The relative age effect in top 100 elite female tennis players in 2007–2016

Jiří Zháněl; Tomáš Válek; Michal Bozděch; Adrián Agricola

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0276668

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 24, 2022
22 Aug 2022 Decision Letter - Javier Abián-Vicén, Editor PONE-D-22-01603The Relative Age Effect in Top 100 Elite Female Tennis Players in 2007–2016PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Agricola, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: Dear Authors, two experts in the field revised your current manuscript and recognised some points that should be addressed. Authors should pay special attention to use more recent references about the topic. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 06 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. 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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 [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: Abstract Line 42: “resp. tennis officials” could be rephrased with “tennis officials” Introduction In general, the introduction should be better structured, considering RAE in general for professional/adult players, individual sports and female athletes, avoiding considering not so pertinent research areas (e.g. RAE in youth athletes), which could make this section as less readable. Lines 59-61. For this sentence, the following papers should be considered for their pertinence and recent publication about RAE in soccer (Brustio et al., 2018) and volleyball, basketball, rugby, and water polo (Lupo et al., 2019) professional players. - Brustio P.R., Lupo C., Ungureanu A.N., Frati R., Rainoldi A., Boccia G. (2018). The relative age effect is larger in Italian soccer top-level youth categories and smaller in Serie A. PLOS ONE. 13(4), Article number: e0196253. - Lupo C., Boccia G., Ungureanu A.N., Frati R., Marocco R., Brustio P.R. (2019). The beginning of senior career in team sport is affected by relative age effect. Frontiers in Psychology. 10, art #1465. Lines 62-67. Why does studies about RAE in youth athletes are reported despite the present article in on professional ones? What about deleting it? On the other hand, more information about RAE on female athletes in general should be reported to better introduce the topic treated by the present article. A recent example about this area of research has reported as follows: - Brustio P.R. Boccia G., De Pasquale P., Lupo C., Ungureanu A.N., (2022) Small Relative Age Effect Appears in Professional Female Italian Team Sports. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19, 385. Lines 112-118. The following article about RAE in track and field athletes represents a pertinent example of RAE in individual sports and could be cited to support the introduction of the study. - Brustio P.R., Kearney P.E., Lupo C., Ungureanu A.N., Mulasso A., Rainoldi A., Boccia G. (2019). Relative age influences performance of world-class track and field athletes even in the adulthood. Frontiers in Psychology. 10, art #1395. Method Line 130. “Participants” could be more properly rephrased with “Procedures” considering that the classification of data is described in this section. Results This section has been well structured Discussion At the beginning of this section, the main findings (lines 231-232) should be highlighted. Instead, authors reported an “experimental approach to the problem” part, which could be reported following to the main findings or treated in the Introduction section. Limitations Although limitations have been properly reported, some consequent and future research purposes to better contributing to the understanding of RAE in tennis or, more specifically, in female tennis, could be provided. Reviewer #2: The article titled “The Relative Age Effect in Top 1 100 Elite Female Tennis Players in 2007–2016” corresponds to a reasonable contribution in the field of sports scientces, particularly in tennis. Please avoid redundancy among title and short title The abstract should be organized into a shorter introduction (background), methods, results and discussion. As it is, readers do not contact with a concise research question (introduction is too long). The methodology regarding may be improved regarding the presenttion of the database, its size and the statistics. Avoid abreviatons in the abtsract: At P2L41, what means “coaches, athletes, resp. tennis officials” The first two paragraphs of the introduction devote too much information on other sports. Please, consider the presentation of the thematic (relative age effect), the theoretical framework from education and briefly in youth sports. Afterwards, try to exclusively focus in tennis. The revised introduction may be structured into 3-4 paragraphs. P6: “participants” or “sample”. This reviewer assume the sample did not accept to particiupate in the study that used a indirect source of data. Please review the qualitative interpretation of d-cohen values, it is usually “trivial”, “small”, “moderate”, “large”, “very large”. Please, check The section results do not claim headline “The RAE in top 100 and top 10 female tennis players in the whole period of 2007–2016”, “The influence of the RAE in top 100 female players in the individual years of 2007–2016”, “The influence of the RAE in the top 100 female players in the whole period of 2007–2016 in terms of age and handedness”. In fact “The influence of the ERA...” corresponds to “the influence of the Effect”. This reviewer believes that authors may attain a concise statement The discussion is circular. Please organize the following paragraphs: “main findings”, “state of the art in tennis”, “limitations”, “practical application”, “conclusion” ****** 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.0276668.r001
Revision 1
5 Oct 2022 Author Response Dear reviewers, thank you for your comments. We have tried to consider all of your recommendations. Please find below our comments on every recommendation. Authors 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: Abstract Line 42: “resp. tennis officials” could be rephrased with “tennis officials” This part was rephrased (no more abbreviation). Based on the recommendation of the second reviewer, the background was also modified. Introduction In general, the introduction should be better structured, considering RAE in general for professional/adult players, individual sports and female athletes, avoiding considering not so pertinent research areas (e.g. RAE in youth athletes), which could make this section as less readable. The introduction has been edited; studies with young athletes were deleted. We hope that the introduction is now more readable. Lines 59-61. For this sentence, the following papers should be considered for their pertinence and recent publication about RAE in soccer (Brustio et al., 2018) and volleyball, basketball, rugby, and water polo (Lupo et al., 2019) professional players. - Brustio P.R., Lupo C., Ungureanu A.N., Frati R., Rainoldi A., Boccia G. (2018). The relative age effect is larger in Italian soccer top-level youth categories and smaller in Serie A. PLOS ONE. 13(4), Article number: e0196253. - Lupo C., Boccia G., Ungureanu A.N., Frati R., Marocco R., Brustio P.R. (2019). The beginning of senior career in team sport is affected by relative age effect. Frontiers in Psychology. 10, art #1465. Both mentioned studies have been added to the manuscript. Thank you for your recommendation. Lines 62-67. Why does studies about RAE in youth athletes are reported despite the present article in on professional ones? What about deleting it? On the other hand, more information about RAE on female athletes in general should be reported to better introduce the topic treated by the present article. A recent example about this area of research has reported as follows: - Brustio P.R. Boccia G., De Pasquale P., Lupo C., Ungureanu A.N., (2022) Small Relative Age Effect Appears in Professional Female Italian Team Sports. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19, 385. As was mentioned above, studies with young athletes were deleted. Information from the aforementioned article was added to the text. More information (also from the recommended study Brustio et al., 2022) about RAE on female athletes has been added to the manuscript. Lines 112-118. The following article about RAE in track and field athletes represents a pertinent example of RAE in individual sports and could be cited to support the introduction of the study. - Brustio P.R., Kearney P.E., Lupo C., Ungureanu A.N., Mulasso A., Rainoldi A., Boccia G. (2019). Relative age influences performance of world-class track and field athletes even in the adulthood. Frontiers in Psychology. 10, art #1395. This study was added to the introductory part of the text. Thank you for the recommendation. Method Line 130. “Participants” could be more properly rephrased with “Procedures” considering that the classification of data is described in this section. It was modified according to the reviewer's recommendation. Results This section has been well structured Thank you. Discussion At the beginning of this section, the main findings (lines 231-232) should be highlighted. Instead, authors reported an “experimental approach to the problem” part, which could be reported following to the main findings or treated in the Introduction section. The introductory part of the discussion was edited as recommended. First, the main findings of the study are presented followed by an "experimental approach to the problem”. Limitations Although limitations have been properly reported, some consequent and future research purposes to better contributing to the understanding of RAE in tennis or, more specifically, in female tennis, could be provided. The short text with suggestions for future research has been added to this part of the manuscript. Reviewer #2: The article titled “The Relative Age Effect in Top 1 100 Elite Female Tennis Players in 2007–2016” corresponds to a reasonable contribution in the field of sports scientces, particularly in tennis. Please avoid redundancy among title and short title The short title was edited. The abstract should be organized into a shorter introduction (background), methods, results and discussion. As it is, readers do not contact with a concise research question (introduction is too long). The methodology regarding may be improved regarding the presenttion of the database, its size and the statistics. The background has been condensed into one sentence. The methodology and results are described to include the necessary information and the most important results. We believe that further shortening the abstract would contribute to the loss of important information for the reader. Avoid abreviatons in the abtsract: At P2L41, what means “coaches, athletes, resp. tennis officials” That sentence has been edited and the abbreviation deleted. The first two paragraphs of the introduction devote too much information on other sports. Please, consider the presentation of the thematic (relative age effect), the theoretical framework from education and briefly in youth sports. Afterwards, try to exclusively focus in. We believe that the information given in the first paragraph is very brief, but important for an introduction to RAE. We think it is worth mentioning in the introduction the first research in this area, the first study of RAE in sport (Barnsley et al.) as well as the first meta-analytic RAE study (Cobley et al.). Other information has been deleted on recommendation (Baxter-Jones study). The second paragraph has been completely rewritten, studies from other sports have been deleted. (This information has been replaced with information on REA in women, based on the recommendation of the second reviewer). P6: “participants” or “sample”. This reviewer assume the sample did not accept to particiupate in the study that used a indirect source of data. That term has been modified (also pointed out by the first reviewer). Please review the qualitative interpretation of d-cohen values, it is usually “trivial”, “small”, “moderate”, “large”, “very large”. Please, check The evaluation of ES index w was interpreted as small (w = 0.10), medium (w = 0.30) or large (w = 0.50) based on Cohen [42]. Some authors later extended the Scale of magnitudes for effect statistics to more intervals (Hoppkins, W.G. (2016). A New View of Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.sportsci.org/resource/stats/index.html). The section results do not claim headline “The RAE in top 100 and top 10 female tennis players in the whole period of 2007–2016”, “The influence of the RAE in top 100 female players in the individual years of 2007–2016”, “The influence of the RAE in the top 100 female players in the whole period of 2007–2016 in terms of age and handedness”. In fact, “The influence of the RAE...” corresponds to “the influence of the Effect”. This reviewer believes that authors may attain a concise statement We are sorry that we cannot understand the exact meaning of this comment. However, we assume that the reviewer recommends removing the subheadings in the Results chapter to make the text more concise. However, we would like to keep the subheadings in this chapter: we feel that they make the chapter significantly clearer in relation to the main research aims of the thesis. This allows the reader to quickly and easily find the answer to a specific research question in the chapter. However, if the reviewer considers this modification important, we are prepared to remove the subheadings. The discussion is circular. Please organize the following paragraphs: “main findings”, “state of the art in tennis”, “limitations”, “practical application”, “conclusion” The discussion was edited (the comments of both reviewers were included). ________________________________________ 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. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276668.r002
12 Oct 2022 Decision Letter - Javier Abián-Vicén, Editor The Relative Age Effect in Top 100 Elite Female Tennis Players in 2007–2016 PONE-D-22-01603R1 Dear Dr. Agricola, 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, Javier Abián-Vicén, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Congratulations for your work! 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 #3: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #4: 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 #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: 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 #3: Yes Reviewer #4: 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 #3: Yes Reviewer #4: 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 #3: (No Response) Reviewer #4: Congratulations for your paper. I think the document meets the criteria established by Plos One to be published. ****** 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 #3: No Reviewer #4: No ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276668.r003
Formally Accepted
11 Nov 2022 Acceptance Letter - Javier Abián-Vicén, Editor PONE-D-22-01603R1 The Relative Age Effect in Top 100 Elite Female Tennis Players in 2007–2016 Dear Dr. Agricola: 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. Javier Abián-Vicén Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276668.r004

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