Dear Dr. Anderson,

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 all of the points raised during the review process.

Reviewer 1 and myself have thoroughly looked at the manuscript and we think it provides a new opportunity for CatWalk users and also for those who are deeply interested in the analysis of altered animal locomotion patterns.   

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 24 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.

• 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'.
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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Antal Nógrádi, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

[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?

Reviewer #1: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Kinematic analysis is an important decent method to monitor regeneration and the efficacy of therapeutic efforts following injuries or diseases affecting the motor system. The authors of the manuscript aimed to use a new R package to make CatWalk data processing more reliable. The manuscript is technically sound, it presents clear logic and a proper scientific English.

I would like to make a few comments to improve the manuscript.

Major points

-The authors should support their statements with references in the Introduction much more often (e.g.: line 37, 44, 64). To find the place of this method among the existing ones the authors should cite more than 16 papers.

-Regeneration of the motor system takes long time in most of the experiments resulting in the growth and gaining weight of the animals (in rats it is significant). How does the package handle this phenomenon? If it is not able to do so yet, how will this correlation introduced?

-Both step length and step duration vary in healthy animals within wide ranges affecting the “style” of the gait. How does the dataset manage to handle these parameters?

Minor points

-Video-based semi-automatic gait analysing systems (e.g. DeepLabCut ) should be mentioned in the Introduction (with references) and they should be compared to the present method in the Discussion.

-Is there any possibility in the future to adopt this method to other systems different from CatWalk?

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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

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Runway: A Novel, Forward-Screen Method of Analyzing Catwalk Gait Analysis Data

PONE-D-25-04329R1

Dear Dr. Anderson,

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,

Antal Nógrádi, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

Reviewer #1: All my questions and comments have been addressed by the authors. The manuscript is eligible for being published in its present form.

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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

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