PONE-D-23-05180Spatial-temporal differences and influencing factors of coupling coordination between urban quality and technological innovation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay AreaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wu,

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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Shi Yin

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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: 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: Dear Authors:

Taking the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area as an example, this paper analyzes the temporal and spatial differences and influencing factors of the coupling and coordination of urban quality and technological innovation. The research topic has research significance. The research method of the article is scientific, and the analysis is detailed. These are worthy of recognition, but there are also some problems, which are put forward for the author's reference:

1 The biggest problem in this article is the lack of theoretical analysis. The article lacks a theoretical analysis mechanism for the relationship between urban quality and technological innovation. That is, before quantitative analysis, it is necessary to construct how the relationship between urban quality and technological innovation affects. The above leads to the following quantitative analysis. It is recommended to add this part

2 The analysis in the quantitative results part lacks theoretical support, and it is suggested to supplement it.

3 The article did not carry out descriptive statistics on the variables used, including maximum value, minimum value, sample size, etc.

4 This article lacks a discussion section, which explains the marginal contribution and research limitations of the article.

5 The language section needs revision.

Kind regards

Reviewer #2: There are still many obvious problems in the paper, especially in the content style, which needs to be greatly revised.

First of all, the third part of the paper, the research results, does not give the research results, but only describes the calculation process, and the results is presented in the fourth part.

Secondly, the fourth part is not a real paper discussion, but now it is mainly the result of the research, and the discussion needs in-depth consideration.

Third, the conclusion of the fifth part is too much and needs to be condensed.

Fourth, the details of the article still need to be carefully revised, such as punctuation, such as the writing of digital units.

Reviewer #3: I found the paper entitled ‘’Spatial-temporal differences and influencing factors of coupling coordination between urban quality and technological innovation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area’’ valuable, since it measures the coupling relationship between urban quality and science and technology innovation using the coupling coordination model, explores the state characteristics and spatial structure of the linkage between the two using trend surface analysis and standard deviation ellipse analysis. While this article has enough value to be published, there are some issues that to be addressed: as follows.

(1) Page 3, Paragraph 1, Line 3-5: ‘’In 2021, China's urbanization rate will have reached 64.72%’’. Please check the tense and grammar of this sentence.

(2) Page 3, Paragraph 2, Line 5: ‘’are of great significance to deepening the cooperation’’. Please check the grammar of this sentence.

Please have your paper being edited by a native English speaker who is either your friend or from an Editing company.

(3) Page 7, Paragraph 2, Line 1: The definition of entropy needs to be cited.

(4) Page 8: Correct the denominator of the formula (2).

(5) Page 10, Paragraph 3: Why the values of a and b were set as 0.5?

(6) Page 14, Paragraph 2: How the trend surface is obtained? If it was obtained by the least squares approach, how are the parameters of formula (14) determined? How to determine the parameters are the most suitable?

(7) Page 17, Paragraph 1, Line 6:’’OLS’’ should be defined for the first time in the paper.

(8) Page 17, Paragraph 1: It’s better to add a figure to compare GWR model and OLS model.

(9) Page 20, Paragraph 2: Why the q value of human capital is the lowest?

(10) Page 21, Paragraph 1, Line 15: What are the three industries?

(11) Page 31-32: There are two Figure 4. Furthermore, the quality of second Figure 4 should be increased. Legends are not readable.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Anlu Zhang

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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PONE-D-23-05180R1Spatial-temporal differences and influencing factors of coupling coordination between urban quality and technological innovation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay AreaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Wu,

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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 19 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-emailutm_source=authorlettersutm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Shi Yin

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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 #3: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #4: (No Response)

Reviewer #5: (No Response)

Reviewer #6: 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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: No

Reviewer #6: Partly

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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: N/A

Reviewer #6: 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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: No

Reviewer #6: 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 #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: No

Reviewer #6: 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 #3: No problem, you can revise the sentence logic again，With regard to the issues raised by the reviewers, the authors have made detailed changes

Reviewer #4: The authors investigate the coupling coordination relationship between urban quality and technological innovation in GBA. This work investigates them from entropy TOPSIS, coupling coordination models, the gravity center and standard deviation ellipse method, the geographic probe, the GWR, and other methods method. The method is propriated. However, there are a few details to be considered.

1. The language section still needs revision. Such as line 450, 453, and etc. I suggest the authors check the manuscript carefully.

2. There are several papers study the sustainable development in GBA, such as https://doi.org/10.3846/tede.2022.16618, https://doi.org/10.1111/grow.12636. It should include in the manuscript.

Reviewer #5: Dear Author/Editor:

Based on entropy TOPSIS, coupling coordination models, and other methods, this paper explored the spatial variation and influencing factors of the coupling coordination relationship between urban quality and technology innovation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area from 2011 to 2020. The article is relatively innovative in its research perspective, extensive in its content, and clear in its graphical presentation, but several important issues affect its publication:

1）The article has a large number of grammatical problems and unclear expressions, for example in the methodology section and the overview of the study area.

2) The article's theoretical value and practical significance are not significant, and the coupling relationship between urban quality and science and technology innovation is not very clearly expressed.

3)Article title and main content need to be consistent. For instance， “technological innovation”、“Science and technology innovation”.

4) The data sources are not clearly expressed in part, and some data need to be supplemented with specific websites and references. Also, how are the data for Macau and Hong Kong handled? There is the problem of exchange rate conversion.

5) The indicator system of urban quality and technological innovation is not explained clearly. Some important references are missing. And the indicator system needs to be by the characteristics and actual situation of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

6)The results analysis section is relatively weak, and no in-depth excavation has been carried out. In particular, there is no summary and practical analysis of the coupling characteristics and influencing factors of urban quality and technological innovation.

7) There are too many words in the discussion section, there are some contents that can be put inside the result analysis.

Reviewer #6: The authors have made revisions to the article as required, and the overall level of publication has been reached

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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 #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

Reviewer #5: No

Reviewer #6: 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.]

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.

PONE-D-23-05180R2Spatial-temporal differences and influencing factors of coupling coordination between urban quality and technology innovation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay AreaPLOS 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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 18 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-emailutm_source=authorlettersutm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Shi Yin

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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 #7: (No Response)

Reviewer #8: 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 #7: Yes

Reviewer #8: Yes

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

Reviewer #7: Yes

Reviewer #8: 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 #7: Yes

Reviewer #8: 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 #7: Yes

Reviewer #8: 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 #7: The manuscript conducts a series of analysis on the subject of the coupling coordination between urban quality and technology innovation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The topic is interesting and worthy of research. The manuscript does extensive research in terms of content, but I still have several concerns which are listed in the following.

1. The time duration on the study is from 2011 to 2020. Are there any specific reasons for choosing this duration?

2. The manuscript does a bunch of analysis, but the structure or relationship between the analysis is not clearly described. As a result, it seems that the analysis is combined by a series of pieces with weak connections. It is better to have a figure to present the logic structure on all the analysis.

3. Some of the analysis results are lack of suitable discussions on their implications and reasons. For example, in the analysis of spatial heterogeneity based on GWR, most results shown in the manuscript are the statistical analysis. The authors are expected to discuss why the coefficients estimated from the models are different for different regions.

Reviewer #8: (1)It is recommended to cite some references from 2023.

(2)It is recommended to beautify Figure 1.

(3)The description of the study area should be as brief as possible

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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 #7: No

Reviewer #8: 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.]

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.

Spatial-temporal differences and influencing factors of coupling coordination between urban quality and technology innovation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area

PONE-D-23-05180R3

Dear Dr. Fangfang 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,

C. A. Zúniga-González, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Dear author I am checked that you have addresses all reviewers' observations. My sincere congratulations!!!!!!!

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 #4: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #5: 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 #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: 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

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: 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 #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: 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: Dear authors :

Thank you for your revise and the revised article is good and it is recommended to publish it

Kind regards

Reviewer #4: After careful consideration, we have no further comments and it is suitable for publication as it currently stands. Therefore, my decision is "ACCEPT."

Reviewer #5: The article has made some modifications, added the roadmap and framework of the article, and has a certain depth to the conclusion.

Agree to accept.

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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.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #4: No

Reviewer #5: No

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