Defining and quantifying fatigue in the rugby codes

Mitchell Naughton; Tannath Scott; Dan Weaving; Colin Solomon; Scott McLean

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0282390

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionOctober 13, 2022
13 Oct 2022 Author Response Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewer Comments_Final_PLOS_Clean.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282390.r001
24 Jan 2023 Decision Letter - Emiliano Cè, Editor PONE-D-22-28342Defining fatigue and quantifying post-match fatigue in the rugby codesPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Weaving, 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, your manuscript has been revised by one expert in the fields, which retrieved some minor issues you should consider while revising the work. Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 10 2023 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 2. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified what type you obtained (for instance, written or verbal, and if verbal, how it was documented and witnessed). If your study included minors, state whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians. If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information. 3. 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. 4. 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 If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references.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. 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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: 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 ****** 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 ****** 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 study entitled “Defining fatigue and quantifying post-match fatigue in the rugby codes” aimed to set up a definition of fatigue which could fit for a range of Rugby modalities, as well as determine the methods and metrics for fatigue assessment which experts consider important in the rugby daily-based routine. I would like to congratulate the authors for the study which is really interesting and highly applicable for coaches, sports scientists, performance analysts, practitioners, academic researchers etc. Follow bellow minor details and few suggestions. The first paragraph of the introductions is confusing, most likely due the excessive information inside the parentheses. Please, revise this paragraph. The second paragraph of introduction (from line 65 to 82) and the sixth paragraph of the discussion (from line 423 to 448) are too long, please, split each one in two paragraphs. I would suggest to the author to add a figure of the experimental design timeline. Despite well explained, the many steps of the study would be better visualized by the readers with a figure of the time domain and relevant information (e.g. sample size of each round). There are several spots in the text with typo errors (lines 271, 272, 283, 355), please double check throughout the manuscript. I’m not sure if I missed that in the supplementary files, however, would be interesting provide the questionnaires in their final form. What was considered “dummy responses”? (line 245) Finally, two points to the authors think about. First, despite the descriptive nature of the study, would be interesting provide some kind of sample size calculation and/or statistical power. That would strengthen the paper. Second, I don’t agree with “post-match fatigue quantification”. According to the first open-ended question, MD-2 is the second most frequent condition of fatigue assessment. That would not be a “pre-match fatigue” depend on the day of prior match? I suggest (even in the manuscript title) “quantifying match fatigue” only. ****** 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: Yes: Fabio Milioni ******** [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.0282390.r002
Revision 1
30 Jan 2023 Author Response Reviewer #1: The study entitled “Defining fatigue and quantifying post-match fatigue in the rugby codes” aimed to set up a definition of fatigue which could fit for a range of Rugby modalities, as well as determine the methods and metrics for fatigue assessment which experts consider important in the rugby daily-based routine. I would like to congratulate the authors for the study which is really interesting and highly applicable for coaches, sports scientists, performance analysts, practitioners, academic researchers etc. Follow bellow minor details and few suggestions. The authors wish to thank the reviewer for reviewing the manuscript and their recommendations and suggestions. The responses to each of these is presented below with the authors responses below the Reviewers comment. This has been included as an attachment as well where the author responses are highlighted in bold. 1) The first paragraph of the introductions is confusing, most likely due the excessive information inside the parentheses. Please, revise this paragraph. This paragraph has been revised from Line 62 to Line 64 – 65 of the updated text and the text has been amended to remove the parentheses which fixes the issue that the Reviewer indicates. 2) The second paragraph of introduction (from line 65 to 82) and the sixth paragraph of the discussion (from line 423 to 448) are too long, please, split each one in two paragraphs. These paragraphs have been revised and each split in to two paragraphs where it was most appropriate to do so, based on the content of these paragraphs. 3) I would suggest to the author to add a figure of the experimental design timeline. Despite well explained, the many steps of the study would be better visualized by the readers with a figure of the time domain and relevant information (e.g. sample size of each round). Figure 1 is now a flow chart which details the timeline of the study, including recruitment information, content of the questionnaire in each round, and the number of participants. 4) There are several spots in the text with typo errors (lines 271, 272, 283, 355), please double check throughout the manuscript. The authors have checked the manuscript for typological and grammatical errors and revised these (see manuscript). The authors have used the PLOS One guidelines (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/criteria-for-publication#loc-5) on using Standard English and therefore words such as “analyse” and “specialise” are used instead of “analyze” or “specialize” as would be the case for American English. 5) I’m not sure if I missed that in the supplementary files, however, would be interesting provide the questionnaires in their final form. The authors agree however, due to the length of the questionnaire document, a supplementary file would not be appropriate. The survey content has been uploaded to a public open access repository, the Open Science framework (https://osf.io/p7vud/). This information has been included in the text (Line 184 of the updated text). 6) What was considered “dummy responses”? (line 245) A response was considered a dummy response if the respondent, for example, responded with an incoherent or one letter or word responses before moving on to the next question. These examples have been included in the text as examples. 7) Finally, two points to the authors think about. First, despite the descriptive nature of the study, would be interesting provide some kind of sample size calculation and/or statistical power. That would strengthen the paper. Sample sizes calculations to determine statistical power are generally not considered as part of Delphi studies (Trevelyan and Robinson, 2015) and samples can vary widely (e.g., 6 – 50 participants [Birko et al., 2015]). Importantly, as there are no statistical comparisons between the outcome measures (e.g., null-hypothesis significance testing, p values, effect sizes), determining statistical power to detect such differences is not relevant for this study. Whilst an increase of the size of the sample will increase generalisability of the resulting conclusions, the Delphi method requires a qualitative approach to the sample which relies on recruiting the subject matter experts in a given area. The authors believe we have achieved this by the targeted recruitment (i.e., directed emails, use of professional networks) and the inclusion/exclusion criteria. This ensured that the sample is homogenous with respect to their expertise, a recommendation of Trevelyan and Robinson (2015), and that the study has measured the consensus among these subject matter experts with a sample size which is comparable to other Delphi studies in sport. 8) Second, I don’t agree with “post-match fatigue quantification”. According to the first open-ended question, MD-2 is the second most frequent condition of fatigue assessment. That would not be a “pre-match fatigue” depend on the day of prior match? I suggest (even in the manuscript title) “quantifying match fatigue” only. The authors agree with this suggestion, and this has been revised throughout the manuscript with the removal of “post-match” in the context of fatigue. References Birko, S., Dove, E. S., & Özdemir, V. (2015). Evaluation of Nine Consensus Indices in Delphi Foresight Research and Their Dependency on Delphi Survey Characteristics: A Simulation Study and Debate on Delphi Design and Interpretation. PloS one, 10(8), e0135162. Trevelyan, E. G., & Robinson, N. (2015). Delphi methodology in health research: how to do it? European Journal of Integrative Medicine, 7(4), 423-428. As mentioned by the Academic Editor, several additional requirements have been met in the updated manuscript. Firstly, the manuscript has been updated to adhere to the PLOS ONE style requirements, as mentioned by the Academic Editor. Secondly, information about the consent process has been included in the Methods section of the manuscript, and in the online submission information. Thirdly, captions have been included for the Supporting Information at the end of the manuscript. Finally, the reference list has been reviewed and amended to comply with the PLOS ONE style format. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewer Comments Round 2_v2_Submit.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282390.r003
14 Feb 2023 Decision Letter - Emiliano Cè, Editor Defining and quantifying fatigue in the rugby codes PONE-D-22-28342R1 Dear Dr. Weaving, 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, Emiliano Cè Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 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 ****** 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: I would like to congratulate the authors for the great work. I believe that will be very helpful and highly applicable in the sport science. ****** 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: Yes: Fabio Milioni ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282390.r004
Formally Accepted
1 Mar 2023 Acceptance Letter - Emiliano Cè, Editor PONE-D-22-28342R1 Defining and quantifying fatigue in the rugby codes Dear Dr. Weaving: 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 Professor Emiliano Cè Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282390.r005

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