Assessment of multiple herbicide protection seed treatments for seed-based restoration of native perennial bunchgrasses and sagebrush across multiple sites and years

Owen W. Baughman; Magdalena Eshleman; Jessica Griffen; Roxanne Rios; Chad Boyd; Olga A. Kildisheva; Andrew Olsen; Matthew Cahill; Jay D. Kerby; Corinna Riginos

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0283678

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 20, 2022
17 Jan 2023 Decision Letter - Ahmet Tansel Serim, Editor PONE-D-22-34851Assessment of multiple herbicide protection seed treatments for seed-based restoration of native perennial bunchgrasses and sagebrush across multiple sites and yearsPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Baughman, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 03 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. 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. 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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). 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Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Manuscript_Stega1-3_submitted revised.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283678.r001
Revision 1
10 Feb 2023 Author Response Changes to the manuscript in response to in-line edits by the reviewer:1) All instances of AC (activated carbon) have been replaced with HP (herbicide protection) to be consistent, because it is clear that our HP treatments rely entirely on AC as the active ingredient. 2) Misspelling in Table 2 (surface) corrected (surface). 3) The typo “vibility” in table S1 was corrected, thank you. 4) Instances of AC reference in Table 3 and footnotes were changed to HP to maintain consistency with text. 5)Abbreviation of “Kam” in Table 3 changed to “Kamterter” to be consistent with text. 6)Typo of “acre” in Table 3 footnotes corrected to hectare (“ha”). 7) Typo of species (ARTRWY) corrected in Table 3 footnotes (ARTR). 8) Space added to “seed lot” in Table 3 footnote. 9) Instance of repeated phrase at line 500 was reworded. 10) Space added at line 637 to correct typo. 11) Reviewer comment at line 501: “You say “improvement in seeding success” above…” We will keep the current wording (“reduction in seeding success”) because if the seed technologies perform more poorly than bare seed, that is not an ‘improvement’ in success of bare seed over the seed technologies, because the bare seed is the baseline for comparison. Therefore, referring to it as a reduction in success for the seed technologies is an accurate way to refer to this difference. We are happy to reconsider if we have misinterpreted your comment. Editor comments: 1) "Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming." We reviewed the Style Guide and corrected the names of supporting information files and corrected a few cels in table to remove “returns” used for spacing. We believe the rest of our submission adheres to the style guide but will be happy to make additional corrections if we have missed something. 2) "In your Methods section, please provide additional information regarding the permits you obtained for the work. Please ensure you have included the full name of the authority that approved the field site access and, if no permits were required, a brief statement explaining why." Thank you for pointing out this omission. We have added wording (line 129-130) explaining the permits obtained for the three sites that needed it, and explaining that the remainder of the sites did not require formal permitting. 3) "We note that S2 Fig in your submission contain [map/satellite] images which may be copyrighted." Thank you for spotting this, our apologies for this oversight. We have reworked S2 fig to contain public domain imagery from the USGS link provided. 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." We have double checked our references and compared them against Retraction Watch’s list of retractions. We found several systemic format errors that we corrected (space after “doi:”, “from” after “Available”), corrected several typos, and found no instances of references to retracted works. We found no other issues with the references and in-text citations, but will be happy to address any that we have missed. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283678.r002
14 Mar 2023 Decision Letter - Tunira Bhadauria, Editor Assessment of multiple herbicide protection seed treatments for seed-based restoration of native perennial bunchgrasses and sagebrush across multiple sites and years PONE-D-22-34851R1 Dear Dr. Baughman 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. 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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 ******** 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 ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: All the comments have been addressed. Manuscript is technically sound, presented in an intelligiblle fashion and written in standard English. And the data support the conclusion. I wish you succes in your further studies. Reviewer #2: The work is focused upon multiple herbicide protection seed treatments for seed-based restoration of native perennial bunchgrasses and sagebrush across multiple sites and years analysis. 1. Use °C in place of C for temperature. 2. Clarify little bit more about pre-emergent herbicides. 3. Mention the reason why authors used multiple sites and years analysis. 4. Conclusion should be more precise and summarized. ****** 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: FİLİZ ERBAŞ Reviewer #2: Yes: Dr. Bijendra Kumar Singh ******** <quillbot-extension-portal></quillbot-extension-portal> https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283678.r003
Formally Accepted
20 Mar 2023 Acceptance Letter - Tunira Bhadauria, Editor PONE-D-22-34851R1 Assessment of multiple herbicide protection seed treatments for seed-based restoration of native perennial bunchgrasses and sagebrush across multiple sites and years Dear Dr. Baughman: 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. Tunira Bhadauria Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0283678.r004

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