PONE-D-22-29071Heavy metal pollution characteristics of soil around a copper-nickel mine tailings pond in the northwest arid area of China and evaluation of desert phytoremediation potentialPLOS ONE

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The manuscript entitled “Heavy metal pollution characteristics of soil around a copper-nickel mine tailings pond in the northwest arid area of China and evaluation of desert phytoremediation potential” may be considered for publication after incorporation of suggested changes.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript titled “Heavy metal pollution characteristics of soil around a copper-nickel mine tailings pond in the northwest arid area of China and evaluation of desert phytoremediation potential” is interesting. However, after reading it, I find out that limited information and the following comments may be helpful for the improvement of the manuscript.

1, Abstract: the abstract is too simple and some important information is not fully displayed. Abstract needs to be qualitative as well as quantitative, improve the quality of the abstract with quantitative data.

2, Line 49, G et al., 2015？

3, The introduction is a bit shallow and would benefit of more depth and outlining some hypotheses, the authors need to emphasize the novelty in the introduction part. Otherwise, I believe that this article might be more suitable for local monitoring journals. And the introduction must be focused on the objectives and methods.

4, The quality control parts needs to be more clear: how the standard curves were constructed? what are LoD and LoQ of the methods and how they were determined? Please provide detailed information regarding the accuracy and precision of chemical analysis for every element.

5, National Soil Environment class II standard has been abolished, and you should use a new standard.

6, In the "Results and Discussion" part. The authors lack (or do not show in the manuscript) the deeper knowledge in pollution assessment and source analysis of soil heavy metal. Therefore, I would propose to authors to be better familiar with some recent advances in the field, such as:

An integrated approach to quantifying ecological and human health risks from different sources of soil heavy metals. Science of the Total Environment.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134466

An integrated exploration on health risk assessment quantification of potentially hazardous elements in soils from the perspective of sources. Ecotoxicol. Environ. Saf, 208, 15: 111489. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2020.111489.

Above-mentioned works can give further help about pollution assessment and source analysis of soil heavy metal. It is suggested the authors refer to these studies. Read all of them carefully, please use for improving the manuscript.

7, At the end of the discussion, explore the limitations of the study.

8, Conclusion must be rewritten based on the objectives and the main finding in this research.

9, References: it is highly recommended to use DOI.

10, At some parts of the manuscript, the English language is hard to follow. Please check the English by native speakers.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Dr. Sana Ashraf

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Review Report.docx

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-22-29071.pdf

Evaluation of soil heavy metals pollution and the phytoremediation potential of copper-nickel mine tailings ponds

PONE-D-22-29071R1

Dear Dr. Jianfei Shi

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

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

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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,

Muhammad Aamer Mehmood, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The manuscript entitled “Evaluation of soil heavy metals pollution and the phytoremediation potential of coppernickel mine tailings ponds” is of good quality and written in a good way. The manuscript has been revised carefully by the authors. The authors have incorporated all the suggested corrections in the manuscript. The current revised manuscript may be considered for publication.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript has been properly revised and improved, and I recommend the publication of it as it is.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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