Evaluation Reports for TEBT-2025-0015 | Zimmerman et al.

Evaluation reports for "An update on micro- and nanoplastics in foods from plastic food contact articles: Protocol for a systematic evidence map" (Zimmerman et al. 2025).

This manuscript presents a protocol for a complex and challenging study of the literature about the migration of micro- and nanoplastic particles from food contact materials into foodstuffs. This is a significant update of prior work by the authors.

Comments from editorial triage related to ensuring the sturdy goals were aligned with a mapping methodology; reconsidering the structure and processes for search, screening, study appraisal, and data analysis in the study, with regard to study goals and meeting the anticipated needs of the target users of the evidence map; and revision of the coding strategy and some other detailed elements of the methodology to ensure the evidence map can deliver the planned objectives.

The authors comprehensively revised their manuscript, which was then peer-reviewed. Two of the three reviewers responded positively to the manuscript. One reviewer did not, but they did not justify their view that the proposed methodology is not a sufficient update of the previous work.

Since the editor and two reviewers view the manuscript as a clear update on a prior approach, and that peer-review and publication of the protocol is an important part of ensuring the utility and validity of the update to the evidence, we will not be following the reviewer’s recommendation to reject the manuscript. Instead we recommend minor clarifying revisions, after which the manuscript should be acceptable for publication.