Peer Review History

Original SubmissionOctober 12, 2022
Decision Letter - Bo Huang, Editor

PONE-D-22-26169Influence of Farmland Confirmation on Farmland Abandonment in ChinaInfluence of Farmland Confirmation on Farmland Abandonment in ChinaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wolin Zheng,

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Bo Huang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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” The work was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (No.20&ZD170); and Academic year 2019-2020 Doctoral Dissertation Scholarship of Tsinghua Rural Studies (No.201901);and Qingyuan City Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project for 2022: "Research on Eco-logical Asset Assessment and its Value Realization Path in Qingyuan City" (QYSK2022018);and Research on Social Responsibility Development of Private Enterprises in Foshan and the Motiva-tion Mechanism of Participating in Rural Revitalization" (2022-GJ056).”

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“The work was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (No.20&ZD170); and Academic year 2019-2020 Doctoral Dissertation Scholarship of Tsinghua Rural Studies (No.201901);and Qingyuan City Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project for 2022: "Research on Eco-logical Asset Assessment and its Value Realization Path in Qingyuan City" (QYSK2022018);and Research on Social Responsibility Development of Private Enterprises in Foshan and the Motiva-tion Mechanism of Participating in Rural Revitalization" (2022-GJ056).”

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8. Please ensure that you refer to Figure 2 in your text as, if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the figure

[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

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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: 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: 1. The explained variable uses "whether farmers give up farmland, only using yes or no, but some people have not completely given up farmland. Whether we are considering whether we can use several options to distinguish intensity, which can more accurately reflect farmers' attitude to farmland. Even if there is a robust test, the measurement of this variable is not appropriate.

2. There is no econometric model in the paper.

Reviewer #2: Very good topic and timely to the moment and well presented. However, there are minor things to consider for the paper to be ready for publication. Please kindly read the authors guide and appropriately correct the minor grammatical errors in the paper in order to make it more suitable to the journal. And also consider sections titles and numbering. Also, the authors need to present the analytical framework in detail supported by literature, define and describe the variables used in the study and explain the model employed.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Essiagnon John-Philippe Alavo

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Revision 1

Dear Editors, Dr. Essiagnon John-Philippe Alavo and Reviewers:

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled "Influence of Farmland Confirmation on Farmland Abandonment in China" (ID: PONE-D-22-26169). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. We upload two manuscript, one of which is a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes' and the other one is a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. Revised portion are marked in red in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the comments are as following:

1. 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.

We have checked our intake and removed the ethics statement from other locations.

2. Please ensure that you have specified (1) whether consent was informed and (2) 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. 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.

Data Availability Statement: China Labor Force Dynamic Survey (CLDS) is a publicly available dataset. When applying for the right to use the data, the data user should provide true personal information to the Social Science Research Center of Sun Yat-sen University (hereinafter referred to as the “Data Provider”) and submit the completed “Basic Information of Data User Applicant Form” to the “Data Provider” via csyjzxsys@163.com, by fax or by mail to the “Data Provider”.

Ethics statement: Our research does not involve human participants.

3. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming.

We carefully read the PLOS ONE style templates and edit our manuscript according to the guidelines for main body, affiliations and file naming to ensure our revised manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements.

4.Thank you for stating in your Funding Statement:Please provide an amended statement that declares *all* the funding or sources of support (whether external or internal to your organization) received during this study, as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now. Please also include the statement “There was no additional external funding received for this study.” in your updated Funding Statement.

We carefully read a lot of articles from PLOS ONE and modified our funding statement.

“Funding: This work was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (No.20&ZD170); and the Major projects of National Social Science Found of China (21&ZD090);and Academic year 2019-2020 Doctoral Dissertation Scholarship of Tsinghua Rural Studies (No.201901).The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

5. Thank you for stating the following in your Competing Interests section: Please complete your Competing Interests on the online submission form to state any Competing Interests. If you have no competing interests, please state "The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.", as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now

This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

We carefully read a lot of articles from PLOS ONE and modified our competing interests.

“Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.”

6. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager.

We have validated the ORCID ID in Editorial Manager.

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

We have removed the funding-related text from the manuscript and update our Funding Statement in our cover letter.

“Funding: This work was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (No.20&ZD170); and the Major projects of National Social Science Found of China (21&ZD090);and Academic year 2019-2020 Doctoral Dissertation Scholarship of Tsinghua Rural Studies (No.201901).The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

8. Please ensure that you refer to Figure 2 in your text as, if accepted, production will need this reference to link the reader to the figure.

We are sorry for the omission of Figure 2 in the article and we have clarified the placement of in our text.

9. We note that several of your files are duplicated on your submission. Please remove any unnecessary or old files from your revision, and make sure that only those relevant to the current version of the manuscript are included.

We are sorry for this mistake and correct it in our submission.

10. Please ensure that you have specified (1) whether consent was informed and (2) 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.

Informed consent: We used the data of the China Labor-Force Dynamic Survey (CLDS). The CLDS was granted ethical approval from the Research Ethics Committees of the Social Science Research Center of Sun Yat-sen University. All subjects signed written informed consent before the interview.

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13. We note your Data Availability Statement as follows:

We have upload our underlying data as Supporting information files in Editorial Manager and update our Data Availability Statement.

Data Availability Statement: China Labor-Force Dynamic Survey (CLDS) is a publicly available dataset. When applying for the right to use the data, the data user should provide true personal information to the Social Science Research Center of Sun Yat-sen University (hereinafter referred to as the "Data Provider") and submit the completed "Basic Information of Data User Applicant Form" to the "Data Provider" via csyjzxsys@163.com, by fax or by mail to the "Data Provider".

Response to Reviewer #1:

Thank you for your careful and thoughtful examination of our paper. Incorporating your comments, as well as those of the Editor, and the other referee, resulted in a greatly improved manuscript. We address each of your comments below.

1. The explained variable uses "whether farmers give up farmland, only using yes or no, but some people have not completely given up farmland. Whether we are considering whether we can use several options to distinguish intensity, which can more accurately reflect farmers' attitude to farmland. Even if there is a robust test, the measurement of this variable is not appropriate.

In our explained variable "whether farmers give up farmland", the use of no means that the farmland has been abandoned. In order to differentiate the intensity, we use the specific number of farmers abandoned (Waste area of cultivated land and Irrigated land abandoned) in our robust test to differentiate the intensity and thus verify the robustness of our study.

2. There is no econometric model in the paper.

We have added to the econometric model in the paper.

To validate the influence of Farmland Confirmation on Farmland Abandonment, we consider the following model:

Y=β0+β1Farmland confirmation+β2Control variables+ɛ (1)

In Eq. (1), Y is the explained variable, and Farmland confirmation is the Explanatory variable. Control variables is a set of control variables and ɛ denotes the error term.

Response to Dr.Essiagnon John-Philippe Alavo

Thank you for your careful and thoughtful examination of our paper. Incorporating your comments, as well as those of the Editor, and the other referee, resulted in a greatly improved manuscript. We address each of your comments below.

Very good topic and timely to the moment and well presented. However, there are minor things to consider for the paper to be ready for publication. Please kindly read the authors guide and appropriately correct the minor grammatical errors in the paper in order to make it more suitable to the journal. And also consider sections titles and numbering. Also, the authors need to present the analytical framework in detail supported by literature, define and describe the variables used in the study and explain the model employed.

Firstly, we carefully read the authors guide from PLOS ONE and edit our manuscript according to the guidelines for main body to ensure our revised manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements. Secondly,we read our paper carefully and corrected the minor grammatical errors in the paper. Thirdly, we carefully angled and numbered the titles of our paper. Fourthly,we present the analytical framework in detail supported by literature and provide Figure 1 and Figure 2 to help the reader understand the idea of our study. Finally, we define and describe the variables used in the study and explain the model employed.

Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the editor and all the reviewers for the extremely helpful comments and for your guidance in the revision. We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. We hope that our efforts have succeeded in allaying your concerns. We look forward to learning about your decision. And we express our thanks again to the referee for his time and efforts in reviewing our paper. Any remaining errors are our own.

Thank you and best regards.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Bo Huang, Editor

Influence of Farmland Confirmation on Farmland Abandonment in China

PONE-D-22-26169R1

Dear Dr. Wolin Zheng,

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,

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 #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 #2: Yes

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

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 #2: 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 #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 #2: All the comments are well addressed and the manuscript style has been improved. After minor edit of the English it can 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 #2: Yes: Essiagnon John-Philippe Alavo

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Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Bo Huang, Editor

PONE-D-22-26169R1

Influence of Farmland Confirmation on Farmland Abandonment in China

Dear Dr. Zheng:

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

Professor Bo Huang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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