PONE-D-20-34327

An Analytical Process of Spatial Autocorrelation Functions Based on Moran's Index

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chen,

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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Bailang Yu

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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"This research was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.

41671167. See: http://isisn.nsfc.gov.cn/egrantweb/). The support is gratefully acknowledged"

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Although there is a major objection from one of the reviewers, other two reviewers as well as myself think this is an interesting paper. I suggest the authors to revise the manuscript accordingly.

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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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: This is an interesting study that attempts to unite the commonly used metrics of spatial autocorrelation such as Moran's I and Gettis G by developing matrix algebra that unites the formulae for the metrics and that supports multiscale analysis. The case study is population in major Chinese cities, and it illustrates the approach well.

I feel that the claim to link spectral power analysis with spatial analysis is not new, and that a broader literature search could reveal more prior work. Also, the paper needs a thorough proof edit of the English, as it lacks definite articles, does not balance verb tenses, mixes singulars and plurals etc. I will upload a marked up PDF that I hope the authors can use to improve the manuscript.

Reviewer #2: see attached pdf

Reviewer #3: Spatial autocorrelation is one of the most important methods in quantitative analyses of geography. This research proposed a new analytical framework based on a series of spatial autocorrelation functions, which, I believe, has made significant contributions both theoretically and practically. However, before publication, I think some points about the empirical analysis need to be clarified or discussed.

1. Only 29 capital cities were included in the analysis. Why not perform the analysis at a city level? I think it might be more appropriate for reflecting “scale”.

2. I don’t think Haikou should be excluded because it was linked to other capital cities like Guangzhou by train even there is no real railway between Guangdong Province and Haikou.

3. Only functions based on Moran’s Index were reported in subsection 3.2. How about other indexes? Will the extent to which the value of r influence the functions vary by index?

Some other comments:

1. Table 2”: it is better to introduce the unit of r, km in the table.

2. I think professional English editing is necessary to ensure the writing is of a high standard.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Stéphane Dray

Reviewer #3: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-20-34327_reviewerA.pdf

Attachment

Submitted filename: review.pdf

PONE-D-20-34327R1

An Analytical Process of Spatial Autocorrelation Functions Based on Moran's Index

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Chen,

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.

There are still some minor comments from two reviewers. I invite you to revise the manuscript accordingly.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 04 2021 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,

Bailang Yu

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

There are still some minor comments from two reviewers.

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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 #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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: 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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #3: 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: The paper has been improved, but suffers from a large number of minor language errors. I have left some substantial comments embedded in the PDF file, which I have uploaded here. There is one section where I would expect some citations for statements that I do not believe are correct.

Reviewer #3: Lines 556-558:"It is hard to clarify the whole questions about spatial scaling in the autocorrelation processes by means of several paragraph of words, and the related problems will be discussed in a companion paper."

Lines 693,694: "Due to limitation of space,...."

I don't think "space" can be a reason if the author does believe that the problem should be fully addressed in one paper. I would suggest tha author rephrase the sentence.

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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 #1: No

Reviewer #3: 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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-20-34327_R1_reviewer.pdf

An Analytical Process of Spatial Autocorrelation Functions Based on Moran's Index

PONE-D-20-34327R2

Dear Dr. Chen,

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.

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Kind regards,

Bailang Yu

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE