PONE-D-23-01059Analysis of Water Quality and Potential Ecological Risk Based on Heavy Metal Content (Cr, Cu, Pb, and Zn) in the Cikijing River, Rancaekek District, West Java, IndonesiaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Marselina,

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 01 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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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Xiaoshan Zhu, Ph.D.

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: No

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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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: No

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: Please refer to the attached file for my report. The subject addressed is within the scope of the journal.

However, the manuscript, in its present form, contains several weaknesses. Appropriate revisions to the mentioned points should be undertaken in order to justify recommendation for publication.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript “Analysis of Water Quality and Potential Ecological Risk Based on Heavy Metal Content (Cr, Cu, Pb, and Zn) in the Cikijing River, Rancaekek District, West Java” is a manuscript assessed heavy metals in West Java. However, I recommend the following suggestions before the article can be accepted for publication I encourage potential justification/revision of the comments/suggestions during its revision:

*Author must be change the title of this paper and need to include components like water and sediment.

*Revise the highlighted points with specific and focused results. The existing highlights are simply stated without pinpointing the novel study findings.

*The abstract should stand alone with focused results. Thus, the authors are advised to update the abstract and improve it with specific data and other relevant results from this current research.

#An updated version of abstract is incorporated in the revised manuscript.

*Minor typos in English and syntax must be thoroughly improved in the manuscript. Please make double-check during revision.

Abstract:

Please rewrite the abstract

There is no statistical analysis such as Principle component analysis and cluster analysis. In addition, authors also mention or give suggestion for the management framework to reduce HMs.

1.Introduction

Author must rewrite this section

Why HMs harmful environment?

What is the significant of this studies?

Describe Literature (HMs) in global as well as authors country

How it is related in food chain?

Author can follow these papers:

a. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15569543.2021.1891936

b. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.144637

c. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-021-15353-9

d. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijsrc.2021.09.002

e. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15320383.2021.1923644

f. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-022-22122-9

g. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-021-17153-7

2.Method and materials

1. Study area must be described significantly why authors select this area.

2. Authors include the station id in the map like S1, S2…….

3.Author can describe all pollution in single table to reduce the paper length and summarize it.

Please this one- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15320383.2021.1923644

3.Results and Discussion

1. In this section, all of the figures are totally blur and must be redraw.

2. PCA and cluster analysis must be included for source identification

3. Comparison table must be needed to compare their studies with others studies in the globe.

4. Conclusion

I think author should give advice for government and stakeholders and so on.

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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: Yalçın TEPE

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PlosOne-PONE-D-23-01059.docx

PONE-D-23-01059R1Heavy Metals in Water and Sediment of Cikijing River, Rancaekek District, West Java: Contamination Distribution and Ecological Risk AssessmentPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Marselina,

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 Nov 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:

• 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,

Xiaoshan Zhu, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

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.

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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

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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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 #3: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

**********

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 #3: No

**********

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 #3: No

**********

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 authors has taken the serious effort to revise the manuscript. Now the paper has improved significantly. Hence I recommend the article to Accept.

Reviewer #3: In the manuscript provided by Marselina and Wijaya, contamination dstribution and ecological risk of heavy metals have been assessed in water and sediment of Cikijing River, Rancaekek District, West Java. In my opinion, the topic addressed is interesting and important. In conclusion, the manuscript can be accepted with major amendments at PLOS ONE.

- English writing needs further polish.

- The term of heavy metals is now deprecated and potentially toxic elements should be used instead.

- The "conclusion" section in the abstract part must be improved.

- Adverse health effects of analyzed elements must be presented in the introduction section. In so doing, it is suggested that the following articles be used as a reference:

i) Marine Pollution Bulletin, 123(1-2): 34-38 (2017).

ii) Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 27(12): 13301-13314 (2020).

- The results of 'one way ANOVA' and 'one-sample t-test' analysis must be presented and discussed to comparing the mean levels of studied PTEs between the sampling sites and also between the mean levels of PTEs and maximum permissible concentrations (MPCs).

- The correlation matrix between the mean content of analyzed elements and physicochemical parameters of sediment and water samples must be provided.

- Are the reference values of PTEs for your country?

- The values of EF and Nemrow indices must be presented and clearly discussed.

- Quality of the discussion section must be improved. In so doing, the authors must be organized the discussion from the general to the specific, linking your findings to the literature, then to theory, then practice and avoid repetition from the introduction.

- For numbers in text and tables < 1.00, use three digits beyond the decimal point; for numbers between 1.00 and 9.99 use two digits beyond the decimal point; for numbers between 10.0 and 99.9, use one digit beyond the decimal point; and for concentrations ≥ 100, use the nearest whole number.

- Point sign must be used as decimal.

- The values of SD and CV(%) of analyzed elements must be presented.

- The authors should include the following references to be added in the introduction section:

iii) Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, 109(6): 1142-1149 (2022).

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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: Yes: Yalcin TEPE

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.

Heavy Metals in Water and Sediment of Cikijing River, Rancaekek District, West Java: Contamination Distribution and Ecological Risk Assessment

PONE-D-23-01059R2

Dear Dr. Marselina,

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,

Xiaoshan Zhu, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: