PONE-D-21-10702

Do extraordinary science and technology scientists balance their publishing and patenting activities?

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Huang,

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. I recommend also to follow the minor points raised by Reviewer #1.

The two reviewers are critical of your paper by agreeing on the necessity to better organize the Introduction and the Discussion and Conclusion sections. The figure need to be revised at least by introducing suitable and explicative caption. Please clarify the status of availability of the data. You declared that they are not available, and that "all relevant data are within the manuscript". Consider carefully the data availability policy adopted by PLOS ONE (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability). I recommend also to evaluate the minor point highlighted by reviewer #1.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 24 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:

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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,

Alberto Baccini, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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2. Please consider changing the title so as to meet our title format requirement (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines). In particular, the title should be "Specific, descriptive, concise, and comprehensible to readers outside the field" and in this case it is not informative and specific about your study's scope and methodology.

3.Please ensure that you include a title page within your main document. We do appreciate that you have a title page document uploaded as a separate file, however, as per our author guidelines (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-title-page) we do require this to be part of the manuscript file itself and not uploaded separately.

Could you therefore please include the title page into the beginning of your manuscript file itself, listing all authors and affiliations.

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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: No

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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: This study investigates the scientific and technological performance of the 12 scientists that were awarded both the NMS medal – an American prize recognizing scientific excellence – and the NMTI medal – an American prize given for outstanding technological contribution – in order to better understand the relationship between scientific publishing and patent activity of extraordinary scientists. The analysis of the bibliometric and patenting profiles of the 12 scientists shows that scientific and technological contributions that were awarded with prestigious prizes by the scientific community were not always matched by outstanding bibliometric and patenting performances. In this regard, the study is an interesting contribution to the debate on the capacity of bibliometric measures to capture “research excellence” and possibly to that on peer review vs. bibliometrics.

In my opinion, the study is a valuable contribution that deserves publication. However, I would suggest to the authors some revisions to improve clarity and readability of the paper.

First, I suggest the authors to better specify the focus of the paper and how it is related to the research questions. I was puzzled by the fact that the study mentions many different issues, including the relationship between science, technology, and academia (rows 15-27), the bibliometric and patenting profiles of outstanding scientists (rows 39-40), and if productivity, citation, and patent metrics are reliable indicators of scientific/technological excellence (rows 158-167), In my opinion, the main result of the paper is that these indicators are not reliable, as the outstanding scientists examined display highly diversified citation and patent profiles (rows 475-477, 531-532, and 552-553). I see that the two other topics are somehow related to this result, but I think that a more concise and clear presentation of the real focus of the paper would help the reader to follow the argument.

In particular, I suggest to better organize the Introduction and the Discussion and Conclusion sections, as some paragraphs seem to be scarcely connected with the main argument. For instance, the paragraph on Nobel laureates (rows 28-38) interrupts the presentation of the rationale of the study and it seems to me not relevant for the discussion, at least at this point of the paper. Similarly, the paragraph on the evaluation of societal effects (rows 520-530) seems to me scarcely related to the focus of the study.

The methodology applied is sound and well-tailored to the research questions. Quantitative analyses are well performed, and results support the paper’s claims. However, some figures may be improved:

Fig. 1: In the Lauterbur facet there is a blue line, does it mean something? If this is the case, please add the explanation.

Fig. 4 should be explained more extensively: what does the color code mean, for instance? What is “n” in the last row on the left? I suggest the author at least to expand the caption of this figure.

Fig. 5: it is not clear the rationale for the three types of scientists. Why were these ranges chosen to delimit type-B from type-C scientists? I suggest also to indicate the type by a color to improve the readability of the figure.

The authors cited mostly the appropriate literature, even if some key references that would perfectly fit in their argument are lacking. In particular, the sections on the relationship between citations and research quality should be integrated with a discussion of Aksnes et al. (2019) (DOI: 10.1177/2158244019829575) and similar contributions. Other references are suggested in the attached list of minor comments.

Lastly, I would suggest the authors get editing help from someone with full professional proficiency in English, as the meaning of some phrases and sentences in the manuscript is not always clear (see the list of minor comments attached).

Minor revisions and typos:

Row 19. “Notably” does not seem to me the right word. Maybe “However”?

Rows 28-38: I do not understand why this paragraph on Nobel laureates is placed here. It interrupts the argument. I would remove it.

Row 35: laureates_and

Row 42: “in sample <of> scientists”

Row 59: I am not sure that “assumption” is the right word here. Maybe “hypothesis” is better?

Row 89: Not sure “demonstrated” is the right word here. I suggest the authors to rephrase the entire sentence.

Row 127: “one scientific publication of a patent” should be “one scientific publication or a patent”.

Row 139-140: The meaning of this sentence is not clear. I suggest the authors to rephrase it.

Rows 143-145: I suggest the authors to integrate the discussion by commenting on Aksnes et al. (2019) (10.1177/2158244019829575), that is an in-depth review of the relationship between research quality and citations.

Row 162: I suggest the authors to add reference to Baccini and De Nicolao (2016) (10.1007/s11192-016-1929-y), a relevant study for this debate.

Row 209: I am not sure that the word “intelligence” is right here.

Row 229: “until” should be replaced with “before”, if a get the meaning of the sentence right.

Rows 231-232: It is not very clear how citations were calculated. Is it from the difference between the two?

Rows 287-288: Accumulation of prizes may be explained also by the Matthew Effect. I suggest the authors to briefly mention this alternative explanation.

Row 351: “he had been for a”

Row 483: I would replace “originate from” with “be reflected in” or “result in”.

Rows 485-490: The meaning of this paragraph is not clear to me. I suggest the authors to rephrase it and elaborate a bit on the relationship between inventions and discoveries to clarify the reasoning presented in this paragraph.

Ref n. 1: “National inVocation systems” should be changed in “National innovation systems”

Ref 25 “orreinforcement” should be replaced with “or reinforcement”

Ref. 32 I think it is better to cite e.g., MacRoberts and MacRoberts (2018) (10.1002/asi.23970)</of>

Reviewer #2: The paper summarizes the careers of 12 American scientists who might be considered as "excellent" performers both in science and technology. The authors try to understand what data about these scientists' publication and patenting activities can tell us about the career choices of successful scientists, and specifically about the relation between (academic) science and technology. Despite the small sample, the work is strictly based on a quantitative approach.

While I do appreciate the effort to better understand the sociology of science with from a scientometric perspective, I believe the paper suffers from three main problems.

First, the aims of the paper are unclear. The introduction (p. 4) spells out two very narrow and specific research questions (if these 12 people authored the same number of articles and patents, and if they are highly cited), and a very generic one (if their contributions are "demonstrated" by bibliometric indicators). The authors do not attempt to motivate why these questions are relevant. Then, the analysis only answers to the first two questions (see my point 2 concerning the third question), and the conclusions depart from all three questions, stating that the authors "have demonstrated that bibliometrics indicators are not a reliable measure of the value of discoveries in improving humanity" (pp. 23-24).

Second, the paper suffers from confusion in the use of terms and concepts. In some cases, this could be a language problem that the authors could possibly solve by asking a native speaker to proofread the manuscript. This is how I personally (and I myself am not a native speaker) interpret some odd statements such as "The research papers and patents produced ... served as proxies of scientific and technological intelligence" (pp. 9-10) or "The low number of winners indicates that this select group has been responsible for extraordinary contributions" (p. 3).

Other examples could be made, but my point is that quite obviously this is not just a language issue. Throughout the paper the authors use "contribution" and "influence" interchangeably (for example in pages 1, and 2), then clearly express the fact that they are not synonymous, but then e.g. on pag. 11 they write again that "citation counts were employed to represent [both] influence and contribution over time". Then for example on pag. 23 they deny this again ("Influence is frequently confused with contribution. In this study, only citation-based counts were used to measure and present scientific and technological influence"). To add to the confusion, sometimes they further add the notions of "performance" and "research originality" (beside the already recalled "intelligence", which I believe to be just a mistake). Perhaps, if the authors clarified better what they aim to measure or document, the statistical analysis too could be more in-depth and precise (see point below).

Third, the data analysis is rather superficial, and not geared at answering the third (larger) research question. For example, because of variability of citations across a same author's papers, the authors only consider the most highly cited paper for each author. Further, for years before 1970 the use citation data from Web of Science, and after 1970 from Scopus, without any consideration about how this might affect their results. The authors do not distinguish between citations received before and after the official recognition of the award(s) and therefore cannot tell us if impact (what they call "influence") is due to visibility and/or how is it affected by it.

More in general, I do not have precise ideas about how to demonstrate if "contribution" is measured by citation counts, so I am sorry I cannot offer constructive criticisms, but certainly the current analysis does not attempt to answer this question at all. Probably, totally different data would be required (including some measurable evidence of "contribution") and I would personally suggest to the authors to rather change the research question.

Concerning the empirical part, however, my biggest concern is that the authors draw general implications from a very (small and) select sample: both geographically (only US authors) and in terms of impact. They only write (p. 8) that this is an "appropriate" sample for a study of this kind, without much more reflection on this crucial methodological choice.

On the whole, I am sorry to say I believe these three main problems make the manuscript unsuitable for publication.

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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.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Eugenio Petrovich

Reviewer #2: Yes: Carlo D'Ippoliti

[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-21-10702R1

Do extraordinary science and technology scientists balance their publishing and patenting activities?

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Huang,

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.

I think that the paper can be accepted for publication,  after you have carried out the corrections as suggested by the two reviewer. Please consider carefully the minor corrections indicated by both reviewers, and feel free to simplify the introduction according to the comment of the first reviewer. 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 22 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,

Alberto Baccini, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

1. Please change the title so as to meet our title format requirement (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines). In particular, the title should be "Specific, descriptive, concise, and comprehensible to readers outside the field" and in this case it is not informative and specific about your study's scope, methodology, and findings.

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.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

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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: 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: (No Response)

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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 new version of the manuscript is clearer and better organized compared to the first one. The paper’s focus is now clearly explained, and the research questions plainly spelled out.

However, I still have some troubles with the Introduction, which, in its present form, is too long, with paragraphs that are not always mutually well connected. My suggestion to the authors is to shorten it and remove several details that are already provided in the following sections of the papers (e.g., the debate on the reliability of citation counts for measuring influence is better presented in the Literature Review section, the history of the NMS and NMTI can be left to the Methodology section without weighing the Introduction down, and so on). I would suggest the authors to limit the Introduction to the presentation of the rationale and relevance of their research questions, leaving the context and other details to the Literature Review section.

Some repetitions may also be reduced to enhance readability throughout the paper (e.g., the fact that filing patents is more challenging than publishing articles is repeated at least three times in different points of the paper).

Lastly, there are still few typos that should be corrected:

Abstract: row 30: there is a missing “s” after “scientist”.

Row 86: it seems the verb is missing in this sentence.

Row 249: “scientist” should be turned to plural.

Reviewer #2: The authors addressed the most important concerns I and the other referees had raised. There remains a difference in points of views, which should not prevent publication of the manuscript, of course.

A final, minor remark: please clarify and streamline throughout the date(s) at which the data are updated. It seems to me, 2018 (for sample selection) and 2019 (for citations data), but this should be more clearly reported. Please note that on pag. 11 (row 252) you write "as of 2004": what does that mean, is that a typo?

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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: Yes: Eugenio Petrovich

Reviewer #2: Yes: Carlo D'Ippoliti

[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.

Do extraordinary science and technology scientists balance their publishing and patenting activities?

PONE-D-21-10702R2

Dear Dr. Huang,

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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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,

Alberto Baccini, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: