PONE-D-22-33342Fresh Keeping Decision and Coordination of Fresh Agricultural Products Supply Chain under Carbon Cap-and-TradePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Yao,

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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Bo Huang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Yes

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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: No

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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: Taking the fresh agricultural produce supply chain as the research object, this paper analyzes the impact of carbon cap-and-trade policy on suppliers' preservation decisions and further designs contracts to achieve Pareto improvement of preservation efforts and supply chain benefits.

Under carbon cap-and-trade policy, this paper provides some interesting insights on the suppliers' fresh-keeping decision-making rule and coordination contracts. The discussion on preservation efforts and supply chain benefits under different models is of some practical value. However, I consider that many of the main points in this paper are explained very vaguely. I provide detailed comments and suggestions below.

Major comments：

1. The inspiration and significance of the manuscript should be added after the abstract.

2. In the Introduction, 1st paragraph must support a practical example of which support the problem descriptions. A potential suggestion to the author/s is to support the importance of a title with some practical examples. However, it seems to be so vague that it lacks credibility.

3. In the Introduction, you need to connect the state of the art to your paper goals. Please follow the literature review by a clear and concise state of the art analysis. This should clearly show the knowledge gaps identified and link them to your paper goals. Please reason both the novelty and the relevance of your paper goals. Clearly discuss what the previous studies that you are referring to. What are the Research Gaps/Contributions? Please note that the paper may not be considered further without a clear research gap and novelty of the study.

4. The paper does not provide any background information about the carbon cap-and-trade policy. Hence, it makes the paper not very coherent, and difficult to follow. Please give a specific explanation of the technical term "the carbon cap-and-trade policy" in the manuscript. Additionally, the link between policy implementation and fresh produce preservation should be discussed in depth.

5. In Example Analysis section, all the figures are so vague that it is impossible to distinguish the exact meaning after reading them. Please upload figures in strict accordance with the journal format.

6. The conclusion is very weak. Please make sure your conclusions' section underscores the scientific value-added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your findings/results. Highlight the novelty of your study. In addition to summarizing the actions taken and results, please strengthen the explanation of their significance. It is recommended to use quantitative reasoning comparing with appropriate benchmarks, especially those stemming from previous work.

7. Please add a discussion section to discuss whether other similar studies are consistent with the results of this study and, if so, to analyze the causes.

8. The writing of the paper needs a lot of improvement in terms of grammar, spelling, and presentations. The paper needs careful English polishing since there are many typos and poorly written sentences.

Minor comments:

1. In the abstract part of the manuscript, the research results should be clearer.

2. Section 3 and section 4 are somewhat related to each other. For conciseness, it is better to combine them together.

3. The authors should recheck the formula numbers. The numbering of the formulas is discontinuous, particularly in Section 4.2. I did not find formulas (6), (9) and (11) in the manuscript. It is highly recommended that the authors proofread the paper carefully for clarity.

4. There are no Supporting Information files in the submitted manuscript. Please add data sources to ensure data availability.

Reviewer #2: You can add more latest references to defend your research, as latest research has been done on this topic, so providing more information will be useful for the readers, you can also quote the new research under way on the related research by other scholars

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Fresh keeping decision and coordination of fresh agricultural products supply chain under carbon cap-and-trade

PONE-D-22-33342R1

Dear Dr. Guanxin Yao,

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.

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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,

Bo Huang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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

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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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

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

Reviewer #1: The author carefully revised their manuscript. Fortunately, the quality of this manuscript has improved significantly.

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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

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