PONE-D-20-10186

Networking and English language to sustain career in academic community under transition

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wieczorek,

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.

Before sending our manuscript out for review, I would like to ask you to revise some formal aspects of the text:

- Text structure: Please, try to re-organise your text according to PLOS ONE's guidelines (see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-manuscript-organization). Currently, the boundaries between the 'Materials and Methods' section with the Introduction and the Results sections are blurred. This makes the reading more difficult, as references to previous works in the literature, justification of the applied methods and presentation of the obtained results are mixed.

- Methodology justification: The applied methods should be properly presented and justified. For example, what were the criteria to select the potential responders to be invited to take the survey (i.e. all the scholars above 40 years old)? How were the questions of the survey designed (e.g. why productivity is measured by blind-reviewed journals)? In relation to this, notice PLOS' publication criterion #3 (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/criteria-for-publication#loc-3).

We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Jun 14 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.

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Sergi Lozano

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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PONE-D-20-10186R1

Networking and English language to sustain career in academic community under transition

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wieczorek,

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.

As you can see below, both reviewers found the topic of your work interesting and relevant. However, they also raised a number of serious concerns. In particular, your revision should especially address the following issues:

- Work positioning in the state-of-the-art: Both reviewers asked to develop further the literature review. As stated by Reviewer 1, this is needed to precisely identify the gap the work aims to address and, eventually, frame your conclusions (see his/her comments 1) and 5) ).

- Methodological issues: Both reviewers raised methodological concerns (see comments 3 - 5 by Reviewer 1, and comment 3 by reviewer 2). Notice that PLOS publication criterion #3: Experiments, statistics, and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail." (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/criteria-for-publication#loc-3).

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 28 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,

Sergi Lozano

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

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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

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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: The article concerns an important topic. Important for theoretical but also practical reasons. It is also valuable that it concerns the functioning of science outside the leading countries in terms of quantity and quality of scientific production. However, one can have numerous, serious reservations about the article in its present shape. Here are some key issues:

1)

The authors emphasize that “prior studies have generally investigated academic collaboration as a “black box” and “Prior research treated academic collaboration usually a ‘black box’ focusing mainly on co-authorship while academic networking is a complex”. This statement is entirely false. It is enough to mention the recent literature reviews about "team science", in which numerous examples of unpacking the "black box" are cited:

• Hall, K. L., Vogel, A. L., Huang, G. C., Serrano, K. J., Rice, E. L., Tsakraklides, S. P., & Fiore, S. M. (2018). The science of team science: A review of the empirical evidence and research gaps on collaboration in science. American Psychologist, 73(4), 532.

• Leahey, E. (2016). From sole investigator to team scientist: Trends in the practice and study of research collaboration. Annual review of sociology, 42, 81-100.

• Sonnenwald DH (2007) Scientific collaboration. Ann. Rev. Info. Sci. Tech. 41 (1): 643–681.

Or classical papers, as Katz JS, Martin BR (1997) What is research collaboration. Research Policy 26 (1): 1–18.

What is more, scientific cooperation studies using randomized trials have recently started to appear. For example:

• Boudreau, K., Ganguli Prokopovych, I., Gaule, P., Guinan, E. C., & Lakhani, K. R. (2012). Colocation and scientific collaboration: evidence from a field experiment. Harvard Business School working paper series# 13-023.

In this case, it is not just about the pair of missing footnotes. The problem is more serious. Without a reference to the current state of knowledge and ongoing discussions in the field, it is difficult to assess what contribution the reviewed article would make to the development of the discipline. This aspect should be carefully thought out by the authors and clearly explained in the text.

2)

The research procedure, especially sampling, seems to make it impossible to draw conclusions that the authors want to draw. Anyway, the authors admit it themselves, but they draw an optimistic conclusion that in total this approach does not disqualify the study:

“Thus, we can assume that the final sample was skewed with regard to the normal distribution of research productivity, i.e. we selected more productive scholars than the average scholar, but that was not treated as an issue because we did not aim at representative sampling, but instead we wanted to test hypothesized model on the purposively selected sample of Polish academicians that are likely active in publishing and networking as well.”

I must admit that I do not understand this argument. It seems that since we deliberately choose the most productive researchers, it will be difficult to assess where productivity comes from. A similar caveat can be found in relation to the networking variable - since respondents were asked to send a survey to friends, it can be expected that it went proportionally more often to more networked people.

3)

I understand reluctance regarding bibliometric indicators:

“This study follows [22], who suggest bibliometric techniques as irrelevant for investigating scholars from less developed countries, because such scholars are not well represented in international scientific databases.”

However, ultimately the authors use the bibliometric variable. The only difference is that it comes from a survey. It may, therefore, be imprecise. In the case of a sample of about 200 people, one could be tempted to manually check the list of publications (e.g. based on CVs, websites of the institutions, etc.), and the national publication database (as far as I know there is one in Poland, so you do not have to limit yourself to international sources, which in the case of non-English-speaking countries give a distorted picture of scientific production).

Adding an objective indicator of publication output would also allow controlling for co-authorship and the number of co-authors. It is essential because it can be expected that the way of counting the number of publications can significantly influence the results of the analysis (whole counting vs fractional counting).

4)

It seems to me that the methodological approach is not sufficiently justified. It is not clear why the authors immediately switch to a rather complex SEM-based approach. Wouldn't a more straightforward approach using maximum likelihood estimation for count variables (e.g. Poisson regression, negative binomial, etc.) be enough?

At a more detailed level, two potential problems can be identified. First, why the gender variable is not included in the main model but is only used in the additional analysis?

Secondly, it is worth considering the possible correlation of responses of individual people working in the same institutions. Did the authors include these possible correlations in the model? (For example, creating a multi-level model or adding dummy variables for individual institutions). Based on the reviewed text, it seems not. As a result, it is difficult to assess whether the values of the coefficients and the reported standard errors are reliable.

5)

The conclusions, and especially the recommendations given by the authors, seem quite clichéd, it is difficult to see the value of novelty in them. We know that cooperation, in its various dimensions, translates into the productivity of scientists. We know that knowledge of English helps in publishing. We know that we should support the development of cooperation. I'd instead like to see narrow conclusions in this section, but with something new.

6)

Finally, a small note. I have doubts about the correctness of the use of the term “lingua franca” by the authors. Dictionary definition says that “lingua franca: a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different”. While the authors write:

“In the last two decades Polish academic system has gradually become more “open” (e.g. increasing participation in international conferences and top-tier journals), however, Polish language has remained lingua franca for Polish scholars (e.g. the tradition of PhD thesis writing in Polish language)”.

Bearing in mind the definition quoted, it seems that the native language spoken mostly in one country cannot be lingua franca for its native speakers.

Reviewer #2: An interesting paper that sheds light on the networking patterns in a non-English academic community. The text is well written and clear in terms of argumentation line and hypotheses testing. I suggest accepting this paper with some minor clarifications as follows.

1. If possible, please provide some correspondence between your sample and available statistics on human resources in science and technology in Poland as it may help to understand which particular groups you represent in your study.

2. It would be great to see some references to similar or related studies from other posts-soviet countries you are mentioning in your analysis if you know any.

3. I still have some doubts about the use of bootstrapping to increase your sample size from 198 to 5000 cases. Do you have any ways to assess trace fraction or bootstrapping was used only for probability distributions, and you don't try to represent any particular social group from the population?

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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.

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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.

PONE-D-20-10186R2

Dynamic Academic Networking Concept and its Links with English Language Skills and Research Productivity - non-Anglophone Context

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wieczorek,

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.

Specifically, I would like to ask you to address the comments and clarification requirements made by Reviewer 2, as well as minor points raised by Reviewer 3.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 26 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,

Sergi Lozano

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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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

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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: Dear authors,

Thank you for addressing my early comments and revising your manuscript in line with the recommendations of both reviewers. I read the text carefully and found your paper much more consistent. However, due to rewriting a few points appeared I want to draw your attention.

At page 1 you say: «Logically, in comparison to other disciplines team social science is also very risky because social science research methods are less standardized and the researchers’ cultural backgrounds are more meaningful due to interpretative epistemology bringing more potential for team conflicts». Thought this argument seems reasonable it doesn’t come from the observation that «collaborative research projects in social science are much longer [8].» Please either provide some evidence for this or reconsider your statement in a more neutral manner.

You pay attention to the importance of English language in collaboration, but do not specify whether this collaboration should be international (should it be?). I am also not sure that your example of science-industry collaboration (see page 17) is relevant to the topic of your research as it might take place with local producers.

The section on English skills and dynamic networking can be shortened and more focused on the arguments why English matters (other languages may also be important) instead of providing a list of non-Anglophone countries :)

At page 23 you mention scholars that may have «have strongest networks and easiest access to resources» and call them «brokers». I find the term «gatekeeper» would be more suitable for such a definition as it refers to the network control function rather than to the service provision. I might haven’t got your point here.

I don’t have questions about Study 1, but for Study 2 I support the other reviewer’s comment on the necessity of data verification& I suggest looking not only at Scopus which is English language bias but also at other open sources that can provide additional information about publication activity of Polish authors, e.g. ResearchGate, Academia.edu. Even Google Scholar can be relevant here as long as you try to assess the overall progress of particular authors and make a longitude of it. Otherwise provide stronger arguments why Scopus remains the only relevant source for your study.

I still don’t understand why connections with industry should have an effect on publication activity. This line of argumentation remains unclear to me.

Reviewer #3: The paper is clear and argumentative. The fact that worldwide research is English-based is an interesting subject of research, especially when can help scholars to reflect on their career. The historical contextualization in scholars that have been affected by the presence of the Berlin Wall is relevant in a context where English is now required to spread research. It is also pleasant to see references on European policies at this regard, as international mobility is a valuable form of both cultural and linguistic integration. Employed methods shows clearly the impact of past education in Poland, which should recognize the role of EU in the last decades. In that sense, it would be interesting to employ the same methods to analyze other languages that in the future can be predominant in research environments, such as Chinese, Portuguese, and Indians, e.g. I simply say that the method can be further validated with a different point of view. Thanks for the pleasant reading.

P.S. Please notice that Figure 1 is missing and many double spaces were found during the reading. I suggest a simple review with a tool like Grammarly.

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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

Reviewer #3: Yes: Dario Rodighiero

[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.

Dynamic Academic Networking Concept and its Links with English Language Skills and Research Productivity - non-Anglophone Context

PONE-D-20-10186R3

Dear Dr. Wieczorek,

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,

Sergi Lozano

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Dear authors,

after checking the report by Reviewer 2, I have decided to accept the article for publication. Nevertheless, please notice that there is a typo right before the very last sentence of the text, as well as some format errors at the reference lists.

Sergi.

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 paper is clear and argumentative, the data support the conclusions. All comments have been addressed. Thanks for the pleasant reading.

**********

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