PONE-D-22-30804Knowledge exchange in the implementation of National Environmental Programmes (NEPs) in China: A complex picturePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kong,

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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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Peter Edwards

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

I would like to thank the authors for their manuscript.

The reviewers have noted that it is generally well written, but have highlighted a number of areas where improvements could be made. In particular, the methodology should be improved, and a thorough copy edit and language check should be conducted.

I would encourage the authors to carefully consider and respond to all of the reviewers comments.

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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: N/A

Reviewer #2: No

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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: 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: In general, the paper is well written and definitely sheds light on an interesting and under-researched issue (in the geographical area, and also the study participants). It was very interesting to read the important role of village heads and some issues around junior and frontline scientists.

Some comments are:

1) the research methodology is interesting and the paper goes into some detail about the thematic analysis of the interviews and survey details, and whilst the paper states that the results are presented in an actor-oriented strategy, I really think that some more description of the themes and survey results, perhaps in a couple of tables and/or charts, would have benefitted the paper a lot.

2) The charts in the paper were very basic and could have had more detail and it would have been useful to have reported some simple non-random statistical analysis, such as crosstabes

3) The heading hierarchy in the article is confusing (i.e. page 7), and there are far too many sub-levels of headings, which are not reflected in the text

4) There is also inconsistent use of text formatting, such as bold, italics, quotation marks etc.

5) Some in-text references (i.e. page 4 but also other pages) give hyperlinks instead of correctly formatted references

6) The order given in section 3.1.1.3 regarding the ages of the farmers is given in a strange order (either report these results by ages or percentage in ascending or descending order)

7) The numbers next to the rather extensive list of quotes are rather confusing, it would have been useful to give a simple code to help with reading, such as "Farmer, 46" or similar

In conclusion, some more detail on the themes and survey responses/analysis other than just part of the text would really benefit the paper; as well as fixing the minor issues regarding formatting, heading hierarchy etc.

Reviewer #2: For the Last question above, I encourage the authors to run some copyediting of the manuscript.

See further my full review enclosed in the attached document. This includes my general comments and some more detailed comments on each of the Sections of the manuscript.

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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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[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.]

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Review Report for PONE-D-22-30804.docx

PONE-D-22-30804R1Knowledge exchange in the implementation of National Environmental Programmes (NEPs) in China: A complex picturePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kong,

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.

The reviewers are overall happy with the revisions that you have made. They have suggested a number of very minor edits - typographical errors and some points of clarification or definition. Please review the suggested edits and make any required minor amendments.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 05 2023 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,

Peter Edwards

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.

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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

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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: 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: (No Response)

**********

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: Thank you for the improvements, the manuscript is much improved. Some minor comments:

• P3, l65, specifies climate science, whereas the MS is not overtly about climate science

• P4, l75, street-level bureaucrats is not defined (is only done so later on) – should be clarified for an international audience

• P5, l103, insert ‘The’ before ‘Three’

• P5, l106, north-western is spelled with different initial capitals in another place in the document

• P5, from lines 111, might be worth a brief description on the levels of government in China

• P6, l 123, ‘afflicted’ is an incorrect term

• Methodology, ensure that is written consistently in the past tense (or the same tense throughout)

• Table 1 is poorly formatted

• P9, l201, clarify what is meant by ‘minors’

• Throughout the document, there is inconsistent use of quotes (either single, or double). Some words are also put in quotes unnecessarily (i.e. p33, l715, supply and demand)

• P13, l285, should be members

• Tables 3, 4 etc, the column with the text ‘person’ is confusing, not sure what it means

• P17, l379 etc, should Mandarin be capitalised?

• P18, l393, incorrect in-text reference

• Table 5, improve the formatting (justify text under the bullet points)

• P26, l563, ideally, do not start a sentence with ‘Actually’

A map showing the broad areas (the research stations) would be useful

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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

**********

[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.

Knowledge exchange in the implementation of National Environmental Programmes (NEPs) in China: A complex picture

PONE-D-22-30804R2

Dear Dr. Kong,

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,

Peter Edwards

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: