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Comment from PLOS ONE

Posted by PLOS_ONE_Group on 26 Nov 2012 at 18:28 GMT

Following the publication of this article, it has been brought to our attention that the Academic Editor Dr Stangel has co-authored publications with several of the authors in the article over the previous eight years.

In line with the PLOS ONE competing interests policy, we consider this as a potential conflict of interest. Dr Stangel was invited by PLOS ONE to act as Academic Editor for this manuscript and we acknowledge that the journal should not have approached him to handle this manuscript.

We have therefore asked the Academic Editor Pablo Villoslada to carefully evaluate the contents of the article. Dr Villoslada has confirmed that he considers the work fulfills the journal’s criteria for publication and supports the decision to publish the article.

Competing interests declared: PLOS ONE Staff