PONE-D-21-17224

The relationship between night-time light and socioeconomic factors in China and India

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Sun,

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.

After taking a look at the reviewer' comments and your manuscript, I recommend a major revision. You should provide more results that show the rationality of selecting the economic indicators (e.g., road network data).

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 26 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.

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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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Wenhao Yu, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

After taking a look at the reviewer' comments and your manuscript, I recommend a major revision. You should provide more results that show the rationality of selecting the economic indicators (e.g., road network data).

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4. We note that you currently have two tables named "table 7". Please correct it 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

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

Reviewer #1: 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

**********

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

**********

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 paper uses remote sensing data - nighttime light (NTL) as well as a rang of economic parameters for China and India to reveal the intrinsic link between the two types of data at different scales. The subject is interesting, as are the results, although there a number of issues and limitations that should be addressed before publication. These comments are presented below.

Main comments:

1.I am concerned with the choice of spatial units and the analysis carried out by these choices. The authors seem to have carried out three scales, namely the city level, the province level and the national level. However, the administrative level of a city or province is sometimes not indicative of its status in terms of economic level, e.g. the capital city of China (Beijing) may have a higher level of economic development as well as NTL than some provinces. I would recommend including a bit more literature and taking into account the economic ranking of the city or province. See, for example Guo, Y., Yu, W., Chen, Z., & Zou, R. (2020).

2.Did the authors select the cities or provinces that participated in the experiment? Because some cities or provinces have very low light values, they do not effectively represent the state of their economic development. I recommend that the authors give at least some summary description of the cities and provinces that participated in the experiment.

3.What is the author's rationale for selecting these economic indicators (GDP, Population, Road network data, Carbon emission data)? In particular, why is road network data used as a type of economic indicator, when it seems that road network data is hardly representative of the economic development of a region in general, e.g. Switzerland does not have an extremely well developed road network (metro, etc.) in most cantons, but its cities still have a high economic level.

4.Have the authors considered the possibility that the NTL data and several of the data in the text are other regression relationships, for example (exponential relation)? Because the level of socioeconomic development of the region does not always show linear growth, at different times in the development of the region, especially in the later stages of development, the economic level of the region gradually slows down and shows saturation levels. Some experiments on this aspect should be added to this paper as this may affect this paper’s conclusion.

Minor comments:

1.Page 5. A table with the type of data, a short description and the source of the data is added to the data section to make the article more readable.

2.Page 17. Regional differences between China and India (e.g. infrastructure development, population, etc.) should be added to the discussion section, and it is possible that these also contribute to the different return relationships.

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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.

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Reviewer #1: No

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PONE-D-21-17224R1The relationship between night-time light and socioeconomic factors in China and IndiaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Sun,

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 Jan 13 2022 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: https://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,

Jun Yang

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.

Additional Editor Comments:

The authors explored the relationship between night-time light and socioeconomic factors. The research methodologies are reasonable, and the findings are justifiable. However, there are still a few aspects that should be improved to make the paper publishable. The paper is not well-organized. I focus here only on some points, which are hopefully easy for the authors to take into account in the revision.

1. Abstract-Line 24, GDP (gross domestic product)? Maybe gross domestic product (GDP)? Please confirm it.

2. Figure 1, is not clear enough. Please added national boundaries to make it clearer.

3. Line 143, CO2, please modify it and check the manuscript carefully.

4. Discussion looks good. However, the author did not discuss the limitation of this study. Furthermore, some important relevant references should be cited as follow.

1) The impact of urban renewal on land surface temperature changes: A case study in the main city of Guangzhou, China. Remote Sensing (2020), https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12050794.

2) Modelling spatial distribution of fine-scale populations based on residential properties, International Journal of Remote Sensing (2019), doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2019.1579387.

3) Spatial Evolution of Population Change in Northeast China During 1992-2018, Science of the Total Environment (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146023.

4) Contribution of urban ventilation to the thermal environment and urban energy demand: Different climate background perspectives, Science of the Total Environment (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148791.

5) Suitability of human settlements in mountainous areas from the perspective of ventilation: a case study of the main urban area of Chongqing, Journal of Cleaner Production(2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127467.

6) Optimizing local climate zones to mitigate urban heat island effect in human settlements, Journal of Cleaner Production (2020), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.123767.

7) Influence of urban morphological characteristics on thermal environment, Sustainable Cities and Society (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2021.103045.

[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

Reviewer #2: 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: 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: 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: Dear authors,

Thanks very much for your response letter. The issues that I worried about this manuscript are well explained, and detailed results are also provided. I recommend to publish this manuscript.

Reviewer #2: The authors explored the relationship between night-time light and socioeconomic factors. The research methodologies are reasonable, and the findings are justifiable. However, there are still a few aspects that should be improved to make the paper publishable. The paper is not well-organized. I focus here only on some points, which are hopefully easy for the authors to take into account in the revision.

1.Abstract-Line 24, GDP (gross domestic product)? Maybe gross domestic product (GDP)? Please confirm it.

2.Figure 1, is not clear enough. Please added national boundaries to make it clearer.

3.Line 143, CO2, please modify it and check the manuscript carefully.

4.Discussion looks good. However, the author did not discuss the limitation of this study. Furthermore, some important relevant references should be cited as follow.

1)The impact of urban renewal on land surface temperature changes: A case study in the main city of Guangzhou, China. Remote Sensing (2020), https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12050794.

2)Modelling spatial distribution of fine-scale populations based on residential properties, International Journal of Remote Sensing (2019), doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2019.1579387.

3)Spatial Evolution of Population Change in Northeast China During 1992-2018, Science of the Total Environment (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.146023.

4)Contribution of urban ventilation to the thermal environment and urban energy demand: Different climate background perspectives, Science of the Total Environment (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148791.

5)Suitability of human settlements in mountainous areas from the perspective of ventilation: a case study of the main urban area of Chongqing, Journal of Cleaner Production(2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.127467.

6)Optimizing local climate zones to mitigate urban heat island effect in human settlements, Journal of Cleaner Production (2020), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.123767.

7)Influence of urban morphological characteristics on thermal environment, Sustainable Cities and Society (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2021.103045.

**********

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: Yunxiang GUO

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-21-17224R2The relationship between night-time light and socioeconomic factors in China and IndiaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Sun,

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 Jan 20 2022 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: https://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,

Jun Yang

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.

Additional Editor Comments:

I read this paper carefully. All my concerns have been addressed. However, there are many some points that need to be modified. Importantly, please check this paper.

(1) I found that the author order has changed, please explain it.

(2) Table 1 mentioned GDP and population, and it was derived from RESDC and RBI. The resolution of GDP and population in China is 1km, what is the resolution of it in India? In other words, if raster data is not needed, why not use statistics data?

(3) There are many mistakes, please check it carefully.

Line 160 - First, we converted the carbon emission NC format into TIF format with GDAL ‘.’ is missing.

Table title is missing, e.g. Line 254, 293 and 296.

Line 268 - R2of ?

(4) Fig 2 is incomplete, please modify it.

(5) Fig 3 - p value should be added in it. Please check it.

(6) Line 237 and 191 - where adjusted R2? Please check it.

[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

Reviewer #2: 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: 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: 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 author has carefully revised the article and my concerns have been well explained. I recommend to publish this paper.

Reviewer #2: I read this paper carefully. All my concerns have been addressed. However, there are many some points that need to be modified. Importantly, please check this paper.

(1) I found that the author order has changed, please explain it.

(2) Table 1 mentioned GDP and population, and it was derived from RESDC and RBI. The resolution of GDP and population in China is 1km, what is the resolution of it in India? In other words, if raster data is not needed, why not use statistics data?

(3) There are many mistakes, please check it carefully.

Line 160 - First, we converted the carbon emission NC format into TIF format with GDAL ‘.’ is missing.

Table title is missing, e.g. Line 254, 293 and 296.

Line 268 - R2of ?

(4) Fig 2 is incomplete, please modify it.

(5) Fig 3 - p value should be added in it. Please check it.

(6) Line 237 and 191 - where adjusted R2? Please check it.

**********

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.

The relationship between night-time light and socioeconomic factors in China and India

PONE-D-21-17224R3

Dear Dr. Sun,

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,

Jun Yang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Accept

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 #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 #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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 #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 #2: Yes

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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 #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.

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Reviewer #2: No