https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9786-4985
Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionAugust 31, 2024 |
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-->PONE-D-24-38117-->-->Evaluating Joint Angle Data for Clinical Assessment Using Multidimensional Inverse Kinematics with Average Segment Morphometry.-->-->PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Gritsenko, 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. ============================== The reviewers raised several significant issues with the manuscript. Reviewer #1 points out the use of bulk citations (e.g., line 51) and mentions the lack of a detailed statistical analysis despite mentioning the ANOVA method. Reviewer #2 criticizes the manuscript for missing essential details, making it difficult to understand the experiment, which aimed to calculate joint angles using musculoskeletal models with different scaling methods in a virtual reality setup. The abstract lacks clarity on the methods, tasks, and results, while the introduction fails to clearly articulate the study’s contribution. The methods and data analysis are described too compactly, omitting crucial information such as task descriptions, repetitions, and data processing steps. The results section lacks clear explanations for the values presented, and the discussion fails to provide concrete conclusions or explain certain claims. Both reviewers recommend significant revisions to improve readability, clarity, and the inclusion of missing data. The authors are suggested to consider these concerns seriously in the revised version of the manuscript. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 01 2024 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:-->
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, Jyotindra Narayan 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 2. We noticed you have some minor occurrence of overlapping text with the following previous publication(s), which needs to be addressed: -Applications and limitations of current markerless motion capture methods for clinical gait biomechanics (https://peerj.com/articles/12995/) -Advancing Medical Technology for Motor Impairment Rehabilitation: Tools, Protocols, and Devices (https://doi.org/10.33915/etd.12056) (among others) In your revision ensure you cite all your sources (including your own works), and quote or rephrase any duplicated text outside the methods section. Further consideration is dependent on these concerns being addressed. 3. Please note that PLOS ONE has spec6ific 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 the following financial disclosure: “NIGMS P20GM109098, NIGMS P30GM103503, NIGMS T32 AG052375, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering FA9550-24-1-0214” 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. 5. Please expand the acronym “NIGMS” (as indicated in your financial disclosure) so that it states the name of your funders in full. This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 6. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: “We would like to acknowledge the contribution of Mychaela MacDonald to the analysis of the reported data as part of her undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program at West Virginia University. V.G. was supported by NIGMS grants P20GM109098 and P30GM103503. R.I.T. was supported by a fellowship from NIGMS T32 AG052375. This material is based upon work supported by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering under award number FA9550-24-1-0214. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Defense” We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: “NIGMS P20GM109098, NIGMS P30GM103503, NIGMS T32 AG052375, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering FA9550-24-1-0214” Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. [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: No ********** -->2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? --> Reviewer #1: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: I Don't Know ********** -->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: 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 ********** -->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 noticed in many cases bulk citations that should be avoided, e.g. at line 51 you cite [2-9]. At line 164 you have {Citation}. The paper does not present the statistical analysis that was made. It is mentioned ANOVA method, but without details. Reviewer #2: This paper describes an experiment where the goal was to calculate joint angles with a musculoskeletal model that was personalized using an Average method and an Individual method in an experiment that used virtual reality. While I believe that the study could be interesting, at this point the manuscript misses a lot of vital information that is required to understand what was being done. Therefore, I cannot recommend publication of the study at this point. The text is so compact in the manuscript that it is a bit difficult to read the paper. It would be great if the text is double spaced. It would also be great if the raw experimental data could be shared as well. Abstract: 8 out of 20 lines are a rather general introduction, which does not explain why the authors were specifically interested in testing different scaling methods. Furthermore, the methods are not described clearly: which motion capture technology is being tested? What sort of tasks were performed? How many participants? Also, it would be great if some quantitative results were added. Introduction: while I generally liked the introduction, a statement/final paragraph is missing which describes exactly the contribution of the study that is described in the manuscript. Therefore, it is really difficult to assess the usefulness of the methodology and the results towards the contribution. For example, why did the authors choose the specific tests that they describe in line 146-154. Line 80: The authors could further expand on the redundancy as it is quite relevant to their study. Methods: • Line 114: please describe the type of virtual reality that was being used. Why is the virtual reality relevant? • Please describe (here or in the introduction) how comparable the experimental setup is to the one that is expected to be used in the clinic • Please describe the experiment and data processing more clearly: what tasks were measured? How many repetitions? What was done to the measured data exactly? • I generally did not understand the data analysis section. The authors have described it a bit too densely. For example, it is only described that the “Average method” relies “on published anthropomorphic dimensions as fractions of individual height”, but how were these applied? And which segment lengths were changed in the “Individual method”. Why was a time-independent standard deviation used? Results: there are more results mentioned in table 1 than just the Average and Individual method. Please explain where these values come from. For table 2, since the tasks are not described, it is difficult to understand what the ROM means. Discussion: • Line 197-198: I do not understand this sentence. According to the methods, there were two methods and there is not a separate ground truth, so how can one “alter the values the most”. • Line 211-212: what is “good enough” based on? • A concluding paragraph is missing. ********** -->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 ********** [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. |
| Revision 1 |
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-->PONE-D-24-38117R1-->-->Quantifying the Effect of Anthropometric Assumptions on Upper Limb Joint Angles Derived from Inverse Kinematics.-->-->PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Gritsenko, 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. ============================== Despite the favourable feedabck by the reviewer(s), Reviewer #2 highlights major concerns, particularly regarding the results section and data availability. Key issues include unclear methodology descriptions, inconsistent terminology usage, missing analysis details, and misinterpretations of statistical results. Minor comments focus on readability, terminology refinement, and additional clarifications in the introduction and discussion. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by May 02 2025 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:-->
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, Jyotindra Narayan Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 #2: (No Response) ********** -->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: Partly ********** -->3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? --> Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: 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 #2: 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 #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: (No Response) Reviewer #2: The authors have addressed my previous comments very well, which has greatly improved the manuscript. The purpose of the paper is now clear, and the methodology is much clearer as well. However, several major issues remain, especially in the results section. I am not sure if the data that is made available meets the standard required by PLOS One, as it is only the root-mean-square errors and no raw data, or perhaps time series data of joint angles over time. E.g., Figure 2 cannot be reproduced as far as I can see. Major Comments Line 28-30: This sentence does not describe the purpose of the paper correctly. As far as I understood, the goal of the paper is to investigate if joint angles can be estimated from a model scaled from average body proportions as accurately as when using a model with measured body proportions. Line 56: the statement “obstacle to widespread adoption” is contradictory to line 51 which claims that there already is widespread adoption. Throughout (line 94/98/…): it is confusing to me that the word “variability” is used with at least two different meanings, the variability in segment length and the variability in reaching movement execution. Furthermore, it also seems to me that sometimes “variability in segment lengths” is used to describe the fact that there is variation in measurements, not necessarily a difference in the actual segment length (e.g., in line 166 and 176). In that case “model/measurement inaccuracy” would be more fitting. But also between variability in segment length and movement execution, I think that the readability could be improved if different words are used to describe these different meanings, although I am not sure what that other word should be. Line 166-169: I do not understand the explanation of the RMSE calculation. Since there is a “between” in the sentence, I expected to see and “and” to indicate the second item between which the RMSE is calculated. Is it calculated as the error between the two methods, meaning that one of the models is considered a ground truth? Or is there a separate ground truth that both are compared to? Methods: a section/paragraph describing the analysis approach is missing. Therefore, the relevance of the variables mentioned in the results is not clear to me. Please add a section describing the analysis approach. Lines 177-185: this piece of text should be in the discussion or the methods. Line 191: is this based on literature or based on the current paper’s results? I also do not understand what is meant with “a small portion”. How is that defined? Line 202-203: please rephrase. An ANOVA test cannot show similarity, it can only show difference or lack of evidence for a difference. A correlation analysis should be used to test for similarity. Line 214: while I agree with the statement, a conclusion should not be in the results section Line 240-241: Was this based on literature? The current study did not show this in my opinion. Please add a citation or rephrase. Line 251: how do the authors conclude a measurable effect when there was no statistically significant difference? Table 1: between which two variables is the difference (final column) defined? Table 2: shouldn’t there be results for both methods in this table? (related to the missing section in the methods about the analysis approach) Table 2: How is the active ROM defined? And the maximal ROM? (could also be in an analysis section) Minor Comments Line 33: MATLAB Line 48-50: it would be great if the authors could add what the Fugle-Meyer score investigates. Line 50: I believe that measures should be measure (metrics measure) Line 71-72: I find it confusing that this line cites ref. [6] while the experiment in ref. [9] is described. Line 104: consider writing out West Viriginia for non-US-based readers Line 110 (and onwards) consider using participants instead of subjects: (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38075407/) Line 164: for readability, I would explicitly mention that the movement ended once they returned to the centre position. Line 224: it was not clear until here that active and passive range of motion were important for the study. Consider including in the introduction or methods, earlier in the manuscript. Line 218-229: I was wondering if the study population of the paper included especially short or tall people, and if the authors considered their population reflective of the general population. This would be an interesting discussion topic/limitation. ********** -->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 ********** [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. |
| Revision 2 |
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-->PONE-D-24-38117R2-->-->Joint Angle Trajectories Are Robust to Segment Length Estimation Methods in Human Reaching-->-->PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Gritsenko, 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. ============================== The reviewer agrees that the manuscript is improved after revision; however, still not convinced with the calculation and presentation of between-participant standard deviation. Moreover, other issues highlighted are the inclusion of results from both methods in comparisons, the lack of detail on trajectory numbers, and the inconsistent and unclear plotting choices in Figure 2. The authors should also check for the minor issues mentioned by the reviewer before resubmitting the revised manuscript. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 25 2025 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:-->
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, Jyotindra Narayan Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 #2: (No Response) ********** -->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 #2: No ********** -->3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? --> Reviewer #2: I Don't Know ********** -->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 #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 #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 #2: Thank you for addressing the comments, the paper is mainly clear. There is unfortunately still on critical point that is not entirely clear to me. Major comments: Line 211-213: I do not understand how the between-participant standard deviation was calculated. Was it calculated separately for each participant or for all participants? If it is only one participant, how can it be a between-participant variability? It also does not make sense with the explanation in line 99, because there is no variation in body size in a single participant. Furthermore, I do not agree with the decision to include the results of both methods in the calculation when the goal is to compare them. It might also help to add the number of trajectories that were used to help readers understand how the calculation was made. Figure 2: why is the presentation of SDw and SDb so different? Since they are very similar variables which were calculated in a similar way and the legend describes both similarly too, it seems that it would make sense to either use lines for both or histogram plots for both. Furthermore, the meaning of the + is not explained in the legend. I would also recommend to use different colors than in Figure 2, because something different is plotted. Minor comments: I recommend using within-participant and between-participant for the variability. Line 96-98: this sentence is not grammatically correct Line 115: the overall height has increased, remove improvements in once Line 189: “to” should be added before “drive”? Line 197: directions should be direction Line 199: word missing (an) Line 213: "that" should be "the"? Line 247: limbs Line 263: remove comma after "that" ********** -->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 #2: 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. |
| Revision 3 |
|
-->PONE-D-24-38117R3-->-->Joint Angle Trajectories Are Robust to Segment Length Estimation Methods in Human Reaching-->-->PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Gritsenko, 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 19 2025 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:-->
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, Jyotindra Narayan Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 1. If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise. Additional Editor Comments: The reviewer recommends substantial further revisions before acceptance. They request clearer justification of the study’s practical relevance and methodological rigor, including identification of applications for the Average (body-height) method, a justification or power analysis for the small sample size, and rationale for the chosen motion capture system. Additional validation steps are required such as comparing Simscape Multibody results to standard biomechanical tools (e.g., OpenSim) and applying time-series statistics (1D-SPM) to the angular data. The reviewer also asks for better-qualified interpretations, particularly regarding neural versus morphological variability, and for clear limitations stating that the results apply only to healthy upper-limb movements, not to clinical populations or other tasks like gait. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 #3: (No Response) ********** -->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 #3: Partly ********** -->3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? --> 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 #3: 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 #3: 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 #3: 1. The manuscript should clearly mention specific applications where the Average (body-height) method is commonly used, to better justify the practical relevance of this comparison. 2. The sample size of nine participants is too small to draw generalizable conclusions regarding anthropometric variability and joint angle calculation; a power analysis or justification for sample size is needed. 3. The manuscript should address the lack of an a priori power analysis. 4. A short justification for the specific motion capture system used is required. 5. The use of self-reported height introduces possible measurement error that may affect scaling accuracy; direct measurement of height should be considered, or the effect of self-report error quantified. 6. The authors should apply a time-series statistical method (1D-SPM) to compare entire angular trajectories rather than only summary differences, because this will detect localized temporal differences that pointwise ANOVA on scalar summaries can miss. 7. The authors used Simscape Multibody instead of standard musculoskeletal modeling software (e.g., OpenSim) but did not provide validation or comparison to ensure that the computed joint angles are biomechanically consistent. 8. The interpretation that morphological variability contributes less than neural redundancy is overstated, given the purely kinematic analysis; causality between morphology and neural control cannot be established without electromyography. 9. A sentence should be added stating that while robust for reaching, the findings should be verified for other movement types (gait, whole-body tasks) 10. The manuscript must explicitly qualify its clinical implications, as the findings are derived solely from a healthy cohort. It is recommended to add a dedicated statement in the Discussion to clarify that the direct application to clinical assessment is not yet proven. Specifically, it should be noted that in clinical populations, the relationship between segment scaling error and motor variability may be fundamentally altered due to neurological damage that changes the structure of movement. 11. Potential for altered limb morphology in clinical populations could affect segment proportions, a factor not explored in this study. Therefore, the robustness of segment scaling methods must be validated in patient groups before these findings can be confidently applied to clinical assessment. 12. The Discussion must explicitly state that the findings are specific to the studied upper-limb joints in a healthy, neurotypical population. The conclusions may not generalize to limbs, upper or lower, with structural deformities, where altered segment morphology and biomechanics could significantly amplify the error from using average segment proportions. ********** -->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 #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". 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| Revision 4 |
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-->PONE-D-24-38117R4-->-->Joint Angle Trajectories Are Robust to Segment Length Estimation Methods in Human Reaching-->-->PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Gritsenko, 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.-->
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Kind regards, Jyotindra Narayan Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 1. If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise. 2. 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. 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 #3: (No Response) ********** -->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 #3: No ********** -->3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? --> Reviewer #3: 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 #3: 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 #3: 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 #3: Thank you for your detailed responses and revisions. The manuscript has been notably improved. To further enhance its methodological clarity, Please consider the following points, or provide a valid justification if not addressed: 1 The authors' rationale for focusing on global effects is noted. However, the key finding that segment scaling alters amplitude but not the shape of the trajectory is inherently a time-series claim . Relying on scalar summaries and visual inspection (figure 2) remains a sub-optimal level of evidence for this conclusion. The application of a 1D-SPM analysis would provide a direct and robust statistical validation that the trajectories are equivalent across their entire duration, thereby strengthening this central result. 2) The phrasing in the Abstract (Lines 48-49) still attributes variability specifically to "how the nervous system selects," which is a strong causal claim not fully supported by kinematic data. We recommend rephrasing to more directly reflect the observed evidence, for example: "...indicating that the variability inherent in movement execution outweighs that introduced by morphological differences." 3) To bolster methodological confidence, please cite existing literature where Simscape Multibody has been specifically validated for calculating human joint angles. ********** -->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? 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| Revision 5 |
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Joint Angle Trajectories Are Robust to Segment Length Estimation Methods in Human Reaching PONE-D-24-38117R5 Dear Dr. Gritsenko, 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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. For questions related to billing, please contact billing support . 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, Jyotindra Narayan Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): The reviewers have now accepted the revised manuscript. I recommend the same for publication. Congratulations to the authors for the quality contribution. 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 #3: 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 #3: Yes ********** -->3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? --> Reviewer #3: 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 #3: 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 #3: 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 #3: The authors have satisfactorily addressed all previous comments. The revisions, have strengthened the manuscript. Acceptance is recommended in its current form. ********** -->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 #3: No ********** |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-24-38117R5 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Gritsenko, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset You will receive further instructions from the production team, including instructions on how to review your proof when it is ready. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few days to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, 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. You will receive an invoice from PLOS for your publication fee after your manuscript has reached the completed accept phase. If you receive an email requesting payment before acceptance or for any other service, this may be a phishing scheme. Learn how to identify phishing emails and protect your accounts at https://explore.plos.org/phishing. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@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. Jyotindra Narayan Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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