrowing down". Response: Amended as per advice 3. Line 86: There is no Reference no. 132. Response: It is actually 13. There was a typo when the references were re-numbered. 4. Line 123 5. Line 136 6. Line 139 7. Line 156 8. Line 168 9. Line 253-254 10. Line 352 11. Line 355 12. Line 439 and throughout the manuscript. Response: The authors have taken the assistance of grammar correcting software Grammarly and also taken the editing service from PM Proofreading Services. The certificate provided by them has been attached. Reviewer #2: The author has addressed the issues raised by the current reviewer previously and the paper is now acceptable for publication. Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed. It is a pleasure to read the manuscript. It is a very interesting field to enhance the forensic investigation. Our sincere gratitude to all the reviewers for your sincere contribution for the betterment of science. At the end, we hope that our sincere effort could address all the requirements of the editor and our revision would satisfy the imminent reviewers. Sincerely yours, M Tanveer Hossain Parash (corresponding author) Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: response to reviewers latest.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273840.r004
17 Aug 2022 Decision Letter - Naji Arafat Mahat, Editor A Multivariate Analysis to Propose Linear Models for the Stature Estimation in the Sabahan Young Adult Population PONE-D-22-16753R2 Dear Dr. Parash, 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, Naji Arafat Mahat, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273840.r005
Formally Accepted
19 Aug 2022 Acceptance Letter - Naji Arafat Mahat, Editor PONE-D-22-16753R2 A Multivariate Analysis to Propose Linear Models for the Stature Estimation in the Sabahan Young Adult Population Dear Dr. Parash: 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. Naji Arafat Mahat Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273840.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 .