Peer Review History
Original SubmissionMay 27, 2023 |
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PONE-D-23-16348Earliest known Gondwanan bird tracks: Wonthaggi Formation (Early Cretaceous), Victoria, AustraliaPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Martin, 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. I would like to sincerely apologise for the delay you have incurred with your submission. It has been exceptionally difficult to secure reviewers to evaluate your study. We have now received two completed reviews; the comments are available below. The reviewers have raised some scientific concerns about the study that need to be addressed in a revision. Please revise the manuscript to address all the reviewer's comments in a point-by-point response in order to ensure it is meeting the journal's publication criteria. Please note that the revised manuscript will need to undergo further review, we thus cannot at this point anticipate the outcome of the evaluation process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 13 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:
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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: I have very little to comment on regarding the actual text of the paper, so I will submit my comments here. The manuscript details a novel avian ichnofauna from Early Cretaceous Gondwana. In short, this is a tremendous find, and provides important information on the paleodiversity of early avians. Given the challenging nature of the present-day environment and the nature of the preservation, the authors approached the description of these tracks with an appropriate level of caution: suggestions of possible ichnotaxonomic assignments were made without formal designation. This provides the opportunity for more detailed examination of the tracks and the possibility for future surveys of the Footprint Flats and Honey Bay localities for more specimens. Detailed measurements and data tables were provided, which will be very useful for future analyses, and the images in the paper and the supplemental information were clear and without overinterpretation. I agree with the authors that photogrammetric images are not required at this stage. Also, the encrusting tidal fauna on many of the tracks would provide a great deal of artificial relief to a heat map. The only item that I would like to see expanded on may be the possible migratory potential for volant Early Cretaceous avians to polar regions during the spring and summer as we see in many of our modern analogs. Would a north-south migration of Barremian – Aptian shore and wading birds during the breeding season have any geographic barriers? I recommend that PLOS One accept this paper for publication. Reviewer #2: A competent paper with broad coverage of avian tracks literature I am a little surprised to see the Wonthaggi tracks compared with such a wide variety of ichnogenera. it would be nice to narrow it down a bit if possible. For example, tracks are much larger the Geongsangornipes and lack web traces. RE morphometric tables it would be nice to place a line with mean measurements at bottom of each table Please refer to digit traces not "actual" digits when appropriate ********** 6. 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Revision 1 |
Earliest known Gondwanan bird tracks: Wonthaggi Formation (Early Cretaceous), Victoria, Australia PONE-D-23-16348R1 Dear Dr. Martin, 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, Jun Liu Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-23-16348R1 Earliest known Gondwanan bird tracks: Wonthaggi Formation (Early Cretaceous), Victoria, Australia Dear Dr. Martin: 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. Jun Liu Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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