Their English is pretty good, so I would be surprised if this were some sort of translation error where the line should be more like ‘we thank our peer reviewers/copyeditors/reference-checkers/etc.’ Taking it at face value, that’s what it sounds like—some sort of adversarial process, likely with the others writing in favor (although it’s possible the opponent group was only assigned criticism and maybe made up by criticizing multiple paper-groups?).
Someone really should ask, since apparently some of them are on Facebook.
Their English is pretty good, so I would be surprised if this were some sort of translation error where the line should be more like ‘we thank our peer reviewers/copyeditors/reference-checkers/etc.’ Taking it at face value, that’s what it sounds like—some sort of adversarial process, likely with the others writing in favor (although it’s possible the opponent group was only assigned criticism and maybe made up by criticizing multiple paper-groups?).
Someone really should ask, since apparently some of them are on Facebook.