Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionMarch 4, 2020 |
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PONE-D-20-06379 Frequency distribution of journalistic attention for scientific studies and scientific sources: An input – output analysis PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Lehmkuhl, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. I was unsuccessful in finding reviewers for the manuscript so I reviewed it myself. My comments are attached. Please ensure that your decision is justified on PLOS ONE’s publication criteria and not, for example, on novelty or perceived impact. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 12 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Luís A. Nunes Amaral, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments: This review follows the Universal Principle Review approach. Lower numerical scores imply greater quality just as in NIH-style scoring of grant applications. Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 2. You indicated that you followed methods given in ref. 84: "Kube L. Konsensanalyse der Berichterstattung in den Wissenschaftsressorts deutscher Tageszeitungen. Unveröffentlichte Bachelorarbeit. 2018." If materials, methods, and protocols are well established, authors may cite articles where those protocols are described in detail, but the submission should include sufficient information to be understood independent of these references (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-materials-and-methods). Summary: This is an interesting well-written, if wordy, article on a very interesting topic that will be of interest to many researchers. The analyses reported are of good quality, but I have some recommendations that I believe will strengthen the manuscript. Quality of research: Score 1.5 (Range 1-3) The authors look at the statistical characteristics of the scientific articles receiving significant press attention both from the perspective of the inputs (in which scientific journals were these articles published) and the outputs (by which media were they covered). The authors provide a very thorough review of the state of the art about this question including going to the point of analyzing some of the data reported in prior studies as a justification for formulating the two hypotheses they test in the study. They also provide a careful description of their approach to selecting data for analysis, and describe in detail their procedures for analyzing the data. Finally, they share some of their filtered data. Next, I list my concerns and questions in the order of their appearance in the manuscript. 1. Table 1 includes the New Scientist as one of the sources for published research. However the New Scientist does not publish original research. I believe a note should be added to table caption letting the readers know that the authors are aware of this point. 2. The authors repeatedly write that "y decreases exponentially with x" (lines 224, 291, 303, 308, 320, 491, 503). This statement is incorrect. The correct statement is "log y decreases linearly with log x" or "y decreases exponentially with log x". 3. Since the hypothesis tested in the study involve power-laws, all graphs should be double-logarithmic. This applies already to Figs 1 and 2. For figure 2a, I recommend having the squares filled white since it will make it easier to distinguish the symbols in the figure. 4. I am not sure that the evidence from Fig. 1 is enough to propose that the exponent should be expected to be close to 1 since the data available is not a good sample of the entire population. This caveat is actually the reason why this study is important. Concerning the power law exponent, its value is related to the concentration of impact. With regard to income and wealth, one number that quantifies their concentration in the hands of a few people is the Gini coefficient. A power law distribution with an exponent alpha > 1 results in a Gini coefficient of 1/(2*alpha - 1). alpha = 1 yields G approaching 1, alpha = 2 yields G = 0.33 For comparison, a highly unequal society such as Brazil has G = 0.5 whereas for the EU G = 0.3. 5. In the discussion of the results in Figs 1 and 2, I would remove the R^2 values. I do not think the data is of good enough quality to warrant the quantification involved in the R^2 calculation. 6. In the Materials and Methods, the authors refer to the sources of the input and output data. I believe that Scopus is a very good source for publications. I think that Altmetric is not as good a source. The reason is that while coverage in Scopus has likely remained pretty constant during the study period, I doubt that the same is true for Altmetric. That means that results for 2014 are not comparable to results for 2018. In fact, I strongly disagree with the statement in lines 333-335. The lack of coverage by Altmetric should left censor a large fraction of SIPs published in the earlier years of the studied period. I suggest that the authors add a new figure showing (a) how the number of SIPs changes by time period, (b) how the number of distinct scientific journals publishing SIPs changes by time period, and (c) how the number of distinct news sources covers by Altmetric changes by time period. 7. I recommend removing Figs. 3 and 4 and replacing them with a 2 panel figure in which the first panel shows the data (use lines of different colors instead of circles) and a fit line for just the last time periods. The second panel shows the aggregated data for the years for which Altmetric sampling is appropriate (probably the last two years of the data). I recommend that the same be done with Figs. 5 and 6. 8. I think that the discussion of model selection should come before showing quality of fits for the power law model and the values of the fit parameters. Table 3 should appear before Table 2 and the Table should also include a comparison between the Weibull and the truncated power law. Table 2 should be separate into two tables. And fit parameters should be given for both power law and truncated power law. By the way, the truncated poor law model seems to be the better one for both data sets. Reproducibility of research: Score 1 (Range 1-3) I believe that enough details are given for one to be able to reproduce most of the analyses reported. However, it is not clear that the data retrieved from Altmetric for news sources is being shared (line 363). If it is not, it should be. Completeness of research: Score 1.5 (Range 1-3) The types of analyses included are perfectly adequate. However, as I mention above, I think that several of the analyses need to be performed in a more careful manner in order to strengthen the confidence on the results and conclusions. It would be interesting to provide an analysis of the distribution of the topics of the SIPs. I realize that classifying nearly 6000 papers by hand is tricky. However, the authors could consider using the topic classification algorithm by Lancichinetti et al (Physical Review X 2015) on the titles and abstracts of the SIPs. Or that analysis could be left for another paper... Scholarship: Score 1 (Range 1-3) I believe the authors do a really thorough job of reviewing the relevant literature. Impact of research: Score 1.5 (Range 1-4) I believe that the authors do a great job of motivating their study the results are quite interesting and strong in spite of all the caveats discussed in the manuscript. Minor points: 1. In line 79, the authors write that "journalists can no longer unconditionally trust...". I am not sure the situation has really changed. what has maybe changes is the awareness of what is the potential for hyperbole or outright lies by scientists. 2. The sentence in line 171 "thus the bond between ..." is not at all clear to me. 3. In line 185, I think it should be "value" instead of "values" 4. Line 350, "for" instead of "from" 5. Line 414: Writing "fewer than 1 in 10,000" is more informative than "about 0.07 percent" [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
| Revision 1 |
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PONE-D-20-06379R1 Frequency distribution of journalistic attention for scientific studies and scientific sources: An input – output analysis PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Lehmkuhl, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 20 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Luís A. Nunes Amaral, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (if provided): Thank you for all the revisions to the manuscript. I believe the manuscript is now nearly ready for publication. I just have a few of minor stylistics issues: 1. Please always include the leading zero in numerical values '0.0001' instead of '.0001' (see, example, Tables 2-4) 2. In Tables, you list values of the estimate and standard deviation. Is it really the standard deviation (SD) or is it the standard error (SE)? The SE of the estimate of a coefficient is more useful than the SD. 2. When presenting estimates for coefficients, do not include non-significant digits. For example, '2.4868 (0.1579)' should be replaced with '2.48 (0.16)' or '2.5 (0.2)' [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
| Revision 2 |
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PONE-D-20-06379R2 Frequency distribution of journalistic attention for scientific studies and scientific sources: An input – output analysis PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Lehmkuhl, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. Please note that in your last revision, rounding of decimal numbers was incorrectly done. E.g. when rounding a value like 0.9898 (as in page 22) to one significant digit, you have to round to the closest digit, in this case 1.0 and not 0.9. Please look at the section rounding decimals here: https://www.mathsisfun.com/rounding-numbers.html Please, submit a revised version of the manuscript following this advice. Submit your revised manuscript by Oct 18 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Miguel A Andrade-Navarro, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
| Revision 3 |
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Frequency distribution of journalistic attention for scientific studies and scientific sources: An input – output analysis PONE-D-20-06379R3 Dear Dr. Lehmkuhl, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Miguel A Andrade-Navarro, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-20-06379R3 Frequency distribution of journalistic attention for scientific studies and scientific sources: An input – output analysis Dear Dr. Lehmkuhl: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Miguel A Andrade-Navarro Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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