PONE-D-21-12807

Operation mode selection of NIMBY facility PPP projects based on combination weighting and GRA-TOPSIS

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Zhang,

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 Jul 21 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'.
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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,

Dragan Pamucar

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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1. Please include a separate caption for each figure in your manuscript.

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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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: N/A

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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: No

Reviewer #2: 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: Yes

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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: The authors propose an interesting paper in project management and decision making, which can be viewed in the general framework of modeling. The improvement is suggested in terms of the following comments:

1. Please take care to the formulations. For example, the weight of a method does not sound well. Also, there are too many abbreviations.

2. The abstract should be improved. It needs to cover five main elements: introduction, problem statement, methodology, contributions and results.

3. In introduction section the authors should provide more information about the existing models (GRA-TOPSIS and Entropy) used in the field and their benefits/weaknesses.

4. Why the grey correlation theory has been used in the TOPSIS method? What are the benefits of its implementation in TOPSIS?

5. Recent references in this field of work should be addressed in the overview:

A VIKOR and TOPSIS focused reanalysis of the MADM methods based on logarithmic normalization, Facta Universitatis series: Mechanical Engineering, 18(3), 341-355, 2020.

COPRAS model, Military Technical Courier, 68(1), 28-64, 2020.

Sustainable supplier selection using combined FUCOM - Rough SAW model, Reports in Mechanical Engineering, 1(1), 34-43, 2020.

Tensor product-based model transformation approach to tower crane systems modeling, Asian Journal of Control, DOI: 10.1002/asjc.2494, 2021.

6. You should add step by step calculations in the case study section. You should also follow the steps defined in the preliminaries section.

7. A validation section is missing. How can we assess and interpret the results? Comparison with the existing methods from the literature is missing.

8. The resolution of figures requires improvement.

Reviewer #2: The submitted paper match the aims and scope of PLOS ONE. It represents an application of GRA-TOPSIS tools for evaluation of PPP projects, while G1 and Entropy methods were used for determining the criteria weights in MCMD methodology. The paper would be of interest to the research community in this field of work but it needs substantial improvements in order to be considered for publication in PLOS ONE. I would suggest a series of changes that would improve the paper:

- The introduction section must be improved. Authors should better highlight the objective of their work and what its contributions are in order to close a gap to the existing literature and/or practice. What is the innovative value of the contribution proposed by the authors?

- In the introduction section, the authors should provide more information about existing MCDM models used in the field and their benefits/weaknesses.

- Why the TOPSIS method? Why not RAFSI, MABAC, MAIRCA, VIKOR methods? This should be discussed. The authors need to discuss their contributions compared to those methods in related papers.

- The authors must clearly discuss the significance of the research problem in the first section.

- The authors should explain why they insist on using the G1 subjective weight model. Why not LBWA, FUCOM or BWM models? These models have numerous advantages and the authors should show what the advantages of G1 over LBWA, FUCOM or BWM models are. These methods should be discussed in the paper.

- Why the Entropy method was used (objective weight model)? Why not CRITIC, FANMA, etc?

- The authors should provide more recent references published in the previous two-three years. References published prior to 2017 may be used, but those are generally of less interest. Some recent interesting references from the MCDM field are missing (application of TOPSIS method). I suggest to the authors to read and discuss the below listed references:

A VIKOR and TOPSIS focused reanalysis of the MADM methods based on logarithmic normalization. Facta universitatis series: Mechanical Engineering, 18(3), 341-355.;

A cloud TOPSIS model for green supplier selection. Facta Universitatis, series: Mechanical Engineering. 18(3), pp. 375-397.;

Route planning for hazardous materials transportation: Multicriteria decision making approach. Decision Making: Applications in Management and Engineering, 2(1), 66-85.

A hybridized IT2FS-DEMATEL-AHP-TOPSIS multicriteria decision making approach: Case study of selection and evaluation of criteria for determination of air traffic control radar position. Decision Making: Applications in Management and Engineering, 3(1), 146-164.

- The authors should provide step by step calculations for suggested methodology, especially Comprehensive weight model. The methodology should be explained in details.

- How can a reader judge about the quality of the obtained solutions? Could the results be compared with some existing approaches in literature? The improvement must be discussed. Suggestion: compare the obtained results with results yielded by the classic TOPSIS method and, in doing that, compare the advantages and limitations of your model over the classic TOPSIS method.

- A validation section is missing.

- In the conclusion section, the authors need to demonstrate the impact and insights of the research. The authors need to clearly provide several solid future research directions and their research contributions. The limitations of the model should be added.

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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.

PONE-D-21-12807R1

Operation mode selection of NIMBY facility Public Private Partnership

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Zhang,

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 Aug 01 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,

Dragan Pamucar

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.

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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: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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 #2: Yes

**********

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: No

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

**********

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 revised paper is improved. It is principally acceptable for publishing, but the authors should check all the references and provide full bibliographic data for each reference.

Reviewer #2: The authors have improved the paper significantly by properly addressing all the comments. There is only one technical aspect that must be additionally taken care of. Namely, a number of references are incomplete, because they are missing the journal titles and further data. For instance:

- in reference 15 the missing journal title is "Reports in Mechanical Engineering", volume and issue missing as well;

- in references 14 and 17, the missing journal title is "Facta Universitatis series Mechanical Engineering", also volume and issue number are missing;

- In reference 19, the missing journal title is "Decision Making: Applications in Management and Engineering", volume and issue missing as well;

- in reference 20, the missing journal title is "Journal of Finance Research", also volume, issue and page numbers are missing here.

Those were only examples. Please, check all the references and make sure all of them contain complete data.

Provided this comment has been properly addressed, the paper would be acceptable for publishing.

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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 #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.

Operation mode selection of NIMBY facility Public Private Partnership

PONE-D-21-12807R2

Dear Dr. Zhang,

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,

Dragan Pamucar

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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

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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 #2: Yes

**********

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: No

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: The authors did a great job in the revision of this very good manuscript. Their efforts are appreciated.

The responses to my comments are well documented and supported by relevant information.

Moreover, all these responses are reflected in the improvement of the manuscript. Therefore, the revised manuscript is correct and technically sound.

I especially appreciate the validation. This revised manuscript contains a sound theory and an illustrative validation, which accompanies and also supports the theoretical claims.

Concluding, I agree again with the publication of this manuscript. This manuscript will certainly continue authors' other past well-acknowledged manuscripts in the growing field of the manuscript.

I estimate that the manuscript will have a high impact for the readers of this highly ranked journal.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed properly. Therefore, the paper is recommended for publishing as it is.

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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 #2: No