PONE-D-21-03106

Research on the Coupling Degree of Internet Development Level and Agricultural Eco-efficiency ——Based on the 2009-2018 Data of 13 Major Grain Producing Areas in China

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ximing,

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Ghaffar Ali, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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

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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: Yes

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: A good contribution.

The following are the comments and suggestions to the author for further improvement of the manuscript.

1. Secondary data may have consistency issues such as data gaps for certain periods or regions. Did the author notice these issues while processing the historical information of different provinces and how did the author manage if there were such cases in the data frame?

2. It is said that qualitative data always supports quantitative ones in the field of social study. Does the author conduct some FGD or KII to verify the model output results by collecting feedback from the relevant stakeholders?

3. Please insert the latitude and longitude value in the map data frame

4. Please insert the province names on the map so that reader can compare the results among different provinces

5. It would be better if the author could summarize the socio-economic differences of different provinces in a tabular form.

6. Since uncertainty is interlinked in modeling, what are the potential areas of uncertainty in the model used in this study, and how did these uncertainties of model results address?

7. Potential limitations such as consistency issues of secondary data and the uncertainty of the model used are recommended to mention in the discussion or conclusion sections.

Reviewer #2: The authors have selected an important topic and presented it in a better manner. However, I have a few minor comments:

1. Paper needs to be proofread by a native language speaker.

2. Justifications of the methods selected are weak and needs to be improved in terms of explaining / indicating academic novelty in the paper.

3. Discussion needs to be improved in terms of explaining the implication of the results in terms of both policy and academic contributions. Further, discuss the results in a comparative manner in order to explain where the results stand in academic discussions.

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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: Yes: Muhammad Ziaul Hoque

Reviewer #2: No

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Research on the Degree of Coupling of the Internet Development Level and Agricultural ——Ecological Efficiency Based on 2009-2018 Data from 13 Major Grain-Producing Areas in China

PONE-D-21-03106R1

Dear Dr. Jie,

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.

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Kind regards,

Ghaffar Ali, PhD

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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: Authors have revised the manuscript considering the review comments. The overall quality of the manuscript improved, and can be considered for publication in its current form.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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