Response and inversion of skewness parameters to meteorological factors based on RGB model of leaf color digital image

Pei Zhang; Zhengmeng Chen; Fuzheng Wang; Hongyan Wu; Ling Hao; Xu Jiang; Zhiming Yu; Lina Zou; Haidong Jiang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0288818

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 9, 2023
22 May 2023 Decision Letter - Sathishkumar V E, Editor PONE-D-23-03750Response and inversion of Skewness parameters to meteorological factors based on RGB model of leaf color digital imagePLOS ONE Dear Dr. Zhang, 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 Jul 06 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. 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, Sathishkumar V E 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. 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. 3. Please note that PLOS ONE has specific guidelines on code sharing for submissions in which author-generated code underpins the findings in the manuscript. In these cases, all author-generated code must be made available without restrictions upon publication of the work. Please review our guidelines at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/materials-and-software-sharing#loc-sharing-code and ensure that your code is shared in a way that follows best practice and facilitates reproducibility and reuse. 4. Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement: "This work was supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFD1000900) and "333 project" research project for high level talent of Jiangsu Province (BRA2019348） (to PZ)." Please provide an amended statement that declares all the funding or sources of support (whether external or internal to your organization) received during this study, as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now. Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement. Please include your amended Funding Statement within your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf. 5. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: "This work was supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFD1000900) and "333 project" research project for high level talent of Jiangsu Province (BRA2019348） (to PZ)." Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: ""The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."" If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 6. Thank you for stating the following in your Competing Interests section: "NO authors have competing interests" Please complete your Competing Interests on the online submission form to state any Competing Interests. If you have no competing interests, please state ""The authors have declared that no competing interests exist."", as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 7. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized. Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. 8. We note that Figures 1, 4, S1, S2 and S4 in your submission contain copyrighted images. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission: a. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figures 1, 4, S1, S2 and S4 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license. We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text: “I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.” Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an ""Other"" file with your submission. In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].” b. If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only. [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 Reviewer #3: Partly ******** 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: No ****** 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 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: The results from this manuscript are impressive. In this study, the author found the closely related relationship between the leaf color levels with some meteorological factors, built the response models. They also drawn the conclusions that the multidimensionality of CGSD parameters is ideal for describing leaf color phenotypes under the influence of complex meteorological factors, and the CGSD parameters is the potential applications in predicting early warning of disaster. this paper may be useful for modern agricultural production. I thought this manuscript should be accepted and published. Reviewer #2: The ms quantified the skewed distribution of color scale, and obtained the relationship between 20 multi-dimensional CGSD parameters based on leaf color skewness parameter system and the five corresponding meteorological factors.The work reads well, the problem and the objectives are well stated in the introduction. The discussion is well organized and to the point, and the conclusions are based on what is found in the results. They can also be useful elsewhere wherever the canopy photos of the crops is taken. Summarizing, the work fits scientific standards and is suitable for journal publication. There are some issues: 1. The meteorological factors daily mean relative humidity (RHdm), daily mean dew point temperature (TDdm)and daily mean vapor pressure (VPdm) are all the discreption of the vapor of the environment, thus, there will be collinearity among them. The equations in Table 1 and 3 should check the collinearity of the dependent factors. 2. in abstract, phenotype change to phenotypes (Line 16), on the leaf color skewness( Line 19), a greenhouse (Line 21), and plants (Line 26) Reviewer #3: The manuscript as a whole is not up to journal standards, lacks innovation and looks more like a workflow than a scientific study. The specific problems are as follows: 1. The CGSD abbreviation appears in line 19 for the first time without a full name 2 Line 65 says something about using RGB images to invert chlorophyll content and nutrient status but it doesn't introduce the corresponding literature method. Right 3 The capture of the images of the peppers in the greenhouse was explained how it was done but there was no mention of whether all the images were used in the experiment or the amount of data that was used in the experiment 4 After 120 lines: used some matlab functions such as 127 lines 142 lines, etc. It just say that they use these functions but they don't tell you exactly what they do and they don't tell you what the corresponding functions are. Right 5 There are 20 different parameters in line 138 but it doesn't tell you what each of them means or even what does Y mean 6 In line 161, it is mentioned that there is a preliminary classification of images by K-means, but what is the purpose of classification not introduced in the article 7 There is no comparison with other models throughout the paper. Besides, the paper adopts a linear model and does not point out why the linear model is adopted (line 152). 8 Line 198 "The results showed that almost all CGSD parameters were extremely significantly related to the relative humidity, water vapor pressure and dew point temperature at the corresponding time." From the heat map, it's not extremely significant. Why only one heat map for 5 time periods? 9 Why are the cabbages divided into two groups based on temperature. 10:Line 232 "Except for B-mean, which cannot be modeled, other 19 skewed parameters all can be used to establish a response model with better fitting effect." From the results of Table 1, we can see that most R2s are. 0.3, the fitting effect is not good. 11 The application of CGSD parameter in disaster warning should be discussed in detail. 12 There was no obvious change of meteorological factors in greenhouse cultivated pepper, so the applicability of inversion model could be improved by increasing temperature change. ****** 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.0288818.r001
Revision 1
16 Jun 2023 Author Response Dear reviewers, Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled " Response and inversion of Skewness parameters to meteorological factors based on RGB model of leaf color digital image ". Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. The comments have been carefully taken into account and a new revised submission has been uploaded. We highlighted all the altered passages in light yellow. The responses are as follows, To Reviewer #2: 1. The meteorological factors daily mean relative humidity (RHdm), daily mean dew point temperature (TDdm)and daily mean vapor pressure (VPdm) are all the discreption of the vapor of the environment, thus, there will be collinearity among them. The equations in Table 1 and 3 should check the collinearity of the dependent factors. Response: Thank you for your question. When constructing the response model of leaf color to meteorological factors, we carried out collinearity diagnosis, and eliminated the factors with collinearity, and then carried on the next modeling work. 2. in abstract, phenotype change to phenotypes (Line 16), on the leaf color skewness ( Line 19), a greenhouse (Line 21), and plants (Line 26) Response: Thank you for your suggestion, we have corrected them. Reviewer #3: 1. The CGSD abbreviation appears in line 19 for the first time without a full name. Response: Thank you for your suggestion, we have added the full name “color gradation skewness-distribution”. 2 Line 65 says something about using RGB images to invert chlorophyll content and nutrient status but it doesn't introduce the corresponding literature method. Response: Thank you for your question, we have added the corresponding literature method in lines 66-68。 3 The capture of the images of the peppers in the greenhouse was explained how it was done but there was no mention of whether all the images were used in the experiment or the amount of data that was used in the experiment. Response: Thank you for your question, we have illustrated the images used for the final analysis in lines 103-104. 4 After 120 lines: used some matlab functions such as 127 lines 142 lines, etc. It just say that they use these functions but they don't tell you exactly what they do and they don't tell you what the corresponding functions are. Response: Matlab functions such as imread, rgb2gray, double, imhist and plot functions, etc., are some basic image processing functions. We have reworked the functionality of each function to more clearly express the purpose of the function. 5 There are 20 different parameters in line 138 but it doesn't tell you what each of them means or even what does Y mean. Response: Thank you for your notice, we have added what each of 20 CGSD parameters means in lines 140-145. 6 In line 161, it is mentioned that there is a preliminary classification of images by K-means, but what is the purpose of classification not introduced in the article. Response: The reason has been added in lines 169-172. The K-means was used to classify the 116 verification samples into two types, which better revealing the response and inversion relationship of leaf color and meteorological factors during different temperature ranges. 7 There is no comparison with other models throughout the paper. Besides, the paper adopts a linear model and does not point out why the linear model is adopted (line 152). Response: Multiple linear regression method is widely used because of its simple principle and convenient use among many modeling methods. The modeling independent variable factors in this paper are relatively simple, which are single leaf color parameters (in response models) or limited meteorological factors (in inversion models). The multiple linear regression method can quickly and accurately find the main factors closely related to the dependent variables, and reveal the interaction effect between meteorological factors and leaf color phenotypes, which is also the focus of this paper. Of course, the construction of the nonlinear model you mentioned is equally important, and we will further improve it in the subsequent research. 8 Line 198 "The results showed that almost all CGSD parameters were extremely significantly related to the relative humidity, water vapor pressure and dew point temperature at the corresponding time." From the heat map, it's not extremely significant. Why only one heat map for 5 time periods? Response: In order to reveal the timely response rule of pepper canopy leaf color phenotypes to meteorological factors, the correlation analysis between the image CGSD parameters of pepper of 5 times in 7 days and the corresponding meteorological factors was carried out. From the heat map (Figure 2), 11 CGSD parameters were extremely significantly and 2 CGSD parameters were significantly related to the relative humidity; 13 CGSD parameters were extremely significantly and 5 CGSD parameters were significantly related to the water vapor pressure; 13 CGSD parameters were extremely significantly and 5 CGSD parameters were significantly related to the dew point temperature. So, “the results showed that most CGSD parameters were extremely significantly related to the relative humidity, water vapor pressure and dew point temperature at the corresponding time.” We have changed “almost all” into “most” to describe the response relationship more accurately. 9 Why are the cabbages divided into two groups based on temperature. Response: The reason has been explained in lines 263-270. “Cabbages grow in the open-air environment in winter, whose environmental changes are more severe than that in the greenhouse, and have experienced several cold waves. During the cooling process, the changes of meteorological factors and leaf color are very drastic (Figure 4 and Supplementary Figure S4). As shown in the leaf color response model, there are many outliers of several skewness (Table 4). One consideration is that cold wave may be beyond the fluctuation range of the normal growth environment to produce adversity. Additionally, the internal stress response of cabbage caused by the low temperature stress influenced the leaf color. Thus, we classified the meteorological factor”. 10: Line 232 "Except for B-mean, which cannot be modeled, other 19 skewed parameters all can be used to establish a response model with better fitting effect." From the results of Table 1, we can see that most R2s are. 0.3, the fitting effect is not good. Response: There are generally three indexes for judging whether the regression model is effective and whether the fitting effect is good or bad. (1) R2 reflects the fitting goodness of the regression model to the observed values. The larger R2 is, the better the regression model is. (2) F test is the test of the significance of the regression model. When the P-value of the F test is less than 0.05, it indicates that the regression model is significant, that is, the regression model is effective. (3) T-test is a test of the significance of each variable in the regression model. If the P-value of the T-test is less than 0.05, it indicates that the significance of each variable in the regression model is significant, that is, every variable in the regression model is effective. We carried out collinearity diagnosis, F test and T-test successively when constructing the response models of 20 CGSD parameters to meteorological factors. Taking Gmedian as an example, the p-value of F-test of the regression model and the p-value of T-test of each variable are all less than 0.05, indicating that the regression model we constructed is valid and every variable in it is valid. Although the low R2 of some models only reflects the poor fitting goodness of the models, and the prediction accuracy of these models is indeed poor, this cannot be used as a standard for the effectiveness of the models, but only indicates that there may be more effective and accurate model construction methods. We will focus on the study in the next stage. 11 The application of CGSD parameter in disaster warning should be discussed in detail. Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have added the discussion of the application of CGSD parameter in disaster warning in lines 425-430. 12 There was no obvious change of meteorological factors in greenhouse cultivated pepper, so the applicability of inversion model could be improved by increasing temperature change. Response: Thank you for your suggestion. we will pay more attention to the temperature change in the future study. In fact, the temperature change in the greenhouse is not as drastic as that in the nature, but some meteorological factors such as relative humidity, water vapor pressure, etc., are also closely related to temperature factors, and their changes often include temperature changes. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288818.r002
5 Jul 2023 Decision Letter - Sathishkumar V E, Editor Response and inversion of Skewness parameters to meteorological factors based on RGB model of leaf color digital image PONE-D-23-03750R1 Dear Dr. Zhang, 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, Sathishkumar V E 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: (No Response) 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: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: (No Response) 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: (No Response) 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: (No Response) 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: I don't have any question. And I think this manuscription is qualified to be accepted and published. Reviewer #2: The manuscript analyzed the relationship between the picture characteristics and the meteorological factors, and the relationship helps to improve the management for the crops with big leaves. The author responded to all concerns. ****** 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 ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288818.r003
Formally Accepted
11 Jul 2023 Acceptance Letter - Sathishkumar V E, Editor PONE-D-23-03750R1 Response and inversion of Skewness parameters to meteorological factors based on RGB model of leaf color digital image Dear Dr. Jiang: 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. Sathishkumar V E Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288818.r004

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 .