Peer Review History

Original SubmissionSeptember 28, 2022
Decision Letter - Jun Yang, Editor

PONE-D-22-26849Research on the characteristics and influencing factors of Beijing - Tianjin - Hebei urban network structure from the perspective of listed manufacturing enterprisesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Miao,

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.

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Kind regards,

Jun Yang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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"Science and Technology Research Fund of Hebei Normal University: Structural Evolution and Regional Collaborative Development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Economic Network (Project No. L2020Z07)."

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Additional Editor Comments:

Reviewer 1

This study presents a case study takes the county-level administrative units in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region as the research object, and uses the subordinate connection model and social network analysis method to analyze the spatial structure characteristics and influencing factors of the urban network in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The topic is interesting and practical, but I recommend the authors to address the following issues:

1. It is better to supplement the analysis of spatial correlation characteristics between parent companies and subsidiaries of different types of manufacturing enterprises;

2. It is suggested to arrange the contents according to the distribution characteristics of enterprises, spatial correlation analysis, network characteristics analysis, influencing factors, etc.

Reviewer 2

This paper explores the spatial structure characteristics and influencing factors of the urban network in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and several interesting findings are presented which have practical significance in improving the regional integration in China. Several revisions are required before moving to the further step.

1.Although the introduction section of the paper mentioned the construction of urban network by talking affiliation model, the reasons and significance of choosing listed manufacturing industry are not clearly discussed. More elaboration should be given to echo the title of this paper.

2.The dividing evidences of hierarchical network (3.3) are not clear enough. More elaboration are reqiured.

3.Although rich literature has been reviewed in this study, there is few dialogue between the empirical findings and literature. More theoretical discussion are suggested to be given in this paper, so as to highlight the theoretical contribution of this paper.

4.Professional language editing is required to express the ideas accurately.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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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: Yes

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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: This study presents a case study takes the county-level administrative units in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region as the research object, and uses the subordinate connection model and social network analysis method to analyze the spatial structure characteristics and influencing factors of the urban network in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The topic is interesting and practical, but I recommend the authors to address the following issues:

1. It is better to supplement the analysis of spatial correlation characteristics between parent companies and subsidiaries of different types of manufacturing enterprises;

2. It is suggested to arrange the contents according to the distribution characteristics of enterprises, spatial correlation analysis, network characteristics analysis, influencing factors, etc.

Reviewer #2: This paper explores the spatial structure characteristics and influencing factors of the urban network in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and several interesting findings are presented which have practical significance in improving the regional integration in China. Several revisions are required before moving to the further step.

1.Although the introduction section of the paper mentioned the construction of urban network by talking affiliation model, the reasons and significance of choosing listed manufacturing industry are not clearly discussed. More elaboration should be given to echo the title of this paper.

2.The dividing evidences of hierarchical network (3.3) are not clear enough. More elaboration are reqiured.

3.Although rich literature has been reviewed in this study, there is few dialogue between the empirical findings and literature. More theoretical discussion are suggested to be given in this paper, so as to highlight the theoretical contribution of this paper.

4.Professional language editing is required to express the ideas accurately.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Revision 1

Reviewer #1:

Response 1:We thank the reviewers for raising this issue, and we have added the spatial structure of urban networks of subtypes of listed manufacturing enterprises to lines 323-351 of the manuscript, and added graphical information to facilitate a more intuitive response to the spatial association characteristics among the sub-parent companies of different types of manufacturing enterprises.

Response 2:①The distribution characteristics of enterprises are described in lines 182-230 of the manuscript.

②We believe that spatial association analysis and network characteristics are inseparable, so we describe these two parts in the chapter of "Spatial Structure Analysis of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei City Network". The node characteristics and overall network characteristics of the city network systematically analyze the spatial association of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei districts and counties (lines 238-295 of the manuscript), and then describe the characteristics of the city network in detail by level, type and molecular group (lines 296-379 of the manuscript).

③The final influencing factors are analyzed in lines 380-479 of the manuscript.

Reviewer #2:

Response 1: We appreciate the reviewers' careful reading of the text. Based on his/her suggestions, we have added the reasons and significance of the choice of listed manufacturing companies in the introduction section of the manuscript, in lines 88-91 of the full text.

Response 2: The issue you raised is very worthy of our consideration. The previous ranking of connection strength carries its own subjective idea and the basis of division is unclear, after referring to relevant literature and considering the number of connections in the city network of listed manufacturing enterprises in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, the hierarchical network is re-divided. The strength of connections between districts and counties in the network is ranked from high to low, and the top 10%, top 10%~50% and top 50%~100% network connection pairs are extracted respectively. The purpose of this division is to simplify the network analysis and facilitate a clearer description of the network characteristics at each level. For details, see lines 296-322 of the manuscript.

Response 3: Based on reviewers' suggestions, we have added a dialogue with the literature in the manuscript.

①Page 17, lines 290-293, cites Sun Zhijing's original work, which compares and analyzes manufacturing firms in the Yangtze River Delta region with those in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

References are: 39. Sun Zhijing. Research on urban network structure in the Yangtze River Delta region based on multiple perspectives[D]. East China Normal University, 2020. https://doi.org/10.27149/d.cnki.ghdsu.2020.000422

②Page 18, lines 315-319, cites Yu Qian's findings based on inter-firm fund transaction data to study the intra-Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei network structure, which validates this paper's Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei network structure.

References are: 40.Yu Qian.Research on the evolution of the internal network structure ofthe three major urban agglomerations in China[D].Fujian Normal University, 2021. https://doi.org/10.27019/d.cnki.gfjsu.2021.000573

Response 4: This section was revised by ourselves, and then we consulted experts and scholars in related fields for guidance on the content of the article; we do not list the changes here, but in the revised document has been marked out.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Jun Yang, Editor

Research on the characteristics and influencing factors of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban network structure from the perspective of listed manufacturing enterprises

PONE-D-22-26849R1

Dear Dr. Miao,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Jun Yang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Accept

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors have adequately addressed most of the comments raised in a previous round of my review and I think that this manuscript should be accepted for publication.

Reviewer #2: The author have conducted a fully and effective repsonse to my comments and suggestions. Consequently, it is suggested to be published.

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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

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Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Jun Yang, Editor

PONE-D-22-26849R1

Research on the characteristics and influencing factors of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban network structure from the perspective of listed manufacturing enterprises

Dear Dr. Miao:

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. Jun Yang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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