Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 13, 2021
Decision Letter - Susan Hepp, Editor, Soni M. Pradhanang, Editor

PWAT-D-21-00012

Linking stormwater control performance to stream ecosystem outcomes: incorporating a performance metric into effective imperviousness

PLOS Water

Dear Dr. Walsh,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Water. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Water's publication criteria as it currently stands since there are some minor comments that need to be addressed. 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 22, 2021. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at water@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pwat/ 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 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'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Soni M. Pradhanang, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS Water

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 If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references.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 If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article's retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

1. Please update the completed 'Competing Interests' statement, beginning with the statement "I have read the journal's policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests:"

2. Please provide us with a direct link to the base layer of the map used in 2 and ensure this location is also included in the figure legend. 

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

After reviewing the comments received from the reviewers, I recommend the authors to make minor revision. The manuscript is well written and is impactful in the field of stormwater management.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Water’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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 (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. 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 Water 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

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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: The author attempted a novel approach to investigate the stream ecosystem response to stormwater control measures. Focus is on weighted effective imperviousness and modeling. It's a great article. See the attachment foe few more suggestions.

Reviewer #2: Overall, this paper looks good. Authors made a good start with the introduction and discussion part.

Two sections need to improve: methodology and Conclusion. Methodology part needs to reorganize and conclusion part needs to improve with detail. In the result, figure 5 and 6 need clear and detail interpretation. Rest of the minor reviews I mentioned in my review document. Thank you.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Review_PLOS_Water_09-02-2021.docx
Attachment
Submitted filename: Review comments.docx
Revision 1

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Susan Hepp, Editor, Soni M. Pradhanang, Editor

Linking stormwater control performance to stream ecosystem outcomes: incorporating a performance metric into effective imperviousness

PWAT-D-21-00012R1

Dear Dr. Walsh,

We're pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication in PLOS Water. The academic editor and reviewers were very positive about your work and we sincerely appreciate your support of the journal and Open Science.

As a new journal, we are finalising our publishing workflow, so we appreciate your patience as your manuscript moves through the system. Soon, you'll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you'll receive a formal acceptance letter. An invoice for payment, along with detailed instructions, will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. 

PLOS Water will formally begin publishing in early 2022 and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication as soon as possible after this point.To minimise any delay in the dissemination of this work, we encourage you to post this paper as a preprint. 

 

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, and 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 water@plos.org.

Thank you for your submission and trust in us as we launch this important new space for the study of water for people and the planet. We are thrilled that you are among the initial cohort of papers that is working to address the most pressing issues in water sanitation and water resources that are facing our world today.

Kind regards,

Soni M. Pradhanang, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS Water

Additional Editor Comments:

The author has addressed all the minor comments that were raised by the reviewers. I recommend "accept" for the manuscript (PWAT-D-21-00012R1) entitled "Linking stormwater control performance to stream ecosystem outcomes: incorporating a performance metric into effective imperviousness" . The methods are well described with enough details and will allow future researcher to replicate the method to other sites.

Reviewers' comments:

The author addressed reviewers' comments thoroughly. 

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