Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 26, 2024
Decision Letter - Daniel Boullosa, Editor

PONE-D-24-28700Acute cardiovascular responses of postmenopausal women to resistance training sessions differing in set configuration: a study protocol for a crossover trialPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Iglesias-Soler,

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 Oct 10 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Daniel Boullosa

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: "This work is part of the project PID2021-124277OB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE. JR-V and MR-A acknowledge the financial support received from the Spanish Ministry of Universities through the Grants for the Requalification of the Spanish University System under the Postdoctoral Margarita Salas Program (JR-V: RSU.UDC.MS10; and MR-A: RSUC.UDC.MS09), funded by the European Union – Next Generation." 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. 3. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please delete it from any other section.  4. We note that Figure 2 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 Figure 2 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. 5. We are unable to open your Supporting Information file SUPPORTING INFORMATION.rar. Please kindly revise as necessary and re-upload.

6. 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. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Descriptions of methods and materials in the protocol should be reported in sufficient detail for another researcher to reproduce all experiments and analyses. The protocol should describe the appropriate controls, sample size calculations, and replication needed to ensure that the data are robust and reproducible.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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 and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Very nice. Considering this is a protocol paper, I would say everything is well-described and the rationale is there. To me, those are the most important aspects for such a paper. Clearly, the "discussion" pointes are theoretical, but should be well-defined and connected to the current literature when the scientific publications come out. I look forward to the paper(s) in the future. Keep up the good work.

Reviewer #2: In this study protocol, a 4 segment randomized crossover design is being proposed to evaluate the impact on resistance training set configuration on arterial stiffness, hemodynamic variables, cardiac autonomic, modulation, baroreflex sensitivity, sympathetic vasomotor tone, resting oxygen uptake, perceived effort, mechanical performance, heart rate, and lactatemia, along with comparisons between the normotensive and hypertensive groups.

Minor revisions:

1- Line 180: State the statistical testing method which achieves 80% power.

2- Identify the software that will be used to capture the data.

**********

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

**********

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Revision 1

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

RESPONSE: We have meticulously adhered to the template and ensured that all files are named in accordance with the correct format as outlined in the style guidelines.

2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure:

"This work is part of the project PID2021-124277OB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE. JR-V and MR-A acknowledge the financial support received from the Spanish Ministry of Universities through the Grants for the Requalification of the Spanish University System under the Postdoctoral Margarita Salas Program (JR-V: RSU.UDC.MS10; and MR-A: RSUC.UDC.MS09), funded by the European Union – Next Generation."

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.

RESPONSE: The statement you suggested has been incorporated into the revised version of the cover letter.

3. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please delete it from any other section.

RESPONSE: The Ethical Statement has been removed from other sections and now appears exclusively in the Methods section.

4. We note that Figure 2 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.

RESPONSE: We have removed the potentially copyrighted images and provided a new figure with images that we created ourselves and are free of copyright.

5. We are unable to open your Supporting Information file SUPPORTING INFORMATION.rar. Please kindly revise as necessary and re-upload.

RESPONSE: We regret this issue. We have now uploaded the Supporting Information as individual files to avoid any problems with the compressed folder.

6. 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.

RESPONSE: We have reviewed the reference list and confirmed that all cited papers are accurate, and none have been retracted.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer #1: Very nice. Considering this is a protocol paper, I would say everything is well-described and the rationale is there. To me, those are the most important aspects for such a paper. Clearly, the "discussion" pointes are theoretical, but should be well-defined and connected to the current literature when the scientific publications come out. I look forward to the paper(s) in the future. Keep up the good work.

RESPONSE: We sincerely appreciate the reviewer’s comments. Thank you very much for your valuable feedback

Reviewer #2: In this study protocol, a 4 segment randomized crossover design is being proposed to evaluate the impact on resistance training set configuration on arterial stiffness, hemodynamic variables, cardiac autonomic, modulation, baroreflex sensitivity, sympathetic vasomotor tone, resting oxygen uptake, perceived effort, mechanical performance, heart rate, and lactatemia, along with comparisons between the normotensive and hypertensive groups.

RESPONSE: We thank the reviewer for their comments and suggestions. Please find below our responses to your specific comments.

Minor revisions:

1- Line 180: State the statistical testing method which achieves 80% power.

RESPONSE: Thank you for your comment. We conducted two types of power calculations for ANOVA tests: one for the interaction in a 4 x 2 repeated-measures ANOVA (set configuration * time) and another for the interaction in a 4 x 2 ANOVA involving a within-subject factor (i.e., set configuration 1-3 and control session), and a between-subjects factor (i.e., hypertensive and normotensive). For the same conditions, the former analysis required 49 participants, while the latter needed a total sample of 50 (25 per group). Therefore, we decided to report the more demanding test. Additionally, as suggested by the reviewer, we have specified in the revised manuscript the test for which the sample size was calculated. “A priori power analysis was conducted using G * Power V3 (Universität Kiel, Düsseldorf, Germany). Considering the research design, the sample size calculation was carried out for a statistical power of 80% (1– β) and assumed Type Error I of 0.05 in order to detect a small effect size (f = 0.12) for the interaction between the within-subject factor (i.e., set configuration 1-3 and control session) and between-subjects factor (i.e., normotensive and hypertensive groups) in an Analysis of Variance test (ANOVA), and assuming a correlation of 0.75 between repeated measures”

2- Identify the software that will be used to capture the data.

RESPONSE: The software to be used for capturing each variable has been added as requested.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: REBUTTAL LETTER.docx
Decision Letter - Daniel Boullosa, Editor

Acute cardiovascular responses of postmenopausal women to resistance training sessions differing in set configuration: a study protocol for a crossover trial

PONE-D-24-28700R1

Dear Dr. Iglesias-Soler,

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. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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,

Daniel Boullosa

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Descriptions of methods and materials in the protocol should be reported in sufficient detail for another researcher to reproduce all experiments and analyses. The protocol should describe the appropriate controls, sample size calculations, and replication needed to ensure that the data are robust and reproducible.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception, at the time of publication. 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 and, if applicable, provide comments about issues authors must address before this protocol can be accepted for publication. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about research or publication ethics.

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: None, accept as is…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. . Must have 100 characters. Sorry. …………….

Reviewer #2: All comments have been adequately addressed.

**********

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

**********

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Daniel Boullosa, Editor

PONE-D-24-28700R1

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Iglesias-Soler,

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

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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.

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. Daniel Boullosa

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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