PONE-D-21-40013How Does Digital Technology Affect Manufacturing Upgrading?Theory and Evidence from ChinaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Fu,

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 Mar 03 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,

Mohammad Azadi

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at 

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https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. We note you have included a table to which you do not refer in the text of your manuscript. Please ensure that you refer to Table 4 in your text; if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the Table.

3. Please include a copy of Table 9 which you refer to in your text.

Additional Editor Comments:

1) The first part of the article is written without any references.

2) The novelty of this manuscript should be highlighted compared to the literature review.

3) All formulations need references, unless they were extracted by authors.

4) What is the reason for reporting data in Figure 1 until 2014? What are data for recent years?

5) Data in Table 1 is unclear. Numbers are not in a good format. Check it again please. Such a problem could be seen for other tables.

6) R2 values are so low in Table 2. What is the reason? They could not be used for a correct analysis. Such a problem could be seen in some other cases in other tables. Best fitting should be bolded.

7) The number of references should be extended for a better discussion. Obtained results should be compared to other results of other researches.

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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: 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: 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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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: I appreciate the author's efforts and the novelty of his ideas on the submitted manuscript, but there are still some issues that the author should consider in order to further improve the manuscript.

—There were some errors in sentence structure and punctuation, as well as problems with table formatting. The language of the manuscript still needs improvement. In order to truly contribute to a valuable article, the author should explore related field research more deeply, and put forward the profound thoughts of contribution and innovation of this paper compared with the current research status in the first and second parts of the article. Therefore, I think the author needs to do more work, especially to revise and improve the manuscript.

—The last part of the introduction should be a summary of the manuscript research, which is a clear summary of what will be studied. It mainly restates the key steps and main ideas of the paper and shows how they are proved. I believe this will greatly increase the degree of future citation of this literature in related fields.

—Although the author has made some theoretical explorations in the third section, in my opinion, the analysis in this part is not in-depth enough. The author should consider the deeper mechanism of digital technology to promote the upgrading of manufacturing industry, and make this part more theoretical support. In addition, I believe that if the author can change the research hypothesis and put forward the statement, it will make readers understand the relevant research content more clearly.

—The manuscript has made abundant robustness verification for the regression of the benchmark model and has also carried out heterogeneity analysis from different angles, which is worthy of affirmation. However, some theoretical analysis of the results is not thorough enough, especially in the case of insignificant regression results. In my opinion, detailed, reasonable and in-depth exploration can add depth to the article and explore the development of related fields.

—The conclusions and suggestions are short, and the suggestions are not targeted enough .I think if this point can be improved, the research will be more oriented.

Reviewer #2: Relevance. The paper investigates the theoretical mechanism of digital technology for manufacturing upgrading. This paper incorporates digital technology and the global value chain division of labor into a unified analytical framework. On the one hand, digital technology's contribution is evaluated from domestic and foreign perspectives; on the other hand, the heterogeneity of manufacturing factor intensity and the classification of technology levels are used to deepen the understanding and elaboration of the relationship between digital technology for manufacturing upgrading. The research in this paper is enlightening and guiding researchers to deepen their understanding of the impact of the digital economy.

Rigour. The econometric model in this paper is reasonably and scientifically constructed and can adequately support the research topic of this paper. However, the following improvements in the research discussion need to be considered.

(1) Some expressions are inappropriate and even confusing. For example, there is a problem with the expression "1% high" in the third line of the text on page 15 of the article. Please explain the meaning of 1% in detail.

(2) Please further concise and highlight the semantic precision in the presentation of the contribution of the article.

(3) Although the data sources are explained in this paper, digitalization in China is developing rapidly. Therefore, the use of data in this paper seems to be old and the research data is rather lagging, please consider adding the latest data after 2014.

(4) Figure 1 shows the digital technology level index of China's manufacturing industry from 2000 to 2014, but the analysis of the interpretation of Figure 1 is not sufficient, and some rich descriptions expressed by the columns in the figure should be given.

(5) The text display of Table 1and Table 2 is further optimized. it currently feels like there is a problem with the typography.

Impact: This work has the potential to have a notable impact as it presents the theoretical mechanism of digital technology for manufacturing upgrading and gives the results and description of the empirical analysis.

Quality of presentation and writing. The paper followed a structure, and the quality of written communication was generally good. However, some improvements still need to be made. The authors need to optimize further the presentation of the article in terms of the various sections such as the abstract, introduction, model, empirical evidence, discussion, and especially the illustration of the content of the figures and tables. Very importantly, the authors could consider native English speakers to improve the quality of the language presentation of this article. Currently, the potential value of the article is obscured due to language presentation issues.

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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.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: review-PONE-D-21-40013.docx

PONE-D-21-40013R1How Does Digital Technology Affect Manufacturing Upgrading?Theory and Evidence from ChinaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Fu,

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 Apr 23 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,

Mohammad Azadi

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 (if provided):

1) Formulations have no references. Before the formulation, at the end part of the last sentence (before the formulation), references should be mentioned.

2) It is better to add a quantitative results in the abstract.

3) The title of the third part in the manuscript should be shortened. It is too lengthy.

[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: (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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

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 Response)

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: (No Response)

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: I appreciate the author's efforts and the novelty of his ideas on the submitted manuscript, but there are still some issues that the author should consider in order to further improve the manuscript.

1.There are some errors in sentence structure and punctuation in parts of the manuscript, and parts of the manuscript are repeated. Authors should carefully examine the grammatical structure and make further modifications to the language of the manuscript.

2.Literature Review in Part II,the author discusses the impact of digital technology on manufacturing upgrades from the definition, theoretical and empirical perspectives of digital technology. This approach is worthy of recognition. However, the authors define digital techniques in the manuscript. In the following micro-level research, I think the author should be highly integrated with the definition given by himself.

3.Although the author has done some theoretical exploration in the third part, the analysis in this part is not deep enough in my opinion. The author proposes three effect mechanisms of digital technology on the manufacturing value chain, but how are these three effects proposed, and whether there is some connection between the three. In this regard, the authors should conduct further exploration.

4.The manuscript has made abundant robustness verification for the regression of the benchmark model and has also carried out heterogeneity analysis from different angles, which is worthy of affirmation. However, the author's previous statement mentioned the current situation of unbalanced development of China's manufacturing regions, whether it is possible to consider the differences between regions in the heterogeneity analysis.

Reviewer #2: The authors have understood the reviewers' comments more accurately and have answered and revised several important questions more accurately.

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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.

PONE-D-21-40013R2How Does Digital Technology Affect Manufacturing Upgrading?Theory and Evidence from ChinaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Fu,

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 May 12 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,

Mohammad Azadi

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 (if provided):

Please carefully address the reviewers' comments besides the attachments and also the following comments,

1) The abbreviation WIOD should be defined at first mentioning.

2) No quantitative results could be found in the abstract.

3) The title of parts is lengthy. They should be shortened.

4) All formulations need references, unless they were extracted by authors.

5) The conclusion part is lengthy. It should be also shortened.

[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: (No Response)

**********

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: (No Response)

**********

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

**********

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 Response)

**********

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: (No Response)

**********

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: I am grateful to the author for adequately revising the comments I made in the last round.I appreciate the author's efforts and the novelty of his ideas on the submitted manuscript, but there are still some issues that the author should consider in order to further improve the manuscript.

1.In terms of language expression, I think the author should pay attention to his own way of expression. In the manuscript, some expressions are inappropriate, and the semantic precision should be highlighted.

2.In the second part of the literature review, the author has sorted out a very good framework, which is very worthy of recognition from the perspectives of definition, theory and evidence.However, the author should sort out more cutting-edge literature in related fields (such as citing literature in the past three years many times). In this manuscript, some of the literature is relatively old.

3.In the fourth part, the author lists China's manufacturing digital technology level index, whether it is possible to consider adding updated data.

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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

[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.

How Does Digital Technology Affect Manufacturing Upgrading?Theory and Evidence from China

PONE-D-21-40013R3

Dear Dr. Fu,

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,

Mohammad Azadi

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

It is accepted. However, please remove the references in the conclusions part. They should be moved to the discussion part in the proof stage.

Reviewers' comments: