Internationalization, cultural appreciation and institutional governmentality for quality control in transnational higher education cooperation: An empirical assessment

Jinsheng (Jason) Zhu; Shushu Wang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0274989

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 26, 2022
31 May 2022 Decision Letter - István Tarrósy, Editor PONE-D-22-11647Internationalization, cultural embeddedness and institutional governmentality for quality control in transnational higher education cooperation: An empirical assessmentPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Zhu, 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. Your choice of topic and research demonstrate a firm commitment to contribute to the better understanding of TNE in China. It is an important project, which may offer a fresh insight into the major items on your agenda, i.e. internationalization, cultural embeddedness and the question of quality control at institutional level. Although Reviewer 2 was suggesting a full green light, I agree more with Reviewer 1 and the detailed criticism provided over there. Please, revise your manuscript thoroughly in particular with regard to your theoretical framework, research questions and empirical work. As for the literatiure review, consult more recent pieces published in the relevant fields, also possibly with a wider look at internationalization and the geopolitics of higher education. Reviewer 2 raises several serious problems about your findings and how you interpret your data. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 15 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, István Tarrósy, 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. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified what type you obtained (for instance, written or verbal, and if verbal, how it was documented and witnessed). If your study included minors, state whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians. If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information. 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. 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. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please delete it from any other section. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: 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: No Reviewer #2: 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: No Reviewer #2: 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: There is no doubt that there is growing interest among higher education institutions across countries of the world to develop the transnational higher education setting to reflect evolving global needs. The current study – “Internationalization, cultural embeddedness and institutional governmentality for quality control in transnational higher education cooperation: An empirical assessment” is very important to the development of TNE in China. While I commend the authors for the time and effort invested in the study, I think that there are additional work that need to be done in all the sections in order to bring the research to the journal’s standards. First, there is a lack of a clear theoretical underpinning of the study. I do not think that the authors’ discussions on internationalization and transnational higher education provide adequate information on the theoretical foundation. Secondly, although the introduction sets a very good pace for the delivery of very informative discussion on TNE and what the authors term as cultural embeddedness and institutional governmentality for quality control, the literature review and empirical sections were short of fulfilling those expectations. The major problem identified with the research findings is the lack of “thick data” or “participants’ narrative” to inform the findings. Summarily, although the current study is very important to the field of transnational higher education, I do not think that the authors have demonstrated enough evidence to show what new knowledge emerges from their study. I have provided some additional comments below for their attention. Literature review I think that the literature review section needs to be improved substantially to provide readers with better understanding of internationalization and transnational higher education. In its current form, the literature review section reads like an extension of the background section. The authors should provide answers to some vet important questions. For example: What are the theoretical foundations of internationalization and transnational higher education? What is already known in the field? What are the existing gaps in the concepts? Etc. unfortunately, these very important information cannot be found in the current text. Research site and research methodology The authors have not provided adequate information concerning the population of their study, the sampling technique adopted to select participants for the study and how the questions were developed. I read the literature review section again to find out how the authors developed their research questions but I could not gather adequate information on that. Also information on the process used to analyze the data is very scanty. Seeing that that authors followed a systematic investigation process, readers should be informed about how the codes were developed into the three main themes. This further connects to my earlier comment concerning the gap between the questions and the theories/concepts used by the authors. Research findings I struggled to identify how the narratives of the focus group participants were captured in the findings section. Did the researchers decide to abbreviate the contributions of participants? I suggest that the authors take a second look at the content and structure of the research findings section and provide readers with the rich text that reveal the voices of study participants. The discussion section also relies heavily on the secondary data analysed rather than the findings from the narratives of participants. Reviewer #2: The topic of this article is very relevant from the viewpoint of internationalization trends in higher education. The research methodology (PAR, case study) adopted in this study is proper. Conclusions are clear and well established. There are some typing mistakes (e.g. lowercase instead of capital letters) left in the text. Please correct them. ****** 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: Yes:** Dr. Yaw Owusu-Agyeman 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274989.r001
Revision 1
22 Jun 2022 Author Response Cover letter in R1 submission June 2022 Dear Editor-in-Chief: This article has been updated in response to the feedback provided by the editors and reviewers. Your encouraging email to request a major revision of the article with the code PONE-D-22-11647 "Internationalization, cultural appreciation, and institutional governmentality for quality control in transnational higher education cooperation: An empirical assessment" is very much appreciated. We are really appreciative of your editorial board's decision to provide us with the chance to resubmit our work. We have given the remarks made by the reviewers and your own ideas careful consideration. We have every reason to believe that this piece of writing will be effective in appealing to a wide audience of possible readers. We have also added, in accordance with your specific demand, the file of "point-to-point response to the reviewers" in the article submission system. This file includes a comprehensive explanation of all of the modifications that were made in this R1 version. We have high hopes that following this significant revision, you and your prestigious blind reviews will be able to once again provide us with favorable feedbacks and remarks that are encouraging. We also add one significant originator who began the research concept of the present work, Miss Shushu WANG, in this submission. She is included as the corresponding author in this resubmission procedure. In the interim, we have accompanied this submission with a Change to Authorship form that is formatted in accordance with PloS One. We really hope that this adjustment does not cause you undue stress. We hope that everything works out well for you in life! We are grateful to you for taking my concerns into account. Thank you for your kind consideration! With sincere regards, Jinsheng (Jason) ZHU, PhD / Shushu WANG Guilin Tourism University Regarding the response you provided in the email correspondence, we will address your remarks in the next section of the current part of the cover letter below with bold blue letters shown below. Dear Dr. Wang, We've checked your submission and before we can proceed, we need you to address the following issues: 1. Thank you for updating your data availability statement. You note that your data are available within the Supporting Information files, but no such files have been included with your submission. At this time, we ask that you please upload your minimal data set as a Supporting Information file, or to a public repository such as Figshare or Dryad. Please also ensure that when you upload your file you include separate captions for your supplementary files at the end of your manuscript. As soon as you confirm the location of the data underlying your findings, we will be able to proceed with the review of your submission. Response to the editor: Thank you for responding so quickly to the data availability statement. We believe it is incorrect to add "supporting information file" in the statement section. Because the submission has no accompanying information file. Therefore, we removed "Supporting Information File" from the statement for this resubmission. We regret for causing you this confusion in this manner. 2. Please amend your authorship list in your manuscript file to include all the authors. Response to the editor: We've provided complete author information in the manuscripts (clear version and the file with track changes). 3. Please amend your list of authors on the manuscript to ensure that each all authors re linked to an affiliation. Response to the editor: In the updated manuscripts, we included all of the relevant affiliation information. 4. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the Methods section, please ensure that you have specified (1) whether consent was informed and (2) what type you obtained (for instance, written or verbal). If your study included minors, state whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians. If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information. Response to the editor: On page 8, you'll find further information that we've supplied about participant consents. For example, on page 8, under the heading "Methods," we put the statements that are shown below. “I consent to participate in this qualitative understanding to transnational collaboration project in the current faculty. I concur that the response I made in the following interview to be used for academic research purposes by researchers of this scientific interpretation.” 5. 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. Response to the editor: Thank you for your comment. We have made revisions to the funding information accordingly. Some of the funding do not have a grant number. 6. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." At this time, please address the following queries: a) Please clarify the sources of funding (financial or material support) for your study. List the grants or organizations that supported your study, including funding received from your institution. b) State what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.” c) If any authors received a salary from any of your funders, please state which authors and which funders. d) If you did not receive any funding for this study, please state: “The authors received no specific funding for this work.” Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Response to the editor: The following phrases are included in the article's acknowledgment section. “In the article acknowledgement, we state the following words. “This article is part of academic achievements of first-class universities and disciplines in tourism management discipline (project) in Guangxi, China. The corresponding author has also been participating in research projects supported by Guilin Tourism University-China ASEAN Research Centre. This research project is financially supported by Guangxi Tourism Vocational Education Teaching Steering Committee - 2021 Tourism Vocational Education Research Project on Teaching Reform in Tourism Education (2021LYHZWZ001).” We will be explaining in detail here. The “first-class universities and disciplines in tourism management discipline (project) in Guangxi, China” was a project of the university that the authors are working in. The Guilin Tourism University-China ASEAN Research Centre is one of the research centers that the authors Dr. Jinsheng (Jason) Zhu are working with. The “Guangxi Tourism Vocational Education Teaching Steering Committee - 2021 Tourism Vocational Education Research Project on Teaching Reform in Tourism Education” is one of the research projects undertaken by Dr. Jinsheng (Jason) Zhu. Here we would like to restate that both the authors are working and taking salaries in Guilin Tourism University, the institution we disclosed in the author title page. However, “The university and the funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript”. We've returned your manuscript to your account. Please resolve these issues and resubmit your manuscript within 21 days. If you need more time, please email the journal office at plosone@plos.org. We are happy to grant extensions of up to one month past this due date. If we do not hear from you within 21 days, we will withdraw your manuscript. Please log on to PLOS Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ to access your manuscript. You will find your manuscript in the 'Submissions Sent Back to Author' link under the New Submissions menu. Be sure to remove your previous manuscript file if you are uploading a new file in response to these requests. After you've made the changes requested above, please be sure to view and approve the revised PDF after rebuilding the PDF to complete the resubmission process. We are requesting these changes to comply with the PLOS ONE submission guidelines (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines). Please note that we won't send your manuscript for review until you have resolved the above requests. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting our mission of Open Science. Kind regards, Richard Ibañez Dilla PLOS ONE Once again, thank you for your kind consideration! With sincere regards, Jinsheng (Jason) ZHU, PhD / Shushu WANG Guilin Tourism University Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274989.r002
25 Jul 2022 Decision Letter - István Tarrósy, Editor PONE-D-22-11647R1Internationalization, cultural appreciation and institutional governmentality for quality control in transnational higher education cooperation: An empirical assessmentPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Wang, 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 was happy to see that the original submission was improved, but still more thorough work needs to be done, especially, as Reviwer 1 also underscores, the data analysis and the results section must be improved. Please, also take sufficient time to compose your sound rebuttal to all the questions, critical remarks articulated by the reviewers. If these are then accepted, I can support the acceptance of your article for publication.============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 08 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, István Tarrósy, PhD 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. [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 ******** 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: Partly 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: No 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 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 must commend the authors for the hard work in revising the current manuscript. While I have seen that the authors have provided some additional information to the original version of their work, I think that there are some outstanding issues that needs to be resolved. First the authors should avoid abbreviations. For example on page 4 (literature review, line 1) the authors indicate that, “before delving into the challenges posed by the globalization of higher education, we'd want to….” The sentence should read as, “before delving into the challenges posed by the globalization of higher education, we would want to…..” Secondly, information on the process used to analyze the data is very scanty. Seeing that that authors followed a systematic investigation process, readers should be informed about how the codes were developed into the three main themes. This comment was contained in my earlier review report but they have not been addressed in the revised study. Lastly I still do not see an improvement in the results section where the narratives of the focus group participants are captured in the findings section. Reviewer #2: The authors have successfully managed to revise their paper according to the recommendations. The revised sections (Literature Review, The internationalization of higher education, Research site and research methodology) have made this research article more suitable for publication from a theoretical and empirical point of view. It is also acceptable that the authors have only provided a summary of thoughts contributed by the interviewed participants. This does not reduce the academic quality of this paper. It is understandable to take into account the word limit. This paper will enrich the academic literature dealing with the internationalization of higher education with a special focus on quality control. I highly recommend the authors to continue their research and extend it to other Chinese universities which have a transnational cooperation in the field of tourism. ****** 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274989.r003
Revision 2
9 Aug 2022 Author Response I was happy to see that the original submission was improved, but still more thorough work needs to be done, especially, as Reviwer 1 also underscores, the data analysis and the results section must be improved. Please, also take sufficient time to compose your sound rebuttal to all the questions, critical remarks articulated by the reviewers. If these are then accepted, I can support the acceptance of your article for publication. Thank you so much, Dr. István Tarrósy, for your encouragement and consideration for the publication of the current paper. Your encouragement helps us a lot in the process of drafting, revising and final publication of this academic work, which we believe will be contributing to the topic of transnational higher education collaborations, quality guarantee, as well as cultural connectedness. We also believe that this paper will get high citations in the near future! In the following response to the reviewers, we started to response to the reviewer from page 5, starting from the comments of the first reviewer. Looking forward to hearing from you! Yours, Wang 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 must commend the authors for the hard work in revising the current manuscript. While I have seen that the authors have provided some additional information to the original version of their work, I think that there are some outstanding issues that needs to be resolved. First the authors should avoid abbreviations. For example on page 4 (literature review, line 1) the authors indicate that, “before delving into the challenges posed by the globalization of higher education, we'd want to….” The sentence should read as, “before delving into the challenges posed by the globalization of higher education, we would want to…..” Secondly, information on the process used to analyze the data is very scanty. Seeing that that authors followed a systematic investigation process, readers should be informed about how the codes were developed into the three main themes. This comment was contained in my earlier review report but they have not been addressed in the revised study. Lastly I still do not see an improvement in the results section where the narratives of the focus group participants are captured in the findings section. Response to reviewer #1：Thank you so much for your comments. We are strictly considering your comments and revised the manuscript according to your criticisms point-by-point here below. 1. We have revised the unappropriated abbreviations according to your suggestion. 2. With regard to the investigative material, we have thoughtfully selected some of the obtained original interview data for inclusion in the manuscript, which resulted in an increase of more than one thousand words to the total word count. This does not constitute a violation of the standards set out by the prestigious publication Plos One since they do not take into account the word count. 3. In the beginning, as a result of our interview that took a full year to complete from the voice recording to the transcription to the words, we gathered a total of around fifty thousand words. As a result of this, we came to the conclusion that your responses are of the highest significance. As a consequence of this, we decided to use interview data to complement the key arguments presented in each area of the article, most notably the results section. Thus, the result section turned out to be the current form. We hope you appreciate its intellectual worth in this run of review. We are really grateful for your views and intellectual insights. Reviewer #2: The authors have successfully managed to revise their paper according to the recommendations. The revised sections (Literature Review, The internationalization of higher education, Research site and research methodology) have made this research article more suitable for publication from a theoretical and empirical point of view. It is also acceptable that the authors have only provided a summary of thoughts contributed by the interviewed participants. This does not reduce the academic quality of this paper. It is understandable to take into account the word limit. This paper will enrich the academic literature dealing with the internationalization of higher education with a special focus on quality control. I highly recommend the authors to continue their research and extend it to other Chinese universities which have a transnational cooperation in the field of tourism. Response to reviewer #2：Thank you so much for your complements! We will be very very willing to extend our research to a wilder range of scope in the near future. We hope to work with you in the near future, haha! https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274989.r004
8 Sep 2022 Decision Letter - István Tarrósy, Editor Internationalization, cultural appreciation and institutional governmentality for quality control in transnational higher education cooperation: An empirical assessment PONE-D-22-11647R2 Dear Dr. Wang, 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, István Tarrósy, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): As long as all the comments of the reviewers have been addressed neatly, which they (especially Reviewer 1) also accepted, and I can also see that the manuscript has improved a lot, I wish to support the publication of the paper in the journal. 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 ******** 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 ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: 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 ****** 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 ****** 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 must congratulate the authors for the hard work. The revised manuscript looks good. I wish them all the best with their future research. ****** 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: Yaw Owusu-Agyeman ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274989.r005
Formally Accepted
12 Sep 2022 Acceptance Letter - István Tarrósy, Editor PONE-D-22-11647R2 Internationalization, cultural appreciation and institutional governmentality for quality control in transnational higher education cooperation: An empirical assessment Dear Dr. Wang: 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. István Tarrósy Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274989.r006

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 .