Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 6, 2022
Decision Letter - Qichun Zhang, Editor

PONE-D-22-06743Multi-period uncertain portfolio selection model with prospect utility functionPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Guo,

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 address all the comments from the reviewers and a careful proof reading is highly recommended for the revision.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 14 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,

Qichun Zhang, PhD

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

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

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

2. Thank you for submitting the above manuscript to PLOS ONE. During our internal evaluation of the manuscript, we found significant text overlap between your submission and the following previously published works, some of which you are an author.

- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0377221712003165?via%3Dihub

- https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0020025512004197

- https://mountainscholar.org/bitstream/handle/10217/206716/Wang_TY_ExpSysApp_2015.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1

- http://orsc.edu.cn/online/180223.pdf

- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S037722171400900X?via%3Dihub

We would like to make you aware that copying extracts from previous publications, especially outside the methods section, word-for-word is unacceptable. In addition, the reproduction of text from published reports has implications for the copyright that may apply to the publications.

Please revise the manuscript to rephrase the duplicated text, cite your sources, and provide details as to how the current manuscript advances on previous work. Please note that further consideration is dependent on the submission of a manuscript that addresses these concerns about the overlap in text with published work.

We will carefully review your manuscript upon resubmission, so please ensure that your revision is thorough.

3. We suggest you thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar. If you do not know anyone who can help you do this, you may wish to consider employing a professional scientific editing service.

Whilst you may use any professional scientific editing service of your choice, PLOS has partnered with both American Journal Experts (AJE) and Editage to provide discounted services to PLOS authors. Both organizations have experience helping authors meet PLOS guidelines and can provide language editing, translation, manuscript formatting, and figure formatting to ensure your manuscript meets our submission guidelines. To take advantage of our partnership with AJE, visit the AJE website (http://learn.aje.com/plos/) for a 15% discount off AJE services. To take advantage of our partnership with Editage, visit the Editage website (www.editage.com) and enter referral code PLOSEDIT for a 15% discount off Editage services.  If the PLOS editorial team finds any language issues in text that either AJE or Editage has edited, the service provider will re-edit the text for free.

Upon resubmission, please provide the following:

The name of the colleague or the details of the professional service that edited your manuscript

A copy of your manuscript showing your changes by either highlighting them or using track changes (uploaded as a *supporting information* file)

A clean copy of the edited manuscript (uploaded as the new *manuscript* file)

4. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match.

When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section.

5. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure:

“This work was supported by Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation(No.9192005) and

the special fund of basic scientific research business fees of Beijing Municipal University of Capital

University of Economics and Business.”

Please state what role the funders took in the study.  If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed.

Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

6. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript:

“This work was supported by Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation(No.9192005) and the special fund of basic scientific research business fees of Beijing Municipal University of Capital University of Economics and Business.”

We note that you have provided additional information within the Acknowledgements Section that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. Please note that funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form.

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows:

 “This work was supported by Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation(No.9192005) and

the special fund of basic scientific research business fees of Beijing Municipal University of Capital

University of Economics and Business.”

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

7. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability.

Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized.

Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access.

We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter.

8. 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 paper is well-organized with solid contribution. The results have been given clearly and sufficiently. All the reviewers' comments show that the paper is acceptable after a minor revision. In particular, some typos in the paper should be corrected and a proof reading is helpful to improve the quality of the presentation. The motivation and the background of the study should also be highlighted with more details where including more reference to support the motivation may be a proper approach. Therefore, a minor revision is needed to respond all the comments.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 is a detailed paper that proposes a new improved artificial bee colony (ABC) method for multi-period uncertain portfolio selection. The explanation on how to improve it are well presented. However, when compared to other techniques, the choice of ABC is not insufficiently discussed. By introducing CPT for the first time, the abbreviations should be used correctly to improve the article.

Reviewer #2: This paper discusses a multi-period uncertain portfolio selection model with a prospect utility function and designs a new artificial bee colony algorithm by combining the sine cosine search method. The paper is overall enjoyable, and the originality of this paper is high. However, the reviewer still has the following comments which need to be addressed.

1. This paper is advised to revise the literature review section, including these related references. The authors can consider including the following research works to enrich the literature study.

(i)https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1568494615005955/

(ii) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12652-017-0478-4

2. This paper introduces the ABC algorithm and proposes a novel improved method. However, different algorithms have different applications. The author should introduce the application of the ABC algorithm in the field of the portfolio.

3.Some grammar errors should be noticed and updated as formal English writing style.

Reviewer #3: This manuscript describes an improved artifificial bee colony algorithms for a multi-period uncertain portfolio selection problem. Numerical results prove the effectiveness of the algorithm under reasonable assumptions, and data analysis is performed appropriately. It is interesting and organized well. The manuscript can be accepted after correcting grammartical、spelling errors.

For example:

1.After definition 3, in “provided that at least one of the two integrals is fifinite.” here, “provided” should be “Provided”.

2.In equation (26) has been given a comma symbol, it should be given a full stop symbol.

3.In line 6, "makes an one-off... " is incorrect.

4.In line 12, "programing" should be “programming”.

5.In the line 10 of second paragraph, the spaces of "returns . For example ," should be deleted.

**********

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

Reviewer #3: No

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.

Revision 1

Dear Editor,

We greatly appreciate the editor’s and reviewers’ insightful review of our manuscript entitled “Multi-period uncertain portfolio selection model with prospect utility function”. The comments have helped us make substantial improvements to this manuscript. Following the Editor’s recommendations along with Referees comments, we have revised the manuscript carefully. The main revisions have been marked in red in the revised manuscript. In addition, we did our best to revise the manuscript and rephrased the duplicate text.

We sincerely hope that contents of this paper in present form would be useful for readers of the PLOS ONE, and revised manuscript will be acceptable to you, Editor and the esteemed referees. This manuscript represents the authors’ original work and has not been published nor has it been submitted simultaneously elsewhere. All authors have checked the manuscript and have agreed to the submission.

Waiting for your early and positive response.

Thanking you

Dr. Gaohuizi Guo

Corresponding Author

Respond to the Reviewer 1 Comments

Comment 1: This is a detailed paper that proposes a new improved artificial bee colony (ABC) method for multi-period uncertain portfolio selection. The explanation on how to improve it are well presented. However, when compared to other techniques, the choice of ABC is not insufficiently discussed. By introducing CPT for the first time, the abbreviations should be used correctly to improve the article.

Reply: Thanks for your suggestions. According to your valuable comments, we have

revised the manuscript carefully. Firstly, we have corrected the abbreviation CPT, which was first introduced on page 8. Second, we compare the ABC algorithm with other techniques on page 9 and explain why we chose the ABC algorithm.

Respond to the Reviewer 2 Comments

Comment 1: This paper is advised to revise the literature review section, including these related references. The authors can consider including the following research works to enrich the literature study.

(i)https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1568494615005955/

(ii) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12652-017-0478-4

Reply: Thanks for your suggestions. We have revised the literature review section, added newer references, and enriched the study of the literature. These include the study of solving multi-period portfolio problems and the study of multi-period portfolio optimization problems in uncertain environments. They are marked in red in the text.

Comment 2: This paper introduces the ABC algorithm and proposes a novel improved method. However, different algorithms have different applications. The author should introduce the application of the ABC algorithm in the field of the portfolio.

Reply: Thanks for your suggestions. We introduce the application of the ABC algorithm in the field of the portfolio on page 10 and introduce the relevant references.

Respond to the Reviewer 3 Comments

Comment 1: This manuscript describes an improved artifificial bee colony algorithms for a multi-period uncertain portfolio selection problem. Numerical results prove the effectiveness of the algorithm under reasonable assumptions, and data analysis is performed appropriately. It is interesting and organized well. The manuscript can be accepted after correcting grammartical、spelling errors.

Reply: Thanks for your suggestions. According to your valuable comments, we carefully checked the entire article for grammatical problems and corrected them one by one, and marked them all in red in the text.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Qichun Zhang, Editor

Multi-period uncertain portfolio selection model with prospect utility function

PONE-D-22-06743R1

Dear Dr. Guo,

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,

Qichun Zhang, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments :

Since all the concerns have been addressed well in the revised version and no further comments are received, I recommend accepting this manuscript as it is.

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: The authors have done some suitable updates in the revised manuscript to correct the mentioned errors. The author's response to reviewer comments has proved their work fits the criteria for publication.

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

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 #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

**********

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Qichun Zhang, Editor

PONE-D-22-06743R1

Multi-period uncertain portfolio selection model with prospect utility function

Dear Dr. Guo:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. 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.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Qichun Zhang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .