PONE-D-23-25349A Study on the Measurement of Inter-provincial Trade Costs in Yangtze River Delta from the Perspective of Value Added Trade and its Promotion EffectPLOS 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Imran Ur Rahman, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Thank you for submitting your article on the Measurement of Inter-provincial Trade Costs in Yangtze River Delta. The research is sound and has possible policy implications, but it needs major revisions, which are recommended as follows:

1. The authors should further enhance the theoretical argument and contributions in the introduction section. This will help readers who are not familiar with the topic to better understand the research direction.

2. The literature review should be enhanced by adding more literature studies and providing relevant citations. It can be further enriched with up-to-date studies to motivate the readers in the background and currency of the subject of the research.

3. The author should check and provide references/citations for all the sources used in the research.

4. The methodology section needs improvements; The authors should further clarify and justify their choice of methods used. If possible, the author should provide additional pre/post estimation tests for the validations of the results.

5. Presentation of the summary of descriptive statistics (Data) in a tabulated form is also recommended, which is missing in the article.

6. The discussion on the results can be explained and enhanced with reference to previous literature studies and outcomes. It will provide further validity to the outcomes with regards to the literature outcomes.

7. The language of the paper needs careful editing and proofreading to improve readability. The authors should recheck the format of the paper including the headings and subheadings. For instance, there is a Chinese Text under Section IV- (iii).

8. Please enhance the conclusion by further clarifying the limitations and future research directions.

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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: 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: Dear Authors,

Thank You for submitting the article "A Study on the Measurement of Inter-provincial Trade Costs in Yangtze River Delta from the Perspective of Value Added Trade and its Promotion Effect".

The relevance of the study is to measure inter-provincial trade costs in the Yangtze River Delta using value added trade data and explore the promotion effect of inter-provincial trade costs on inter-provincial trade development in the region.

The research gap is that previous studies measured inter-provincial trade costs using traditional trade flow data which contains double counting. This study uses value added trade data to address this issue.

The research aim is to objectively measure inter-provincial trade costs in the Yangtze River Delta and analyze the contribution effect of inter-provincial trade costs to the growth of inter-provincial trade flows in the region.

The methodology used is Novy (2013) model with improved value added trade data and differential decomposition method.

Based on the information provided in the document, the authors' contributions in the theoretical sense are:

Renxiang Lu: Contributed to the theoretical framework of using the Novy (2013) model with value added trade data to objectively measure inter-provincial trade costs in the Yangtze River Delta.

Yang Wang: Contributed to the theoretical development of using the differential decomposition method to explore the contribution effect of inter-provincial trade costs on inter-provincial trade development.

Huanyue Tong: Likely contributed to refining and extending the theoretical frameworks proposed by the other two authors to specifically analyze inter-provincial trade costs and their effects in the context of the Yangtze River Delta region of China.

The citations are adequate and sufficient.

However I'd like to recommend some improvements in the Discussion section.

The Discussion section could recommend adding discussion of sustainability concept, such as discussing how reducing inter-provincial trade costs through deeper division of labor and cooperation can promote more sustainable development of the Yangtze River Delta region in the long run.

Reviewer #2: There are no convincing explanations about the reason and importance of choosing the analysis method you used in your analysis.

Your in-text citations and your bibliography are not compatible. I wrote next to some of your citations that they are not in the bibliography. You should check them all.

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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: Yes: Sergey Barykin

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-23-25349_reviewer (Sept.23).pdf

PONE-D-23-25349R1A Study on the Measurement of Inter-provincial Trade Costs in Yangtze River Delta from the Perspective of Value-Added Trade and its Promotion EffectPLOS 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. The authors have addressed the majority of the recommendations, but there are still some minor changes that need to be made. Please check the detailed comments at the end of this email.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 29 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,

Imran Ur Rahman, Ph.D

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.

Additional Editor Comments:

The authors have addressed the majority of the recommendations, but there are a few minor changes I would suggest to improve the outlook of the paper.

1) The authors have already added the limitations of the research in the conclusion section, but it needs to be brief and specific as some explanations can be part of the discussion section. I would suggest that the authors provide specific key points and recommendations briefly in the conclusion section.

2) Although the authors have addressed grammatical errors and enhanced the language of the article, it still needs proofreading and editing.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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: 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 #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: Thank You for improving the manuscript. I can see the changes made. The sustainability issues are very significant.

Reviewer #2: Dear Author,

All comments have been addressed. Citation and method description arrangements have been made.

Thanks and good luck.

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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: Yes: Sergey Barykin

Reviewer #2: Yes: M. Esra Atukalp

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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.

A Study on the Measurement of Inter-provincial Trade Costs in Yangtze River Delta from the Perspective of Value-Added Trade and its Promotion Effect

PONE-D-23-25349R2

Dear Dr. 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.

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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,

Imran Ur Rahman, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

All comments have been addressed.

Reviewers' comments: