Socio-economic urban scaling properties: Influence of regional geographic heterogeneities in Brazil

Caio Porto de Castro; Gervásio Ferreira dos Santos; Anderson Dias de Freitas; Maria Isabel dos Santos; Roberto Fernandes Silva Andrade; Maurício Lima Barreto

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0242778

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 30, 2020
17 Apr 2020 Decision Letter - Mingxing Chen, Editor PONE-D-20-02779 Socio-economic urban scaling properties: influence of regional geographic heterogeneities in Brazil PLOS ONE Dear Dr. de Castro, 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. We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Jun 01 2020 11:59PM. When you are 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. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. 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[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Thank you for the opportunity to review this interesting paper. While I found it to be reasonably well-written and interesting, I cannot recommend publication at this time. After reading the manuscript carefully, I think the scientific contribution and novel knowledge of the research need to be specified. What problems should be solved, such as theory, method or policy of urban development in Brazil? Compared with the relevant research, where is the innovation and contribution of this study? I think some clarifications and major alterations will increment the general quality of the paper. 1.Authors need to better address the goals of the paper in the end of the Introduction section. They are poorly or insufficiently addressed. 2.Data sources require explanation and critical discussion. 3.Figure 3 and Figure 9 could be improved by drawing. 4.Line 62: the title "Discussion" is not appropriate. 5.Further analysis on the influence of regional geographic heterogeneities is important. Reviewer #2: Using economic, infrastructure and violence related data sets for the time interval 2002-2016 in Brazil, the study analyzed socio-economic urban scaling properties in the country. Results indicate that regional specificities related to some selected factors have a larger influence on the absolute value of the urban indexes. Regional scaling similarities and differences among regions were also uncovered. The study was good writing, and these findings are helpful for understanding the socio-economic urban scaling properties. However, there are some issues the authors must response before this manuscript to be published. 1, the study pointed that there exists regional heterogeneities in Brazil, the reviewer suggest authors test the statistical significant of the spatial stratified heterogeneities using statistic methods. 2, comparison of findings between the study and the other related papers should be discussed in the manuscript. 3, limitations and the further studies of the study should be discussed in the manuscript. 4, some findings have been discussed, however some of them need more scientific interpretations. 5, the reviewer suggest authors check structure of the manuscript. For example, in line 62, “discussion” is appeared before “methods” section. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No [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 to be viewed.] 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. 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Revision 1
23 Jun 2020 Author Response Reviewer #1: Thank you for the opportunity to review this interesting paper. While I found it to be reasonably well-written and interesting, I cannot recommend publication at this time. After reading the manuscript carefully, I think the scientific contribution and novel knowledge of the research need to be specified. What problems should be solved, such as theory, method or policy of urban development in Brazil? Compared with the relevant research, where is the innovation and contribution of this study? I think some clarifications and major alterations will increment the general quality of the paper. Author’s response: The authors thank the reviewer for reading our manuscript and for the important comments in the report. Overall, we believe that after the changes that we introduced in the new version, we have a significant improvement on our manuscript. 1.Authors need to better address the goals of the paper in the end of the Introduction section. They are poorly or insufficiently addressed. 1. As opportunely suggested by the reviewer we have included a new paragraph in the end of the introduction where we clearly address the goals of our work. Please, see text from line 62 to line 76. 2.Data sources require explanation and critical discussion. 2. We have included an additional explanation on the data in the first paragraph of the section “Results and Discussion”. Please, see text from line 124 to line 130. 3.Figure 3 and Figure 9 could be improved by drawing. 3. We have amplified Figure 9 and improved Figure 3. We hope that after the changes the figures have improved their quality. 4.Line 62: the title "Discussion" is not appropriate. 4. We thank the referee for calling our attention to this issue. We have removed “Discussion”, in line 62. 5.Further analysis on the influence of regional geographic heterogeneities is important. 5. We do agree that further analysis in order to understand completely how socio-economic heterogeneities present in continental size countries. This work intends to contribute to such discussion in Brazil, and certainly may be extended to include a larger number of urban variables. For the moment, we understand our work already uncovers a number of interesting findings. Indeed, the quantities selected for our analysis are representative of several sectors of socio-economic indicators, providing a first but wide view of their scaling properties. We intend to proceed further with our investigation, so that new insights coming from our results may be presented in a new future. =================================================================================== Reviewer #2: Using economic, infrastructure and violence related data sets for the time interval 2002-2016 in Brazil, the study analyzed socio-economic urban scaling properties in the country. Results indicate that regional specificities related to some selected factors have a larger influence on the absolute value of the urban indexes. Regional scaling similarities and differences among regions were also uncovered. The study was good writing, and these findings are helpful for understanding the socio-economic urban scaling properties. However, there are some issues the authors must response before this manuscript to be published. Author’s response: The authors thank the reviewer for reading our manuscript and for the important comments in the report. Overall, we believe that after the changes that we introduced in the new version, we have a significant improvement on our manuscript. 1, the study pointed that there exists regional heterogeneities in Brazil, the reviewer suggest authors test the statistical significant of the spatial stratified heterogeneities using statistic methods. 1. We have added a supporting information material which presents the Brazilian spatial heterogeneities and also the regional ones. 2, comparison of findings between the study and the other related papers should be discussed in the manuscript. 2. In the section “Conclusion” we have mentioned that our conclusions are in the same direction of the Bettencourt paper, ref. 27, which presents regional scaling analysis for India. 3, limitations and the further studies of the study should be discussed in the manuscript. 3. We have include a new paragraph in the section “conclusion”. 4, some findings have been discussed, however some of them need more scientific interpretations. 4. We believe that we have improve the discussion of our findings by including a new paragraphs in the “Introduction” and in the “Conclusion” sections. 5, the reviewer suggest authors check structure of the manuscript. For example, in line 62, “discussion” is appeared before “methods” section. 5. We thank the referee for calling our attention to this issue. We have removed “Discussion”, in line 62. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to the ReviewersPlosoOneR.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242778.r002
11 Aug 2020 Decision Letter - Mingxing Chen, Editor PONE-D-20-02779R1 Socio-economic urban scaling properties: influence of regional geographic heterogeneities in Brazil PLOS ONE Dear Dr. de Castro, 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 have received mixed feedback from the two reviewers. While Reviewer 1 is satisfied with your revision and reply, Reviewer 2 suggests another round of major revision before this manuscript can move forward. Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 25 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: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled '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, Mingxing Chen, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Partly ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed. The present document has been largely improved from its previous version. Reviewer #2: This version has been improved much. Some issues, however, should be addressed. Regional geographic heterogeneities of the research object is the core content of the article, in the manuscript, the authors test the statistical significant of the spatial stratified heterogeneities using Local Spatial Autocorrelation Moran Index (LISA). The reviewer think that LISA can be used to test the local heterogeneities, however, the regional heterogeneity studied in the manuscript is more suitable to be expressed by spatial hierarchical heterogeneity, which can be calculated by geodetector q statistic (Wang, et al. A Measure of Spatial Stratified Heterogeneity. Ecological Indicators 2016), so that the reviewer suggest authors complement the analysis and added in the main text. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242778.r003
Revision 2
28 Sep 2020 Author Response Response to the Reviewers We would like to thank the editor and reviewers for their contributions. Please, find below, in red color, our point by point comments to the reviewers. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed. The present document has been largely improved from its previous version. Author’s response: The authors thank the reviewer for the previous comments. We believe that after the changes, we have an improvement in our manuscript. Reviewer #2: This version has been improved much. Some issues, however, should be addressed. Regional geographic heterogeneities of the research object is the core content of the article, in the manuscript, the authors test the statistical significant of the spatial stratified heterogeneities using Local Spatial Autocorrelation Moran Index (LISA). The reviewer think that LISA can be used to test the local heterogeneities, however, the regional heterogeneity studied in the manuscript is more suitable to be expressed by spatial hierarchical heterogeneity, which can be calculated by geodetector q statistic (Wang, et al. A Measure of Spatial Stratified Heterogeneity. Ecological Indicators 2016), so that the reviewer suggest authors complement the analysis and added in the main text. Author’s response: The authors thank the reviewer for this new suggestion and fully agree with it. We have included new results and a discussion of the parameter q, reported in Wang, et al. A Measure of Spatial Stratified Heterogeneity, Ecological Indicators 2016. In fact, the results we have found support our discussion regarding regional geographic heterogeneities. Metropolitan areas in every Brazilian region concentrates wealth, infrastructure, high level education employees and violence, which explain the values of q close to zero (heterogeneity within the regions are more significant than between them). The regions present similar heterogeneity, despite the discrepancy on the absolute value of the socioeconomic variables. On the other hand, the largest value of q associated with WDS indicates a comparatively smaller infrastructure discrepancy between the richest regions with the poorest ones. This can be explained, among other reasons as political and historical, by the fact that the poorer regions, as North and Northeast, have globally had less investments in infrastructure. We have included such discussion (in red) in pages 5 and 6 of the manuscript. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to the Reviewers2.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242778.r004
21 Oct 2020 Decision Letter - Mingxing Chen, Editor PONE-D-20-02779R2 Socio-economic urban scaling properties: influence of regional geographic heterogeneities in Brazil PLOS ONE Dear Dr. de Castro, 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 am glad to inform you that after the second round of reviews, the paper was accepted with minor revisions. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 05 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: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled '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, Mingxing Chen, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #2: The present document has been largely improved from its previous version. In addition, in table1, it’s better to replace the statistical symbol q with Geodetector q. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #2: No [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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242778.r005
Revision 3
28 Oct 2020 Author Response Reviewer #2: The present document has been largely improved from its previous version. In addition, in table1, it’s better to replace the statistical symbol q with Geodetector q. Author’s response: The authors thank the reviewer for this suggestion. We have replaced the symbol q with Geodetector q in table 1. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to the Reviewers3.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242778.r006
10 Nov 2020 Decision Letter - Mingxing Chen, Editor Socio-economic urban scaling properties: influence of regional geographic heterogeneities in Brazil PONE-D-20-02779R3 Dear Dr. de Castro, 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, Mingxing Chen, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242778.r007
Formally Accepted
17 Nov 2020 Acceptance Letter - Mingxing Chen, Editor PONE-D-20-02779R3 Socio-economic urban scaling properties: influence of regional geographic heterogeneities in Brazil Dear Dr. de Castro: 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 Prof. Mingxing Chen Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242778.r008

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