Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: MOLECULAR PHYLOGENETICS AND EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF THE ENDEMIC LAND SNAIL GENUS EVERETTIA IN NORTHERN BORNEO
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Clear statement for the research.
Experimental design: Well experimental design and improved results of divergence dating.
Validity of the findings: Well stated conclusion and improving our knowledge about the origin of land snail diversity of Borneo.
Additional comments: No additional comments


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: MOLECULAR PHYLOGENETICS AND EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF THE ENDEMIC LAND SNAIL GENUS EVERETTIA IN NORTHERN BORNEO
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: My impression is that the authors have very carefully and comprehensively addressed all issues raised in reviews of the previous manuscript version. I am satisfied with the outcome and find the article to be written in a clear and concise manner.
The methods applied are suitable and the conclusions drawn from these are sound.
I have n reservations for this study to be published in its present form.
Experimental design: ok
Validity of the findings: ok
Additional comments: well written and informative


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SHARING FOR SCIENCE: HIGH-RESOLUTION TROPHIC INTERACTIONS REVEALED RAPIDLY BY SOCIAL MEDIA
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Impressive use of social media to obtain data. You have no doubt illustrated the utility of using facebook for your data collection and comparing it to that of iNaturalist and Google images was a bonus.
Your long intro is well organized but your hypotheses at the end are ambiguous. I ran into the same problem with a similar study because I knew the data would prove useful, but struggled to identify specific hypotheses that my results would prove.
I appreciate you clearly stating what your paper will accomplish.
A search for the word hypothesis yielded 1 result, in the lit cited. Simply adding this word to your single, main hypothesis, may help readers and your paper alike.
Your figures are informative, though I would appreciate seeing one that is more visually stimulating and showing an example of a picture that provided good data.
Experimental design: Main research question is ambiguous. Please work on firming that up along with your hypotheses to. It seems that your knowledge gap was the various prey species that were very difficult to detect via traditional data. If so, more focus on that in your hypotheses and conclusions would help.
I know from experience that it is hard to identify a “knowledge gap” with this type of study because social media data is still perceived as new, extra data on top of traditional data. But if we can describe social media data as an important and common dataset that needs to be harnessed regularly, instead of extra data, it may help in identifying new knowledge gaps. Other scientists that do not take advantage of social media data should now be viewed as having a knowledge gap. Thus, part of your knowledge gap should be how to best make use of social media data and you can hypothesize as to the quality and quantity of new data.
Validity of the findings: Your conclusions need to address your main research question, hypothesis, and knowledge gaps. Your conclusions were generally that social media has great utility and provided you with rapid info, catching novel interactions and should be harnessed in other sciences as well. These, to me, are general truths that should be elaborated on. Possibly in another study.
Additional comments: I applaud your use of social media data and encourage you to think of it as a common tool that we should all accept, then move forward in exploring how to incorporate it seamlessly into traditional data sets.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SHARING FOR SCIENCE: HIGH-RESOLUTION TROPHIC INTERACTIONS REVEALED RAPIDLY BY SOCIAL MEDIA
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript proposes a novel approach in the data collection process applied to the study of trophic interactions. The authors showed that the collection of data from a dedicated Facebook group has been capable of supplying data at a higher rate than traditionally used methodologies. This conclusion is supported by the comparison of an extensive analysis of historical data and literature and its comparison with the Facebook data. Moreover, Facebook data allowed us to discover new trophic interactions that have never been previously reported by scientists.

Language is clear and professional. There are no typographical or grammatical mistakes.
Literature reference is sufficient and appropriate. An exhaustive list of the references used for historical analysis has been included in the subscription in the form of an Excel file.

Data collected from Facebook, iNaturalist and Google Image are not attached to the submission. However, it is possible to join the Facebook group from which the data have been retrieved. iNaturalist and Google data could be retrieved since the methodologies used to collect those data are clearly described in the manuscript.

The manuscript provides the correct URL of the Facebook group, but the name cited is wrong. The manuscript states that the Facebook name is “Predation Records - Reptiles & Amphibians (Sub-Saharan Africa)” while it is “Predation Records - Reptiles and Frogs (Sub-Saharan Africa)“. This does not affect the quality of the research as the correct URL of the Facebook group is still provided. However it is an oversight that the authors might want to review.
Experimental design: The original primary research is within Aims and Scope of the journal as the manuscript belongs to the field of biological research.

The paper adopts a meticulous scientific method documenting each step clearly: it is replicable. Moreover, it highlights challenges and respective solutions with motivations behind the choices. Possible limitations of the method are listed and commented on.
Validity of the findings: Conclusions are well stated and supported by the previous part of the manuscript. Data sources are either provided or publicly available.
Additional comments: The methodology proposed is really interesting. It is shown that in certain contexts a group with active users can provide a useful quantitative of data. When thinking about possible applications of the same methodology to other researches, a big challenge can be the creation of a Facebook group focused on the specific topic of the research. How do researchers create such an active and useful group? It would be nice to hear the story behind the birth and growth of the Facebook group used to collect the data analyzed in this manuscript. Did users join the group “spontaneously” or were they close friends or collaborators of the authors? The answer doesn’t affect the validity and soundness of the paper. It is just my opinion that it would be useful and interesting to tell the side story behind the Facebook group so that other scientists can leverage the same methodology for other projects.

First, the paper is sound, clear and exhaustive. Even though there is an abundance of research that uses social media, it is interesting to see an approach solely based on a single Facebook group. The methodology is described in a way that leaves no doubt about its effectiveness in the proposed context.
I believe the paper should be published by PeerJ.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SHARING FOR SCIENCE: HIGH-RESOLUTION TROPHIC INTERACTIONS REVEALED RAPIDLY BY SOCIAL MEDIA
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: I believe that the manuscript needs at least one table to provide more information about the actual data collected rather than the methodology used. Although is an important work, providing novel and important information, in the manuscript authors are almost exclusively focused on the methodology and the comparison between the sources they used to collect the data. However, they clearly state that several observations were unique and never been reported before in the literature, but those are not reflected in the main text and they should.

Also Figure 1 although is very sophisticated is very hard for a reader and does not provide in a clear way all the information. I suggest a table to be added for supplementing this figure.
Experimental design: this is the strongest part of the manuscript. Very well design and presented.
Validity of the findings: Authors apart from the methodological part they present and the difference between the sources used must also present the actual data and the trophic interactions the detected that are not presented in the literature. Again a table must be really valuable.
Additional comments: Very significant and important work that can be significantly improved if the data collected are well presented.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: PROGNOSTIC VALUE OF COMPLEMENTARY BIOMARKERS OF NEURODEGENERATION IN A MIXED MEMORY CLINIC COHORT
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: This is a well-written manuscript investigating the predictive value of various neurogeneration markers accessible at the memory disorder clinic of tertiary hospitals.
It seems to meet all the standards of this journal including professional article structure, figures, tables, professional English and references.
Experimental design: 1. Progression of cognitive function depends on the duration of the disease. You considered age but not disease duration which you might want to control for to investigate the relationship between biomarkers and the clinical progression. Otherwise, it could be a serious confounder.
2. The same is true of the education level which may affect the cognitive decline.
3. The intracohort Z score was used for analysing the biomakrer data in this study. The Z score is conventionally calculated form the mean and standard deviation of the normal control sample which are not available in this study. The readers may be interested to know about the rationale for the intracohort Z score.
4. You mentioned in the inclusion criteria that a T1-weighted MRI with slice thickness>2mm of sufficient quality for analysis. Should it not be slice thickness<2mm rather than >2mm?
Validity of the findings: The way you defined clinical progression is too pragmatic to be taken for granted. You might want to define it using MMSE and CDR scores, for example, 3-4 points decrease on MMSE or an increase on CDR SOB. The decision only based on physician's impression is subjective and most likely will be biased, undermining the validity and also generizability of the findings.
Additional comments: No additional comments


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: PROGNOSTIC VALUE OF COMPLEMENTARY BIOMARKERS OF NEURODEGENERATION IN A MIXED MEMORY CLINIC COHORT
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: No comment.
Experimental design: Although the methodology is correct, I would like to suggest some points to improve the article

1) Please, specify more about the FDG-PET analysis. What software was used? Is the whole cerebellum used as a reference, just a part of it, or a grey substance?

2) Since we are trying to detect neurodegeneration and not vascular damage, if patients had vascular damage, was any segmentation done to eliminate the effect on the analysis of brain metabolism?

3) About the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), were Abeta 1-42 and phosphotau not measured? What were the cut-off points for total CSF?

4) Another important aspect, which requires further clarification, is whether the z-score was calculated based on the sample itself. Because if it is the case, it would not be discriminating atrophy versus non-atrophy, but rather patients with more or less atrophy. It would be interesting to use a control group to calculate normality, and afterward a z-score <0 should not be used as an indicator of atrophy, but rather a -1 or -1.5 (1 or 1.5 standard deviations below normality).
Validity of the findings: The final diagnosis of the patients should be specified. Even if it is a mixed cohort, it should be reported if they are patients with Alzheimer's, Frontotemporal Dementia, Lewy, depression, etc. This is an essential aspect because biomarkers should be interpreted in the context of a diagnosis, and not only as positive/negative, atrophy/non-atrophy, hypometabolism/non-hypometabolism. This represents a significant limitation that restricts the generalization of results since not knowing what type of patients we are talking about could affect the interpretation of the tests (e.g., MMSE).
Additional comments: This is an interesting and clinically relevant document on the prognostic properties of atrophy and hypometabolism in patients with suspected neurodegenerative diseases. The authors link several interesting aspects of the field, which gives the article a very solid proposal.

However, there are some considerations that I think the authors should include in a future version before publication to improve the quality of this work. The suggestions were detailed in the specific sections.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: PROGNOSTIC VALUE OF COMPLEMENTARY BIOMARKERS OF NEURODEGENERATION IN A MIXED MEMORY CLINIC COHORT
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: No comment.
Experimental design: No comment.
Validity of the findings: No comment.
Additional comments: The authors have addressed all the suggestions made in the first review and have provided answers to the questions raised. It is an interesting article that will make an excellent contribution to the field.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: EFFECT OF PREDATION RISK AND ECTOPARASITIC LOUSE FLIES ON PHYSIOLOGICAL STRESS CONDITION OF THE RED-TAILED TROPICBIRD (PHAETHON RUBRICAUDA) FROM RAPA NUI AND SALAS & GÓMEZ ISLANDS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript is well written, concisely and clearly presented. The introduction is clear and cover the topic with enough detail. I have however a few suggestions for improvement.
1.1. Some references are poor/inappropriate. Creswell 2008 in line 75 deals with predation, while a proper reference dealing with parasitism is needed instead here. Aramburú 2012 do not seem the best reference in several parts where it is cited, and a more general/relevant reference should be cited instead.
1.2. Too many tables and figures are presented, all but one figure depict non-significant results. Consider removing some of the figures.
Experimental design: The study system is worth of investigation, as well as the questions tackled. Understanding the effects of predation and parasitism on the ecology of this bird species is especially relevant given its limited distribution. I have however several concerns regarding the experimental design and data analyses.
2.1. Information on breeding stage of sampled birds is not known (apart from incubating / rearing chicks). Nevertheless, the incubation process is an energy demanding process that  affects the physiology of the birds. Birds in the early incubation stage will be different in many aspects to birds in the late incubation stage. Thus, this has probably introduced noise in the data, making more difficult to find relationships between the physiological variables explored with predation risk and parasitism. I am aware that this info may not be available in this system, but this concern should be discussed in the manuscript. Moreover, given that samples were collected during a relatively extended period of time, spanning from June to November, consider including date in the models somehow, to take into account this seasonal / phenological variability. In addition, only three of the birds were rearing a chick; would results change if these three nests are excluded from the analyses? (The only two birds from Rapa Nui with louse flies could be also excluded as well). The same concern regarding incubation stage applies to bird sex, which is not known and is an important source of noise that may hinder detection of the expected relationships.
2.2. I have concerns that the design may be flawed if, as stated in the ms (lines 390-395) predation risk is the same between exposed and protected nests. Please explain much better what these two categories mean.
2.3. In addition, a few more details are needed in the methods: State for example whether the bird nests colonially, which is important as it may determine parasitism exchange among neighbour nests, while sharing predation risk as well.
Validity of the findings: 3.1. I want to stress that it is difficult to find effects of parasitism and predation risk even in more controlled and standardized conditions, so it may not be surprising that no such effects have been detected in this study. First, it is a correlative study, with no experimental manipulations performed. Second, the distinction between nests exposed and protected from predators may not be clear (see my previous comment above).
3.2. Apparently, the only relevant finding of the study is that H/L ratio is lower in Rapa Nui island. All other results are nonsignificant, although some of them are reported as “not significant trends”. These terminology is justified when p values approach significance, but not in all other cases; please rewrite these sections.
3.3. Info on percentages of leukocytes is not so relevant as to start each section of the results with it.
3.4. Interpretation of the difference in H/L ratio between islands is attributed to louse flies. However, the two islands differ in many other aspects, as the authors already point out (frigatebird presence, nutrient abundance around the island,…). Thus, without having detected an effect of ectoparasites on H/L ratio, it is not justified to defend this as the cause of the difference between islands. Please reconsider this interpretation.
3.5. Authors suggest that blood parasites may be involved as well in the observed difference in H/L ratios, although they have no data on blood parasites. Nevertheless, during microscope slide examination to conduct leukocyte counts, authors have to know whether there are or there are not blood parasites in the sampled birds (at least the most common haemosporidia).
Additional comments: Minor comments:

L267: Info repeated three lines before, please rewrite/delete.
L338: Delete “at the moment of assessment”
L424: Could this huge difference in percentage of eosinophils be due to misidentification in one of the two studies?


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: EFFECT OF PREDATION RISK AND ECTOPARASITIC LOUSE FLIES ON PHYSIOLOGICAL STRESS CONDITION OF THE RED-TAILED TROPICBIRD (PHAETHON RUBRICAUDA) FROM RAPA NUI AND SALAS & GÓMEZ ISLANDS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: Abstract:
Line 31: “and/or” would be better here.
Line 45: would replace “categories” and provide a more detailed description here. Either exposed on unexposed nests.
Line 48: Compare to what? Birds from Rapa Nui?
Line 57: raptors birds
Line 92: I would rather see the authors state that blood smears are more commonly used to investigate the immune status of an individual. Stress is most commonly investigated using circulating levels of glucocorticoids which is known to mediate the physiological response to challenging conditions. Smears are much more specific, in my opinion, to immune function. Immune function is one of the many factors affected by glucocorticoids. Deviations in measurements from blood smears do not have to be a direct response to an environmental stressor.
Line 173: Is the sex known for these birds? I am assuming that these are all females. Do you know the sample date relative to lay date? Females undergo wide fluctuations in blood parameters around the time of egg lay which could influence your measurements. Some authors that have looked at blood parameters around the laying period are Tony Williams, Jesse Krause, Michael Kern, P. Hõrak,,
 and there is a nice review by Jeanne Fair. Also circulating glucocorticoids in females can be quiet variable around the transition from egg lay to incubation and feeding of young. Thus, changing  circulating levels of glucocorticoids could be directly influencing the transcription of HSPs
Line 194: Is it known if HPSs are rapidly affected by handling? Meaning the delay in collecting the blood sample could affect the measurements. Perhaps it would be best to report your average time to blood sampling with standard deviation.
Line 327 & 354: If there is no relationship then do not state that there was a trend.
Line 408-421: It may be good to offer an alternative explanation. I agree that higher immune function induced by parasitic flies is likely a very plausible explanation. However, without a control it is hard to know which group is up and the other down. One could argue that stress is upregulated, just not in anything you measured, which results in immunosuppression of tropic birds on island inhabited by predators. Perhaps corticosterone levels are different between birds on the different islands which is directly affecting leucocytes. I would suggest adding this alternative explanation as well.
Experimental design: Luna et al examined red-tailed tropic birds to understand the effects of predation pressure and parasite load on various physiological markers that included heat shock proteins (HSPs), heterophile to lymphocyte ratios on two separate islands. The authors did not detect any significant correlations between H/L ratios or HSP and parasite load or body condition. MANOVA analysis were also not significant in determining the effects of the various continuous variables on nest site. There was a significant difference between H/L ratios between the two islands with high parasite load results in relatively higher H/L ratio.
Validity of the findings: Overall, this study is straight forward, from the data collection, to analysis, and data interpretation. One critical detail that is missing is the sex for the individuals that were sampled. It would be expected that sex effects especially when considering the sample date with egg lay date could influence these parameters. It would be greatly appreciated if the authors could clarify these details. It is unfortunate that there is not a control island in this study to truly understand the directionality of the significant relationships. The authors do acknowledge this short coming and to a certain extent is overcome by the physiological questions that are asked for each respective island before making the direct comparisons between the islands. Making comparisons between two treatments, essentially, makes it difficult to interpret which island truly has a higher or lower physiological parameter since it is not known what the unmanipulated phenotype would be.
I am always cautious in using the work stress in my writing because of its complexity. I do not disagree that the authors have investigated things that are directly affected by stress. I wonder if there is a better way of phrasing this study?
Additional comments: No additional comments


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: EFFECT OF PREDATION RISK AND ECTOPARASITIC LOUSE FLIES ON PHYSIOLOGICAL STRESS CONDITION OF THE RED-TAILED TROPICBIRD (PHAETHON RUBRICAUDA) FROM RAPA NUI AND SALAS & GÓMEZ ISLANDS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: The authors have addressed all of my previous concerns.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: ?AMPHICTIS (CARNIVORA, AILURIDAE) FROM THE BELGRADE FORMATION OF NORTH CAROLINA, USA
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The manuscript is well structured and written in understandable English even for non-native English speakers.
Introduction, background information, and figures are fine, but
-	I suggest including a map showing all the localities mentioned in the introduction. Moreover, geographical coordinates for the Belgrade Quarry should be provided.
-	Figure 2 shows a reconstruction of the specimen, but it is unclear which source the authors used for the reconstructed teeth (Amphictis ambigua? A. schlosseri?).
-	The new specimen is referenced in figure 3 and 4 with two different colors (black/red). This should be unified.
Literature is well referenced and relevant, but
-	I noticed that the journal’s format is not always followed. I commented this in the pdf, but please check again for consistency.
I additionally
-	corrected some very minor misspellings within the pdf.
Experimental design: The manuscript fits well to aims and scope of the journal. The applied methods are described with sufficient detail.
All other criteria of this section are fulfilled, as well.
Validity of the findings: The results are of high interest as the authors verify the discussed specimen as the yet oldest ailurid of North America. Due to this, I expect a high rate of citations not only in literature of specialist but also in general contributions on Ailuridae, up to Wikipedia.
I have only few additional remarks:
-	the authors state that Morlo & Peigné (2010) discuss “all eight species” of the genus. In figures 3-4, however, only five of these are included, but it remains unclear, why that is the case.
Moreover, the species A. timicua Baskin, 2017 should be added to the eight species mentioned by Morlo & Peigné (2010).
-	the authors state p4 to be closest to A. schlosseri, but it is unclear why they say this. I suggest to include the relevant characters.
-	the authors state m3 to be absent. This is very probably true, but in my view this cannot be evidenced from the specimen or the figures attached to this manuscript. The authors should either add such evidence (lack of the anterior border of a possible m3-alveolus?) or clarify that the absence of m3 is inferred from the other evidence that allows identification of the specimen as musteloid.
Additional comments: This contribution deals with a new mandibular ramus from the early Miocene of the Belgrade Quarry. Though only little information is obtainable from the specimen, the authors attribute it convincingly to the genus Amphictis, verifying it to be the hitherto oldest member of the carnivoran family Ailuridae in North America.
This manuscript thus is an important contribution to the evolution and early paleobiogeography of ailurids. I suggest to publish it with the minor changes I outlined above.
I thank you for the possibility to be part of its publication as a reviewer.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: ?AMPHICTIS (CARNIVORA, AILURIDAE) FROM THE BELGRADE FORMATION OF NORTH CAROLINA, USA
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: - I am not a native English speaker thus I cannot comment on the language
- The geological context is well brought forward. The literature is referenced but some citations are missing
- extend comparisons
Experimental design: The study shows that a scan method may be used for an uncomplete fossil material to help a taxonomic identification. It is in the scope of the journal. The research question is well defined.
The research is rigorous with a high technical standard and the method well described.
Validity of the findings: Despite the poor material, I think it is valid and could contribute to the knowledge on geographic distribution of a taxon quite rare in North America.
The conclusion is credible but the comparisons could be a little extended
Additional comments: This is an original and smart analysis on an isolated and almost edentulous hemimandible of carnivoran from North Carolina of which only a piece of p4 is known. I appreciate the idea to work with help of microtomography scans to use the shape and size of the roots for the identification.
The authors give a careful description of the fossil and they use a large comparison to conclude that the hemimandible belongs probably to ?Amphictis. Measurements in the supplemental will be very useful.
Nevertheless, I have some remarks
- Currently, the suffix ictis coming from a feminine Latin word, the species name Amphictis ambigua must be used.
- Ratios are used in the text but only as larger or smaller, please give the numbers.
- line 193: the authors speak about the measurements of Pech du Fraysse. Those of m2 were published (Cirot & Morlo 1996) but where did they take those of m1? (Citation please).
- For the comparisons, some other taxa may be added. First, I think to Pseudobassaris. it is considered as a procyonid by Wolsan & Lange-Badré 1996, who attributed to it a couple of teeth, m1 and m2, from two Quercy localities (Bonis & Cirot 1995 fig. 8-9). If they are right, although they come from two different localities, the ratio Lm2/Lm1 (65) is close to that of NCSM 33670 (63). The size is smaller but the hypothesis is possible.
- Two other genera, Broiliana and Stromeriella could also be candidate, although they are smaller than NCSM 33670.
- Finally, I don’t understand why, in figure 4, there are genera which are not discussed in the text: Floridictis, Zodiolestes, Oligobunis, Brachypsalis, Promartes, Parabrachypsalis, even if they are in the measurements.
- line 527: Cirot & Wolsan 1996 no Cirot & Bonis

The fossil material is poor, but it is another point in North America where the presence of this type of carnivoran is recorded (even with a double question mark)


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: ?AMPHICTIS (CARNIVORA, AILURIDAE) FROM THE BELGRADE FORMATION OF NORTH CAROLINA, USA
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: The fossil described in this manuscript is very incomplete, and its geologic age is not certain, which can only result in an approximate taxonomic assignment and likely potential trouble for subsequent authors. One could therefore wonder if this manuscript should be published at all. As concern myself, I avoid publication of specimens that are such incomplete anatomically and uncertain taxonomically. However, I admit that there may be some importance in this fossil for an American or other reader that I missed. Therefore, I recommend publication of this manuscript for the sake of record.

That said, despite a very incomplete state of the evaluated fossil, I feel convinced by the authors that the fossil may be tentatively referred to Amphictis. As concerns the manuscript itself, I find it professional and well written. I believe this manuscript is publishable in the present form. I have only one minor comment that Amphictis ambiguus should be spelled as Amphictis ambigua because ictis (weasel in Latin) is feminine in gender.

Typos:
Line 84: “Arikareean, to”
Line 134: “missing, Length”
Line 162: “m2 is and”
Line 187: “basinsof”
Line 215: “the the”
Line 216: “PollackFarm”
Line 274: “anycase”
Line 527: “Cirot and Bonis, 1995”


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: OPEN ACCESS UPTAKE BY UNIVERSITIES WORLDWIDE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Please see general comments to authors.
Experimental design: Please see general comments to authors.
Validity of the findings: Please see general comments to authors.
Additional comments: The authors provide an examination of institutional penetration, globally, of Open Access (OA). Using the Leiden rankings and including 963 institutions the authors track OA penetration through use of the Unpaywall API – for records having a DOI. This methodological paper provides some preliminary results – OA penetration is slightly above 40%, globally, but there are wide disparities. For example, the UK does far better than other countries, such as Canada.

I found the methods and results transparently reported.

A major thought (perhaps concern as well) is the ‘basic’ manner in which the data were dealt with – descriptively. I was wondering whether some modelling (e.g., regressions) would make the results stronger. For example, do different types of OA and region of the world better predict institutional OA? I’m not used to thinking about PubMed Central (PMC) as an OA repository and wondered whether some modelling with and without PMC would be more informative (Figure 8 provides some sense of the disparity)? Similarly, given the overlap of types of OA, how did the authors handle the ‘counting’? were overlaps counted twice? Would regressions better model the different types of OA without overlap?

Some aspects of the results are not clearly explained. For example, why is the UK substantially better than other countries, such as India (Figure 3)?

The authors allude to the usefulness of these data to institutions and I agree with their assumption. What is less clear is how many institutions have the infrastructure in place to compute what the authors have done. I doubt many and wonder whether the authors should provide an example of how to work out the data for a particular institution; perhaps Delft? I think this worked example would be helpful to institutions wanting to enable this process (and better disseminating this paper).

Predatory journals advertise themselves as OA. Would the authors approach enable institutions get a better handle on which of their constituents (staff; faculty) are publishing in predatory journals?


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: OPEN ACCESS UPTAKE BY UNIVERSITIES WORLDWIDE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The article is very timely and provides a great way to integrate data sources such as the CWTS institutional disambiguation (from the Leiden ranking) and Unpaywall data to analyze OA uptake at universities worlwide.

The article needs quite a bit of improvement in the way that it is written and a thorough proofread. I have therefore made comments and edits in the attached PDF.
Experimental design: This is a great study analyzing the uptake of various OA types on the level of universities, disciplines and countries. It combines the method by Piwowar et al (2018, published in PeerJ) with data from the Leiden ranking.

A specific research question is lacking and the objective could be better defined. The research definitely fills a knowledge gap as OA uptake has not yet been investigated on the institutional level to such an extent and with the new Unpaywall dataset.

Methods would benefit from a bit more detail: when was data retrieved from Unpaywall, what publication years does the set span etc.
Validity of the findings: The findings are very interesting and based on valid methods. However, I am missing context in terms of previous findings or national policies etc.

Data is made available on the level of presented data, that is universities, countries etc. However, the underlying data based on the article level is not provided. I assume this is due to restrictions by proprietary data providers such as WoS and CWTS. I therefore was not able to validate the findings beyond the provided Excel file.

Authors should clarify what data they could and could not provide.
Additional comments: I would suggest that you focus on improving the writing and the objectives of the study. The data is excellent, but the way in which it is presented, could be much improved with relatively little work, particularly in terms of the writing.

I really like the way that the data was visualized, particularly the combination of bar charts and scatterplots as well as Figure 1. Could you clarify what software you used to produce figures?

There are some inconsistencies between the numbers and figures in the text as specified in the comments in the PDF. These need to be fixed.

I would also suggest that you provide percentages for OA types in the tables for countries and universities to facilitate comparison.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: OPEN ACCESS UPTAKE BY UNIVERSITIES WORLDWIDE
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: This is revision. I have no further comments.
Experimental design: This is revision. I have no further comments.
Validity of the findings: This is revision. I have no further comments.
Additional comments: This is revision. I have no further comments. The authors have addressed my concerns in a reasonable manner.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: OPEN ACCESS UPTAKE BY UNIVERSITIES WORLDWIDE
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors have addressed all major concerns and improved the writing of the manuscript.
Experimental design: I disagree with the authors that a descriptive research article does not need research questions or objectives, but I think that the main research objective added is sufficient to clarify the goals of the paper.
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: Congratulations on a great and timely study!


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: EXCEPTIONALLY PRESERVED ‘SKIN’ IN AN EARLY CRETACEOUS FISH FROM COLOMBIA
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: This is all fine.
Experimental design: This all seems good.
Validity of the findings: The authors use standard analytical methods, which are clearly explained, and I think all conclusions are reasonable. In the Discussion, perhaps say more about the usefulness and trustworthiness of the various methods, especially FTIR (where identification of peaks is a bit of an art).
Additional comments: The first sentence isn’t helpful – why does it matter that it’s from South America? The first sentence should be of global interest – what’s unique about the specimen? Maybe the best that can be said is that ‘Exceptional preservation of soft tissues in fishes is well known from a number of localities (Santana, Liaoning…), and we present here the first such report from a new location… so establishing the Paja Formation fish beds as a Lagerstätte.

The initial part of the ‘Discussion’ (lines 230-288) is Results, so can you move it back to ‘Results’ and integrate with the existing text there.

Then the ‘Discussion’ will focus on the exceptional fossilization and the model for why soft tissues were preserved. This needs more comparison with recent papers on b Santana, Liaoning, and other such materials. Also explore the reliability of FTIR and the other methods used – are they entirely reliable?

70: couple = a few
103: clean = cleaned
225: aspidorinchid – aspidorhynchid
281: a phenomena = a phenomenon
319: Aspidorhynchid = aspidorhynchid


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: EXCEPTIONALLY PRESERVED ‘SKIN’ IN AN EARLY CRETACEOUS FISH FROM COLOMBIA
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The ms. by Alfonso-Royas and Cadena describe a rare fossilization condition within vertebrates: the preservation of soft tissue. Overall, the ms. is well written and pretty straight forward: they have found a quite incomplete specimen but manage to find out that it shows well preserved portions with soft tissue and proceeded with detailed analysis that are not commonly done in fossils. This alone is warrant publication. There are some typos here and there (e.g., Brasil), but nothing of great concern.

The main point here is that the literature regarding soft tissue in fossil vertebrates of South America is not acknowledged.
Experimental design: Going through their study, there is nothing that I could identify or observe that would not fit to their interpretations.
Validity of the findings: As pointed out above, there are not many studies like the ones addressed in this paper.
Additional comments: The ms. by Alfonso-Royas and Cadena describe a rare fossilization condition within vertebrates: the preservation of soft tissue. Overall, the ms. is well written and pretty straight forward: they have found a quite incomplete specimen but manage to find out that it shows well preserved portions with soft tissue and proceeded with detailed analysis that are not commonly done in fossils. This alone is warrant publication. There are some typos here and there (e.g., Brasil), but nothing of great concern.
Going through their study, there is nothing that I could identify or observe that would not fit to their interpretations. There are some main points that the authors should correct despite being peripherical to they study.
1) The stratigraphy they are using from Brazilian deposits is outdated. The former Santana FM is now recognized as Santana Group and the deposit they point out with well preserved fish fossils (not only, see below) is now regarded as the Romualdo FM. There are several papers pointing this out - perhaps the authors wish to consult Kellner et al. 2013 (Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, 85(1): 113-135; doi: 10.1590/S0001-37652013000100009) and/or the bibliography cited therein.
2) Please make sure that all other localities you pointed out in your figure 1 are in the right place. For example, the Brazilian deposit (Santana = Romualdo FM) is in the northeastern portion of the country not in the center.
3) Right in the abstract the authors mention that "preserved in fossil vertebrates from tropical South America are barely known". They than proceed with several inserting and relevant examples from different deposits in the Introduction. However, they should be aware of the several superb specimens from Brazil and China that have been in the literature, including soft tissue from fishes, dinosaurs and pterosaurs from the Romualdo Formation (former Romualdo member of the Santana Formation) as well as the material from several deposits of China, that include even "hair-like structures" such as pycnofibers. For all the material of the Romualdo FM with dermis, epidermis, muscle fibers and potential blood vessels (from dinosaurs such as Santanaraptor, pterodactyloid pterosaurs, as well as fishes) should be cited at least in the introduction since their material is from South America.

4) How sure are they that they have the caudal portion of a fish? This is not clear from the picture. The identification as and aspidorhynchid seems to be correct judging from the scales. They should comment if the edges of the specimen are completely preserved and that there is no indication that parts of the dorsal and ventral portion of the piece they got were not decomposed prior to fossilization or eroded away after fossilization.

	There are some additional comments that they authors should address as they see fit:
4) l. 39 - Please acknowledge the specimens from China that include feathers, pycnofibers.

5) ls. 74-76 - It is nice the caution collecting the material. But they authors might like to disclose why this particular specimen was collected with that much care, a quite unusual procedure regarding fossil vertebrates. Did they know in advance the potential for finding such important material?

6) l. 148 - indet.

7) l. 150 - is this the first specimen of a new collection? This might be mentioned in the introduction - that the authors are building a new collection.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SUCCESSFUL PROMOTION OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AMONG STUDENTS OF MEDICINE THROUGH MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEW AND WEB-BASED INTERVENTION
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: In the abstract’s Background part, please consider strengthening your problem, gap and hook. Please put comma after “In this age”.
In the abstract’s Methods, please write “MET” in full first and then use abbreviation afterwards.
L49: Please correct the citation styling.
L64. Please consider explaining how motivational interviews are proven to increase physical activity.
L72-74: Please elaborate how social media use (e.g., Facebook) can improve physical activity.
Please consider sharing descriptive statistics for Facebook usage such as how many posts, how many comments etc. Did every student participate in the online group? What were the reactions of the students to the posts in the Facebook group.
L254: whitespace on “( p=0.005)”
L375: Please revise citation and writing.
It would be better if you could ask questions about how the time is spent when students are not active (i.e., playing games, studying, staying home, getting social).
Following literature resonates with your study, and I highly recommend citing them in your paper.
Suner A, Yilmaz Y, Pişkin B. 2019. Mobile learning in dentistry: usage habits, attitudes and perceptions of undergraduate students. PeerJ 7:e7391 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7391
Mitsuhashi T. 2018. Effects of two-week e-learning on eHealth literacy: a randomized controlled trial of Japanese Internet users. PeerJ 6:e5251 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5251
Experimental design: The authors used motivational study addition to web-based intervention. Did you consider supporting students with only motivational interviews? Please answer “Does motivational interviews solely can contribute to physical activity?”

The authors explained details of the intervention for Facebook. However, they did not explain the details of motivational interviews. Please consider explaining more about the motivational interviews such as how many times students attend the interviews, what was the duration per student, what is the content and motivational constructs of the interviews.

Did you measure MET scores when the interventions were completed on the 6th Month. I believe that there would be some indications about the interventions at the end of the period. Please explain how and why you set the dates for measurements.
Validity of the findings: Participants gathered from the first year medical students. The groups who accepted to participate in the study were formed based on the students’ choices. Voluntary participation may add up to bias for the result of the study. Besides, the statistical methods used in the study have assumptions on randomization and independent observations (i.e., students are classmates). Therefore, there is a violation for the assumptions of the statistical methods. Please address in your analysis section how you dealt with the violations.
Additional comments: Dear authors,
Thank you for your article entitled “Successful promotion of physical activity among students of medicine through motivational interview and Web-based intervention” submitted on PeerJ. I have reviewed your paper with interest. I would like to point out my position for you to get the most of it from my review. I have reviewed your article from the eye of a scientist in medical education expertise in e-learning. Therefore, I was not able to make extensive comments for the content on motivational interview technique. I hope my comments would be sufficient for your considerations and improvement on your study.
The authors have investigated a very important topic on physical activity among medical students. The study is very timely in our era because of internet use and other accompanying indications can hurt physical activity among young adults.
I found the study well constructed between the sections and easily read, and the use of language is also flowing in the parts.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SUCCESSFUL PROMOTION OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AMONG STUDENTS OF MEDICINE THROUGH MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEW AND WEB-BASED INTERVENTION
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: Some minor edits needed, see line #s referenced:
23.  "Numerous evidence" - awkard, reword
26. "while" - vague
70 "this" - vague
117.  Include N for Group 3?
141. "Specifically" - vague
187. "the marathon" - what marathon?
Throughout, consider using "first-year" to describe medical students rather than "first-grade".

Authors mention that readiness to change is measured, and reader needs to see this in the tables pre/post.

Notably, reviewer did not closely look at edits past the Results section because comments below may affect the interpretation of results, which would warrant changes to the discussion, etc.
Experimental design: When mentioning MotivationaI Interviewing, is it face-to-face? What number of sessions were there, and what was the duration of sessions?  Clarify.

In the Facebook group, is it the case that the discussion is geared at self-reflection?  What is the goal?  Would help the audience to know what people in the web group are getting out of that.
Validity of the findings: Reader needs to know if data were normally distributed to know if parametric statistical analyses are appropriate.  If not, non-parametric and/or corrections are needed.

To determine if either intervention group had a greater impact on PA compared to the non-intervention group - need a comparison at baseline of whether there were significant differences in group physical activity and/or readiness to change at baseline.  If, for example, group 3 was not ready to change and the other two groups were - particularly given the self-selection process - it is possible that the groups were motivated to change and would have changed even without intervention.

Author needs to note that Group 3 started with lower physical activity (1595 compared to 1742 and 1773 in other groups).  Is this a significant difference?

SDs for the MET data are quite large.  Not sure if worth mentioning or further demonstrating that even with alot of variance the changes are significant.

Is there any expectation of a temporal impact given that med students are starting a new semester, and then workload increases as the study goes on?  Presumably, this might make the physical activity less likely for everyone.
Additional comments: This paper, once revised, will contribute in a meaningful way to the existing body of literature regarding phsycial activity promotion.

It may be worthwhile to consider a few things about the intervention in this line of research:
1.  In the web-based intervention, it may be worthwhile to consider whether the motivational images are expected to increase physical activity or not.  There is research that shows that sometimes motivational images on social media have the opposite of the intended effect.  There is a line of research about ˆfitsporation" that the authors might read, which shows that such motivational messages may cause more harm than good.  Perhaps an education-only intervention with reflection would be better?

2.  Consider tailoring the intervention (s) to address time-limitations of med students.  That is, promote physical activity that can be built into a busy day.  Most likely, this is on your radar already.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SUCCESSFUL PROMOTION OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AMONG STUDENTS OF MEDICINE THROUGH MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEW AND WEB-BASED INTERVENTION
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Revisions in the manuscript address my comments and concerns.
Experimental design: Revisions in the manuscript address my comments and concerns.
Validity of the findings: Revisions in the manuscript address my comments and concerns.
Additional comments: Dear authors,
Thank you for revising and resubmitting your work again. I have reviewed your changes and revisions. Thank you for addressing the other reviewer and my concerns and questions in your letter. Now, I believe that this article deserves publishing as is.
Yours truly.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SUCCESSFUL PROMOTION OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AMONG STUDENTS OF MEDICINE THROUGH MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEW AND WEB-BASED INTERVENTION
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors made improvements throughout.  In the abstract, consider changing "first grade" to be consistent with revisions elsewhere.  In the United States, "first-year" applies to medical students, whereas "first grade" refers exclusively to roughly 6-year-old children, and it may be useful to avoid reader interpretation errors.
Experimental design: The authors made many improvements and were successful in clarifying many points, including the normalcy of the data.  The methods section includes the Readiness to Change.  Author comments suggest that this data/inventory are not used in the current analysis, and instead will be used later.  Around this, two issues:
1) It is a bit awkward to read about an inventory and then not find results/discussions that are pertinent.  If attending to this point alone, it might seem warranted to remove.  However, the second issue is also related:
2) Authors have included "wish for physical activity" and "satisfaction with physical activity" to address potential confounds due to self-selection into Group 3 (as opposed to a true random assignment to the control condition).  Without readiness to change data and possibly even self-efficacy data, it seems possible there are confounds beyond "wish for" or "satisfaction" with physical activity.  For example, it is possible that systematically - group 3 includes people who WISH for physical activity just as much as those in group 1, and also are not as ready to change their behavior (as measured by the readiness to change) and/or do not believe they are capable of physical activity (could be measured by a physical activity self-efficacy inventory).
Validity of the findings: Given the comments provided in "experimental design", the major issue is that besides justifying the method of group assignment, an abundance of caution needs to be used with the interpretation of intervention impact based on group comparisons.  The potential for confounds possibly can not be directly addressed in this study, and authors need to be transparent about this in the limitations.  It is possible, for example, that the students who increased Physical activity in the intervention groups did so because of their own readiness to change and self-efficacy and would have done so without the intervention.  Since motivaional interviewing targets self-efficacy, measuring self-efficacy may be useful in future studies.
Additional comments: Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper.  Your contributions have potential value for first-year medical students.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SUCCESSFUL PROMOTION OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AMONG STUDENTS OF MEDICINE THROUGH MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEW AND WEB-BASED INTERVENTION
Review round: 3
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: No comment.
Experimental design: No comment.
Validity of the findings: No comment.
Additional comments: Thank you for attending to prior comments.  I believe this article now appropriately discloses limitations regarding self-efficacy so that the audience can make sound interpretations of results.  I support the publication of this paper.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: THE EFFECTS OF KNEE EXTENSOR MOMENT BIOFEEDBACK ON GAIT BIOMECHANICS AND QUADRICEPS CONTRACTILE BEHAVIOR
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The peak internal knee extensor moment (pKEM) is often lower in individuals with knee pathology than in healthy individuals and is a surrogate for quadriceps activity and cartilage loading. Because cartilage health is partially a product of loading environment, intervening to return pKEM towards normal magnitudes may be of value in the rehabilitation of knee pathologies. The purpose of the current study was to determine if and how young adults could alter pKEM during gait using real-time biofeedback. The authors developed a method for estimating pKEM in real-time and used this method to provide biofeedback to participants to target higher and lower than normal pKEM values. The authors examined whether these changes in pKEM resulted in changes in sagittal knee range of motion, vertical ground reaction force, and quadriceps MTU and fascicle kinematics. They found that changes in pKEM corresponded to changes in knee flexion excursion and MTU length change but not to fascicle length or angle change. They concluded that the reported methods and results lay the foundation for new intervention methods and for re-examining the presumed kinematics of the quadriceps muscles during loading response.

This paper is clearly written with established rationale, sufficient background information, and clear methods. Hypotheses follow logically from introduction, and methods and results correspond to hypotheses. Most of my comments are minor, with a few suggestions to improve clarity/reproducibility.

Raw data: Raw data to replicate the reported statistics are provided.
Experimental design: Experimental design corresponds to the aim of the study and appears technically sound.

1. KEM estimation method: Has agreement or correlation of this estimation method been compared to standard inverse dynamics KEM methods (i.e., bottom-up calculations)? Upon reading the results, I see that you did this comparison. Perhaps mention in the methods that this comparison was made or move this sentence of results (lines 209-212) to the methods.

2. The “experimental protocol” section is slightly unclear. Was the method for pKEM estimation used for both baseline target determination and for real-time biofeedback? During the exploration trial, were participants walking or standing still? See also comment 14 below on apparent mismatch between text and figure 1A.

3. How were key frame events identified in the ultrasound data? Frame closest in time to the events in the kinematic/kinetic data?

4. A figure would be helpful to accompany the description of the ultrasound methods. How was the linear projection of the aponeurosis defined? Were both deep and superficial aponeuroses always visible in both frames of interest? How was the deep aponeurosis applied as a correction factor? I think I can deduce the answers to these questions based on figures in some of the cited work, but a figure would greatly clarify this description.

5. Statistics: I am not familiar with determining if a change is different than no change by comparing it directly to 0 (VL fascicle length change isometric t-test). Was this recommended by a statistician?
Validity of the findings: Discussion elaborates on results in the context of previous work or assumptions. Future directions for this work are discussed. Limitations are appropriately outlined.
Additional comments: Overall, the manuscript is very well-written, has sound rationale, and is clearly executed. As such, my general comments are relatively minor.

6. Title: the title indicates that biofeedback affects quad contractile behavior but the results seem to indicate that the contractile behavior (i.e., change in fascicle length and angle) was similar across conditions. Suggest modifying title.

7. Abstract: VL is not defined before being used as an abbreviation.

8. Line 42: Suggest changing “arthroplasty” to “osteoarthritis”. There is no (or at least less) cartilage to load appropriately after arthroplasty.

9. First paragraph: Use of “physiological” loading term. I am not sure of the meaning being conveyed by this term. If in a functioning being, isn’t any magnitude of loading “physiological”? Is this meant to convey “normal” or “healthy”?

10. Lines 82-83: Is there a reference for “muscle activation does not associate with MTU behavior”?

11. Lines 100-101: Is there a measure of “quadriceps mechanical output” in this study? Or is the purpose to test a real-time biofeedback paradigm that very likely will affect quadriceps output? Suggest clarification of this, more precise wording, or a reminder that the pKEM being manipulated here very likely correlates with quad output.

12. Line 105: There is a hypothesis about muscle activation here but no matching methods or results. Remove?

13. Line 110: ( missing before “6 females”.

14. Lines 149-151: Figure 1A depicts the position vector as between the lateral femoral condyle and the instantaneous COP, which seems different than the description here of “between the lateral femoral condyle and the line of action of the GRF”. The latter makes more sense as the cross product of the GRF and the moment arm perpendicular to the GRF vector. Please confirm what method was used and ensure figure (and caption) match.

15. Line 176: “extension” or “extensor” moments?

16. Lines 176-177: Is the method described here the same cross product method as used for the biofeedback trials? Or this is traditional inverse dynamics?

17. Lines 219-223: The increase (decrease) reporting style took me a bit to figure out. Perhaps split this out to something like “For example, when cued to change pKEM by 40%, participants increased or decreased knee flexion excursion … by 30% and 36%, respectively”. Or use a similar style as in the following paragraph.

18. Lines 230, 234: standard deviations for fascicle shortening and pennation angle change?

19. MTU, fascicle results: how sensitive are these results to individual anthropometrics (e.g., height) or walking speed?

20. Lines 239-240: Similar to comment on purpose, what is the measure of “quadriceps output” in this study? Reframing similarly to purpose statement may add clarity to the application of the current findings.

21. Lines 241-242: Similar to pKEM methods questions, were the knee extensor moments reported in the results (as opposed to those used for biofeedback) not calculated using standard inverse dynamics methods? Were they expected to differ from typical profiles? Is this statement meant to convey “the people still walked like people when doing the biofeedback” or something else?

22. Line 265: Change “pEKM” to “pKEM”.

23. Lines 343-344: Does “cumulative literature” here refer to the literature on the cumulative effect of loading or the literature as a whole?

24. Table 1: Results are reported in mm here but in cm in the results section. Consider revising to match.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: THE EFFECTS OF KNEE EXTENSOR MOMENT BIOFEEDBACK ON GAIT BIOMECHANICS AND QUADRICEPS CONTRACTILE BEHAVIOR
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: Basic reporting is well done. I have checked all documents and have no concerns.
Experimental design: The experimental design is clear, appropriate, and in-line with the aims and scope of the journal. The methodology is especially detailed and the study could easily be replicated by experts in the field.
Validity of the findings: Again, this meets the journal's criteria. The study conclusions are valid and appropriate given the author's methodological approach and the results.
Additional comments: The purpose of this study was to examine the acute effects of biofeedback on gait biomechanics and quadriceps contractile behavior. The authors have concluded that biofeedback indeed influences knee extensor moment and knee flexion excursion, with isometric, rather than eccentric, muscle actions controlling these changes during weight acceptance. Both of these findings are very intriguing and perhaps not intuitive or widely known. In its current form, I believe that the manuscript is well-written and clear, with only a few issues needing clarification. The study seems well designed and the methodology appears detailed enough that the study could be replicated. The statistical analyses seem appropriate and the results are detailed. Some of the investigation’s potential limitations include a small sample size and analysis of a healthy, uninjured population despite the research topic being framed around knee pathology; however, the authors concede that this study was an initial step that may lead to larger, more definitive trials. Overall, I enjoyed reading this manuscript and I believe that this study has the potential to further the field’s understanding of the influence of biofeedback on gait parameters. My comments have been provided in chronological order.

Abstract
-While the sentence is well-written, the authors might consider better explaining what “±20% and ±40% of normal walking values” refers to. I suggest this because the authors examined a variety of different variables and readers may find this a bit unclear.
-Please spell out “vastus lateralis” before using VL.

Introduction
-Can the authors provide a reference to strengthen this statement? Lines 82-83: “However, muscle activation does not associate with underlying MTU behavior…”
-Line 102: “muscle-tendon unit” can be abbreviated as MTU both here and throughout the manuscript.

Materials and Methods
-The authors have been inconsistent with their use of “participants” versus “subjects.” Please pick one and be consistent.
-Line 110: Please include “(“ prior to 6.
-For readers that may not be familiar with the use of biofeedback during treadmill walking, a figure illustrating the authors’ laboratory setup would be quite helpful for gaining an appreciate of the participant’s perspective. Currently this is difficult to imagine from a written description alone.
-How confident are the authors that these participants were able to correctly adopt the recommended walking strategy in the absence of a separate familiarization trial? Are these altered gait mechanics simple enough to be adopted quickly?
-Lines 185-187: “We opted to perform manual identification of fascicle lengths and pennation at specific keyframe events (i.e., heel strike and the instant of pKEM) after determining that this approach was more reliable than automated tracking.” Can the authors provide any additional detail regarding this decision? Has anything on this been reported in the literature previously?
-It sounds like the authors approach to calculating fascicle length for those that fell outside the image window was similar to that recommended by Ando et al. (2014; JEK - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24485560).
-While the box and whisker plots are appreciated, given the small sample size, I am curious if non-parametric tests would have been more appropriate for the dependent variables which were not normally distributed. Have the authors considered the Friedman test or other alternatives?
-Lines 198-202: The authors state that analyses were performed on five variables, but then list more than five. Please clarify.

Results
-The authors’ use of increase and decrease in lines 218-220 is difficult to follow.

Discussion section
-Very well-written and clear. I am just curious if the authors could elaborate on exactly how real-time biofeedback would be implemented in clinical practice, as well as how dosing would look? Is it likely that a single session or even repeated sessions would result in chronic changes in these gait parameters? I recognize that this is a preliminary study, but I guess I am missing the potential practical application associated with the intervention.

Clear and helpful figures; the table is appropriate.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: MOTOR EXPERTISE AFFECTS THE UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSING OF GEOMETRIC FORMS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: /
Experimental design: /
Validity of the findings: /
Additional comments: Dear Editor,
Geng et al. present a study in which they compare performance of athletes versus non-athletes on a masked priming task. Their findings show that only athletes show a significant masked priming effect, despite both groups displaying chance level performance when asked to identify the primes. The findings themselves seem convincing and the manuscript is well written, but I have major conceptual concerns. Most specifically i) these findings do not seem to speak about executive control, and ii) it is unclear how they differ from previous work.

Major comments
Throughout the manuscript, the authors consistently describe their effects as evidence for ‘superior unconscious executive control’. I think this is problematic for two reasons: i) it is unclear why showing a masked priming effect is ‘superior’, as the optimal thing to do in this task would be to ignore the primes. ii) a priming effect by itself cannot be used as a marker of executive control. Historically, priming effects are considered markers of bottom-up processing and not of top-down executive control. At line 235 the authors write “motor expertise possessed by athletes facilitates unconscious information processing” which seems like a fair and correct conclusion to me.

The difference between the current study and previous work is unclear to me. The authors argue that previous work has shown sport-specific priming effects, but e.g., Meng et al. used circles with notches in specific locations, which to me does not seem very sport-specific. A much better explanation should be given as to why that study was sport-specific and the current one isn’t.

The prime identification task is suboptimal because it is prone to a well-known task-difficulty artifact (cf Pratte & Rouder, 2009, AP&P). Because the identification task is much more difficult than the main task, participants might lose motivation, stop trying, and simply start pressing random buttons. Indeed, Pratte and Rouder (2009) showed that d’ significantly increases as clearly visible prime trials are intermixed with the prime identification task. Another classical problem is that prime identification tasks usually comprise of less trials and therefore have less power to reject the null hypothesis. I was unable to evaluate this because the number of trials used in the prime identification task was not mentioned.

Minor comments
The authors spend quite some space to argue that the lack of a priming effect in non-athletes compared to Kiefer et al. might be because their participants had less training trials. This seems like a very unlikely possibility (given that the difference was only 24 vs 32 trials), and more importantly, can’t this hypothesis easily be tested by excluding the first twelve trials from data analysis?

Frequentist statistics cannot provide evidence for the null hypothesis that primes were invisible, so these analyses should be corroborated using Bayesian statistics.

Please report whether or not the experimenters were aware of the hypothesis, and which groups participants where in. There is some evidence that priming effects can be explained by experimenter bias (cf. Doyen et al. 2012, PLoS ONE).

Line 242: the word intuition seems ill-chosen here. Probably it would be better to say that S-R mappings are so highly over trained in athletes that these can be used without any conscious deliberation (or something alike). This explains the data as well, without the vague notion of ‘intuition’.

Line 271-273, the use of the word ‘sense’ and ‘felt’ seems to implies that this was a conscious experience (cf. Desender et al., 2014, Psychol Sci). Please reword in order to avoid confusion.

Line 302: if the authors genuinely think their limited sample size is an issue, then why try to publish these data in the first place?


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: MOTOR EXPERTISE AFFECTS THE UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSING OF GEOMETRIC FORMS
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The paper is written in clear and easily accessible English throughout the manuscript. The structure of the paper appears to conform to PeerJ standards. The figures of the manuscript appear to provide high-quality. They are sufficiently labelled and described and are relevant for the text. The research question is well-defined, relevant, and meaningful. The authors are successful in identifying a research deficit.

On a general scale, the issue of the paper relates to the processing of information in sports beyond a level of awareness of the very stimuli that elicit a motor response. Therefore, the PeerJ section Brain and Cognition provides a suitable platform for the publication of the results. The specific specific goal of the study relates to a previous study (Meng et al., 2019) ) of that author group in which they show that competitive table tennis players perceived table tennis specific visuospatial information on a computer screen without stimulus awareness whereas college students with no table tennis background did not. The present study extends these result as table tennis players and novices are tested in a similar set-up but with geometric symbols rather than table tennis specific stimuli. It is the goal of the authors to show that table tennis players are trained to process visual stimuli without awareness in general and not for visual stimuli representing the table tennis domain only.

While the purpose of this investigation can be readily followed it appears that the included literature is too narrow in scope while lacking a broader background on related psychological theories (Primary concern No. 1). In particular, the authors are encouraged to include the theory of direct parameter specification as outlined by Neumann and Klotz (e.g. Neumann & Klotz, 1994; Klotz & Neumann, 1999) as similar experimental paradigms with prime identification tasks were used.

References:

Klotz, W., & Neumann, O. (1999). Motor sctivation without conscious discrimination in metacontrast masking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 25, 4, 976-992.

Neumann, O., & Klotz, W. (1994). Motor responses to nonreportable, masked stimuli: Where is the limit of direct parameter specification? In: C. Umilta, & M. Moscovitch (Eds.): Attention and Performance 15: Conscious and nonconscious inform a- tion processing. MIT Press: Cambridge MA, 123-150

Meng, F., Li, A., You, Y., & Xie, C. (2019). Motor expertise modulates unconscious rather than conscious executive control. PeerJ, 7. Doi: 10.7717/peerj.6387
Experimental design: The investigation is performed to a high technical and ethical standard. However, the authors may have strengthened their argument by conducting the tasks from their previous study (Meng et al., 2019) with sport specific stimuli along with the tasks from their present study within the same subject group while using a multivariate statistical analysis (Secondary concern No. 1).

The general methodological approach including a masked priming task and a prime identification task was adopted from the study by Zovko & Kiefer (2013). In addition, they authors may wish to compare their approach with the metacontrast paradigm as outlined by Neumann and Klotz (e.g. Neumann & Klotz, 1994; Klotz & Neumann, 1999). In particular, using a 5-point Likert scale for the prime identification task may contribute to an enhanced data precision in the prime identification experiment.

In general, the authors are encouraged to clarify their description of the prime identification task (lines 144-152). This section should be written in greater detail to outline how subjective and “objective measures of conscious awareness” determine prime stimulus awareness. It appears that a paper by Tulving (1993) may help to render the terms “consciousness” and “stimulus awareness” more precisely (Secondary concern No. 2) and clarify whether /or how a verbal response and/ or an emphasis on an accurate rather a speedy motor responses may be used to detect stimulus awareness (see also the dissociation paradigm by Erdelyi, 1986).

Two other methodological issues deserve notice. Firstly, in the masked priming task, subjects are asked to respond as quickly and accurately as possible (line 121) leaving open whether both goals are compatible at the same time. This issue seems crucial in regard to the speed-accuracy trade-off as advocated by Fitt’s Law. Therefore, equivocal meanings in the subject instructions should be avoided or else explained about in detail (Secondary concern No. 3). The second methodological issue raised here refers to the justification of the sample size. Contrary to other studies (Neumann & Klotz, 1994; Klotz & Neumann; 1999; Zovko & Kiefer, 2013), the present study failed to detect a significant difference in reaction times for normal subjects/ non-athletes between the congruent and the incongruent stimulus conditions while responding to geometrical stimuli. The speculation of the authors about a high perceptual sensitivity of athletes only towards geometrical stimuli must be considered rather vague while further empirical evidence is amiss. An alternative explanation is mentioned in the manuscript (line 269) indicating a tendency in the non-athletes to respond similar to the athletes on congruent versus incongruent trials. Possibly, a larger sample size might have provided statistical significance (Primary concern No. 2). Therefore, the authors are encouraged to justify their sample size through a Power analysis as required in various scientific journals already. In particular, the authors are encouraged to use the effect sizes of related studies (e.g. Zovko & Kiefer, 2013) to estimate their anticipated effect size along with the alpha- and beta-errors in the Power analysis.

References:

Tulving, E. (1993). Varieties of consciousness and levels of awareness in memory. In: A.D. Baddeley & L. Weiskrantz (Eds.): Attention, selection, awareness, and control (p. 283-299). Oxford: Claredon Press.

Erdelyi, M.H. (1986). Experimental indeterminacies in the dissociation paradigm. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 9, 30-31

Zovko, M., & Kiefer, M. (2013). Do different perceptual task sets modulate electrophysiological  correlates of masked visuomotor priming? Attention to shape and color put to the test.  Psychophysiology, 50, 2, 149-157.
Validity of the findings: Provided the validity of the present findings, athletes from combat sports or game sports would respond faster and with fewer errors in congruent versus in congruent trials with geometric symbols as compared to non-athletes. In particular, their perceptual sensitivity towards geometric symbols would be enhanced through warm-up trials while such enhancement is amiss for non-athletes.
However, care should be taken when interpreting the results of the competitive tale tennis players and the non-players. While, the authors mention a tendency in the non-players to respond similar to the players a sample size issue arises. Possibly, a larger sample size may have provided statistical significance. Therefore, the authors are asked to provide table data including effect sizes and to conduct an aposteriori sample size calculation using a Power analysis tool (e.g. GPower : Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007).

References:

Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.-G., & Buchner, A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175-191.
Additional comments: Your paper is written in clear and easily accessible English throughout the manuscript. Your manuscript follows a well-comprehensible line of  thought. The methodology is adopted from previous studies in the literature. However, the missing reaction time difference between congruent and incongruent trials in the non-athletes remain inconclusive while contradicting other studies on one hand and while leaving open an alternative explanation based on a larger sample size on the other hand.

Some primary and secondary concerns are listed in this review. For the primary concerns, an inclusion of related literature on the metacontrast effect and the underlying direct parameter specification (Neumann & Klotz, 1994; Klotz & Neumann; 1999) is suggested. Moreover, I suggest to provide a sample size justification through a Power analysis to rule out a possible statistical cause for the missing significance in the two-way repeated measures ANOVA.
For the secondary concerns, it would strengthen your line of evidence if sport specific stimuli and geometric stimuli would be tested to identify a priming effect in congruent and incongruent trials in the same athlete and non-athlete subject groups. In addition, a clarification of terms and meanings could be achieved through a more in-depth review of existing psychological literature on what is called in the manuscript conscious awareness of the prime stimulus.  As a last point, the authors are encouraged to explain about a possible conflict within the subjects when being instructed to respond a quickly and as accurately as possible at the same time.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: MOTOR EXPERTISE AFFECTS THE UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSING OF GEOMETRIC FORMS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: The authors have done a good job on revising their work based on my previous comments. I would like to further discuss two of my previously raised points, but apart from that have no further comments.

- About the prime identification task: the "difficulty artifact" that Pratte & Rouder discuss stems from the fact that the main task is relatively easy (~85% correct) whereas the detection task was very hard (~50%), so participants might feel that in the detection task they are merely guessing and thus "give up". The authors responded to this that participants were told there was no time pressure, but that doesn't solve the issue at all. That being said, the data are what they are, but it would be good if the author mentioned this shortcoming and take it into account for future work.
- I thought the author's response about differences between the current and previous work was not very convincing. That being said, I leave it up to the Editor to decide how much strength to put on novelty concerning publication.
- I am not familiar with Gpower, but a minimum of 16 participants for an effect size of .24 seems very little. This obviously depends on design specifics, but e.g., for a one-sample t test one would need to test 140 participants to achieve sufficient power for such a small effect. The authors might want to reassure that they did this correctly.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: MOTOR EXPERTISE AFFECTS THE UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSING OF GEOMETRIC FORMS
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: 1.	Referring to my first review, substantial improvements have been provided in the re-submission of the paper by Geng et al. “Motor expertise affects unconscious processing of geometric forms”. In fact, through their re-analysis of previous data the authors show that motor expertise in a sport-specific domain is affecting unconscious processing somewhat independent of the stimulus structure.

However, while the authors have additionally mentioned about the theory of direct parameter specification they have failed to discuss the results of the related papers (e.g. Neumann & Klotz, 1994; Klotz & Neumann, 1999). More specifically, similar to the authors, Neumann and Klotz have used a masking paradigm with geometric forms in their experiments, as well, while consistently showing clear RT differences between congruent and incongruent trials in normal non-athletic subjects. These results add to other studies (e.g., Ulrich & Kiefer, 2016) showing RT differences between congruent and incongruent prime-target combinations in normal subjects as well. So, rather than discussing why athletes show superior processing of non-consciously perceived stimuli the authors should have provided arguments why their non-athletic subjects did not exhibit any RT difference between congruent and incongruent trials in the face of considerable evidence in the literature showing the contrary. In my opinion, individual differences, as advocated in the resubmission, provide only limited to no substantial explanation about these inconsistent results.

As a minor point, several writing errors should be eliminated prior to the publication in PEERJ (e.g. line 41 (…higher than in non-athletes…), line 160/161 (……prima and target included the same geometric stimulus…., …included a different geometric stimulus…), line 206 (…to a general domain, we, firstly, selected…), line 219 (…but the exact content…), line 311 (…of the present study…), line 319 (…these capacities are not limited to… ), etc.). Hence, the authors are encouraged to thoroughly re-correct their text and eliminate all writing errors. Please examine, as well, whether the statement line 38 (No significant difference was detected between athletes and non-athletes …for congruent trials) as compared to Fig. 3.
Experimental design: 2.	The new contributions of the authors concerning their experimental design have substantially improved their manuscript. In particular, additional evaluations regarding the stimulus specificity of the unconscious response priming effect and their extended outline on the prime identification control task are much appreciated.

3.	I understand that the authors could not retrospectively change their analysis of objective and subjective measures of prime awareness. However, they could have discussed their approach in comparison to other approaches in the literature as a limitation of their study.

4.	The authors efforts to clarify to a possible speed-accuracy trade-off conflict are much appreciated. However, I am still wondering about an equivocal meaning of the authors' instructions at the time when the experiment was conducted.

5.	Again, based on the authors' results, I have no doubt about the pronounced perceptual sensitivity of the table-tennis players to sport-specific stimuli and rather general geometric stimuli. However, the authors' argument regarding individual differences when aiming to explain the similarity of RT in congruent and incongruent trials is not convincing owing to considerable evidence in the literature showing opposite results. Moreover, if individual difference would contribute to the different results in non-athletes the same could be true for the results in the athletes as well.

6.	The authors efforts to provide a sample size justification is much appreciated.
Validity of the findings: 7.	The authors efforts to provide an aposteriori sample size calculation is much appreciated.
Additional comments: The authors effort to improve the paper is much appreciated. While few open issues were not thoroughly discussed in great detail the overall quality of the manuscript was substantially improved. Nevertheless, some minor revisions are needed in regard to writing errors.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: METOPROLOL RESCUES ENDOTHELIAL PROGENITOR CELL DYSFUNCTION IN DIABETES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: In this paper, experiments were performed in cells, mice and clinical patients. The authors, at last, made a conclusion that metoprolol could rescue endothelial progenitor cell dysfunction in diabetes. The work of this paper is practical and the results of study have clinical significance. However, there are some problems to be further improved as well.
1. There is at least one spelling error in the manuscript, such as, in line 394, Figure 1, “ther” would be “their”. Please check the manuscript carefully.
2. The abscissas of Fig.2A and Fig.2C are lost.  Based on customary reading approach reading from left to right and top to bottom , the authors ought to post the abscissas of Fig.2B and Fig.2D on the top of photographs. The graphic standards of Fig.2 should keep consistent with that of Fig.1.
3. In Fig.1, the effects of five beta-blockers on HUVECs tube formation and migration are showed by photographs and bar charts (Fig.1A and Fig.1B). However, the effects of five beta-blockers on BM-EPCs tube formation and migration are only displayed in bar charts without photographs. Please replenish relevant photographs.
4. The concentration unit should remain the same in paper, such as “mmol/L” and “mM”.
5. In Fig.2, the border sizes of bar charts between HG-MET- group and HG+MET- group are different . This mistake also can be found in Fig.3B. Besides, in Fig.4, the bar of CON group has border while that of another groups are without borders. Please check it carefully.
6. In Fig.6, authors used black arrows to note. However, authors didn’t explain what that mean in figure legends. The arrows may merit a brief explanatory note.
7. Optimum concentration of five beta-blockers need further detailed experiments.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: METOPROLOL RESCUES ENDOTHELIAL PROGENITOR CELL DYSFUNCTION IN DIABETES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The MS entitle “Metoprolol rescues endothelial progenitor cell dysfunction in diabetes” addressed the endothelial dysfunction in diabetic patents, and how treatment of β-blockers, especially metoprolol, overcome the endothelial dysfunction in diabetic mice and patients. To address this, authors were used both in vitro and in vivo experimental methods and their scientific contributions are encouraging and useful further in-depth mechanistic investigation. The scientific contents, methodology, figures, tables and language are of good standards. However, some typo errors and queries should be addressed before its acceptance.

1.	Is the reported work is carried out in combination with diabetic drugs (e.g. Metformin etc.)?

2.	If not what could be the effect of these drugs on EPC function.

3.	What is the concentration and volume of STZ was used to induce diabetic in mice? Should be mentioned in the methodology and results sections.

4.	The drug names should be in lowercase letters throughout the MS except at starting of sentence.

5.	In page 13, line no 171:  The sentence “Measurement of PWA 210 s……” should be revised. It’s not meaningful.

6.	In page 25, Figure 1 legend: “Quantitative evaluation of the tube numbers and ther numbers of migrated HUVECs from (A).”  In this sentence the typo error ther should replaces with the.
Experimental design: The experimental design and the research work carried are within the scope & aim this journal. The hypothesis is well defined, and relevant work is carried with standard experimental methods. Although, the sample size (for in vivo work) is less, the outcome results are helpful for in-depth mechanistic investigations.
Validity of the findings: The obtained results are valid, statistically robust and clearly stated in the results and discussion section.
Additional comments: The scientific work and contribution is encouraging. However, author should have carried out their work using β-blockers in combination with diabetic drugs (e.g. metformin etc.) for better understanding the EPC functions.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: METOPROLOL RESCUES ENDOTHELIAL PROGENITOR CELL DYSFUNCTION IN DIABETES
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: This present manuscript demonstrates metoprolol can accelerate wound healing in diabetic mice and improve endothelial function in diabetic subjects possibly by improving the impaired EPC function.

The results of this research will be helpful for clinical therapeutics of diabetes vascular lesion. The manuscript can be accepted after some data supplemented.

1.	In figure 1, the authors need to provide both photos and statistic data for EPCs, like they do on HUVEC.
2.	Tube formation and migration are the main evaluation methods used in this research for experiments in vitro. In figure 2, the authors only provide the migration data for EPCs from STZ, they should supplement data of tube formation for these cells.
3.	In figure 7, the clinic data illustrates the effect of metoprolol on endothelial function. However, diabetes treated with placebo should be an important  control group and the data need to be provided.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: METOPROLOL RESCUES ENDOTHELIAL PROGENITOR CELL DYSFUNCTION IN DIABETES
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: The work of this paper is practical and the results of study have clinical significance.
Additional comments: The author has made a serious revision according to the opinions of the reviewers, so it is suggested to accept this paper.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: METOPROLOL RESCUES ENDOTHELIAL PROGENITOR CELL DYSFUNCTION IN DIABETES
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: No comment
Experimental design: No comment
Validity of the findings: No comment
Additional comments: No comments