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Potential Conflict of Interest of Academic Editor

Posted by PLOS_ONE_Group on 09 Dec 2013 at 15:42 GMT

It has come to our attention that the Academic Editor who handled this manuscript, Jian-Xin Gao, is affiliated at the same institution as several of the authors.
In line with the PLOS ONE competing interests policy (http://www.plosone.org/st...), we consider this as a potential conflict of interest. Dr Gao 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 an independent Academic Editor, Dr Jose Luis Perez-Gracia, to carefully evaluate the peer review process of this article. Dr Perez-Gracia has confirmed that he is satisfied that the decision for publication was adequate.

Competing interests declared: PLOS ONE Staff
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