JMIRxBio JMIRx Bio JMIRx Bio 2819-2044 JMIR Publications Toronto, Canada v1i1e50624 10.2196/50624 Peer-Review Report Peer-Review Report Peer Review of “The Loch Ness Monster: If It’s Real, Could It Be an Eel?” Eysenbach Gunther Evans Derek W 1 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-1981-2693 Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute Belfast United Kingdom 2023 21 7 2023 1 e50624 6 7 2023 6 7 2023 ©Derek W Evans. Originally published in JMIRx Bio (https://bio.jmirx.org), 21.07.2023. 2023

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 https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/49063 https://bio.jmirx.org/2023/1/e50618/ https://bio.jmirx.org/2023/1/e49063/ European eel Anguilla anguilla probability distribution Loch Ness folk zoology unknown animals cryptozoology

This is a peer-review report submitted for the paper “The Loch Ness Monster: If It’s Real, Could It Be an Eel?”

Round 1 Review General Assessment

Interesting paper [1] and a useful attempt at answering a cryptozoological question using real data, although some of the data used is not quite relevant to the cold waters of Ness. There was no Figure 2 included with the manuscript. A description of eel behavior outlining how they do not swim upward and out of the water akin to “Nessie” breaching would be useful.

 Essential Revisions That Are Required to Verify the Manuscript

A map of locations. Corrected inclusion of Figure 2. Some wider eel biometric data such as that to be found in any of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea Working Group on Eels’ annual reports; reference to The Eel by Tesch and Thorpe [2] for comments on eel behavior and comments on biometry.

 Other Suggestions to Improve the Manuscript

Inclusion of some images of very large 1 m plus eels for comparative purposes.

 Decision

Verified with reservations: The content is academically sound but has shortcomings that could be improved by further studies or minor revisions based on the edits suggested above.

 Round 2 Review

The great inclusions and revisions certainly make the paper a finished article and a genuinely interesting read—print as seen.

Decision Changed

Verified.

None declared.

Editorial Notice

This paper was peer-reviewed by the Plan P Hashtag Community partner #PeerRef.

 Foxon F The Loch Ness monster: if it's real, could it be an eel? JMIRx Bio 2023 e49063 10.2196/49063 Tesch FW Thorpe JE The Eel 2003 Hoboken, NJ John Wiley & Sons 1 71