Short-term effects of national-level natural resource rents on life expectancy: A cross-country panel data analysis

Isaac Lyatuu; Georg Loss; Andrea Farnham; Mirko S. Winkler; Günther Fink

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0252336

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 17, 2021
20 Apr 2021 Decision Letter - László Vasa, Editor PONE-D-21-08827 Short-term effects of national-level natural resource rents on life expectancy: A cross-country panel data analysis PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Isaac Lyatuu, 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 Jun 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. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, László VASA, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: The authors would like to thank the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d Programme), which is a joint funding initiative by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) [grant number 169461] for having financed this study. We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. [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: Yes 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: The topic of the paper is unique, the level of methodology and evaluation is high, it is a very promising paper, however: - introduction is very short and not appropriate regarding the content, - there is absolutely no literature review in the paper, - context isn't highlighted well, - very short article as a whole. Reviewer #2: The topic is extremely interesting and inspiring. I consider it a very good idea to study the relationship between natural resources and human health. I also consider the database and the method used to be suitable for the study. Although the range of data processed can be identified, summarizing the categories in a table would improve clarity. What I find problematic is that neither the title nor the abstract show that the study applies to some African countries. This may even be good, but it’s worth clarifying when positioning the article. The conclusion needs to be completed. Editing errors need to be corrected (Table 1 hangs from the page.) ****** 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.] 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.0252336.r001
Revision 1
5 May 2021 Author Response Point-by-point response, Research article: PONE-D-21-08827 Kindly find point by point responses to reviewer 1 & 2. In addition, we have attached a word document with these feedback. Reviewer #1 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? � Reviewer #1: Partly Response: We thank Reviewer #1 for having scrutinized our manuscript and are grateful for the recommendations received. We hope that the reviewer is now fully satisfied with the quality of the paper after having addressed the reviewer’s concerns as specified below. 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? � Reviewer #1: Yes Response: Thank you. 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? � Reviewer #1: Yes Response: Thank you. 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? � Reviewer #1: Yes Response: Thank you. 5. Review Comments to the Author: The topic of the paper is unique, the level of methodology and evaluation is high, it is a very promising paper, however: - introduction is very short and not appropriate regarding the content, - there is absolutely no literature review in the paper, - context isn't highlighted well, - very short article as a whole. Response: We are pleased about the overall very positive appraisal of our study. In response to the reviewer’s request to provide more background while better embedding the paper in existing literature on the topic, we have now expanded the introduction for providing more background (see lines 31-37, 58-69, 79-82 in the revised manuscript), which also includes additional references. Even though we do not have a formal literature section, we summarize the main literature on economic growth and the resource curse in the first two paragraphs for the introduction, and then provide an overview of the health-focused literature in lines (58-69) of the revised manuscript. We would be happy to move this part of the introduction to a separate “Literature review” section if this is preferred by the Editor and reviewer. Moreover, we have also expanded the conclusion chapter of the paper (see lines 298-302). We hope that these additions have extended our work to the level that is sufficient. The overall article length is now just below 4000 words, which seems well aligned with word limits of most general interest journals. Reviewer #2 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? � Reviewer #2: Yes Response: We thank Reviewer #2 for having scrutinized our manuscript and are grateful for the recommendations received. 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? � Reviewer #2: Yes Response: Thank you. 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? � Reviewer #2: Yes Response: Thank you. 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? � Reviewer #2: Yes Response: Thank you. 5. Review Comments to the Author: The topic is extremely interesting and inspiring. I consider it a very good idea to study the relationship between natural resources and human health. I also consider the database and the method used to be suitable for the study. Although the range of data processed can be identified, summarizing the categories in a table would improve clarity. Response: We are grateful for the overall positive evaluation of our study by Reviewer #2. We are sorry that the prior formatting of Table 1 (which has been fixed now) did not allow to see all the detail of the data. The full table contains means, standard deviation, min and max values as well as the temporal range, and should thus give readers a clear sense of the data used. We would of course be delighted to add further information or statistics if there are specific suggestions or requests. What I find problematic is that neither the title nor the abstract show that the study applies to some African countries. This may even be good, but it’s worth clarifying when positioning the article. Response: Our manuscript does indeed have an additional layer of analysis focusing on the African continent. In order to be more consistent on this aspect, as requested by Reviewer #2, the introduction now includes a few sentences that clarify why the study presented is of particular relevance for the African continent (lines 31-37) and in the abstract we added an Africa-specific finding (lines 23-24). We also clarified at the end of the introduction that we look both at Africa and the rest of the developing world (lines 79-82). But we prefer not to include “Africa” in the title as we primarily present a global analysis, with Africa as a secondary, supplementary layer of analysis. The conclusion needs to be completed. Response: We have further expanded the conclusion of the paper (lines 298-302). Editing errors need to be corrected (Table 1 hangs from the page.) Response: We have once more read our manuscript sentence-by-sentence and made corrections where needed. Also the layout of Table 1 was corrected. 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 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf Response: We have carefully studied the PLOS ONE's style requirements and applied them when developing the manuscript. 2. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: The authors would like to thank the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d Programme), which is a joint funding initiative by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) [grantnumber 169461] for having financed this study. We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Response: Many thanks for the clarification of the difference between the Funding Statement and the acknowledgements with PLOS ONE. We have replaced the previous content of the acknowledgement section: “The authors would like to thank the entire team of the Health Impact Assessment for Sustainable Development (HIA4SD) Project both at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and partner institutions in the project countries for their continuous support over the course of this study” (lines 308-310). Kindly include the following content in the Funding Statement: “The authors would like to acknowledge the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d Programme), which is a joint funding initiative by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.” Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-08827_Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252336.r002
9 May 2021 Decision Letter - László Vasa, Editor PONE-D-21-08827R1 Short-term effects of national-level natural resource rents on life expectancy: A cross-country panel data analysis PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Isaac Lyatuu, 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 Jun 23 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. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, László VASA, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [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 ******** 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: Partly ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: 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 ****** 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 ****** 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 authors mostly accepted my recommendation in the previous review process and did the necessary improvements. However, regarding the literature review, it is not enough what they did. I recommend to formulate a separate literature review chapter and extending the sources to be processed. ****** 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 [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.0252336.r003
Revision 2
9 May 2021 Author Response Dear editors, Once again, thank you for the opportunity to revise our submission. We have uploaded, 1. Response to reviewers document 2. Revised manuscript with track changes 3. Manuscript (revised) Kind regards, Isaac Lyatuu Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-08827_Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252336.r004
14 May 2021 Decision Letter - László Vasa, Editor Short-term effects of national-level natural resource rents on life expectancy: A cross-country panel data analysis PONE-D-21-08827R2 Dear Dr. Isaac Lyatuu, 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, László VASA, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252336.r005
Formally Accepted
21 May 2021 Acceptance Letter - László Vasa, Editor PONE-D-21-08827R2 Short-term effects of national-level natural resource rents on life expectancy: A cross-country panel data analysis Dear Dr. Lyatuu: 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. Dr. László Vasa Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252336.r006

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