Discovering smart cities’ potential in Kazakhstan: A cluster analysis

Marat Urdabayev; Anel Kireyeva; Laszlo Vasa; Ivan Digel; Kuralay Nurgaliyeva; Akan Nurbatsin

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0296765

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 9, 2023
21 Aug 2023 Decision Letter - Tarik A. Rashid, Editor PONE-D-23-17894Discovering smart cities' potential in Kazakhstan: a cluster analysisPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Vasa, 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. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR:The novelty is poor in your paper, this point was strongly mentioned by reviewer #1. Thus, you should make sure to address the novelty clearly in the revised version of your paper. Provide novelty in your results as well. Additionally, address all the points that were made by the reviewers in step-by-step way, including analytical discussion. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 05 2023 11:59PM. 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Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: “This research has funded by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Grant " Development Strategy of Kazakhstan Regional Potential: Assessment of Socio-Cultural and Economic Potentials, Roadmap, Models and Scenarios Planning " No. BR18574240).” We note that you have provided funding information that is currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, 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. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: “This research has funded by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Grant " Development Strategy of Kazakhstan Regional Potential: Assessment of Socio-Cultural and Economic Potentials, Roadmap, Models and Scenarios Planning " No. BR18574240).” Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. [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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: No ****** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: The article describes the use of cluster analysis to identify cities in Kazakhstan with the highest potential for smart city development. It is a well-written article, providing a clear exposition of the context, methodology, and results, which can be easily understood by readers unfamiliar with the topic. However, there is no methodological innovation, and the results and their discussion do not contribute novelty to the current knowledge on the subject. Regarding the methodology, an agglomerative cluster analysis is employed with three different forms of linkage between groups (Ward's criterion, Complete, and Single), applied to a dataset of 38 cities described by a set of 26 demographic, economic, and social variables. The methodology was previously used in a recent study, focusing on regions rather than cities, also in Kazakhstan. The material presented in Section 3 "Methods and Data" is standard material covered in a university course on data analysis or multivariate statistics. The results of the three cluster analyses are disparate, but all of them indicate the existence of clusters formed by the two or three major cities, while the rest of the cities are agglomerated into a single cluster or two clusters. The conclusions drawn are overly generic, failing to fulfill the main objective of the article, which, in the authors' own words, is " to provide meaningful and actionable insights for policymakers and urban planners." The significance of the variables considered in the study and their influence in creating an appropriate environment for smart city development is not described. Therefore, the analysis and discussion of the results are superficial, and no conclusions are drawn from the data analysis that were not already known. Clearly, data analysis can be used to confirm existing knowledge; however, the conclusions should still be supported quantitatively by the results of the analyses. Finally, the data contained in the supplementary Excel file includes anomalous values (e.g., a percentage of 45,000 in unemployment, and this is not the only case). My recommendation would be for the authors to improve their variable dataset, discuss its relationship with smart city development, better justify the connection between the obtained clusters and the group's positioning towards the city's evolution into a smart city, and contrast the results with previous studies, either in the same geographical area or through similar analyses in other regions. Reviewer #2: Title: Discovering smart cities' potential in Kazakhstan: a cluster analysis The manuscript is an interesting study on the potential for the development of smart cities in Kazakhstan. However, there are some issues that can improve the manuscript: It would be interesting to obtain more information on the type and quality of the data used for the study. A special mention should also be made and development in more depth to the origin of the data. I have observed that the term “smart city” appears in the manuscript written in different ways, such as by "smart city" or smart city (with "" or without ""). The form of denomination should be unified. Perhaps the second option is more appropriate since the name smartcity is common in the field of research on the city. The citations and bibliographical references must be reviewed. For example: -The reference "Villessuzanne et al. (2021)" does not appear in the bibliography. -The citation "(West, 2017)" appears in the text while the reference "West, G. (2018)" appears in the bibliography. It seems that one is wrong. -In the text it mentions "Kubina and Vodak" (page 4) while in the bibliography it includes bibliographical reference "Kubina, M., Šulyová, D., & Vodák, J." -In the text he cites "(Frazer, 2015)" twice, while in the bibliography only the reference "Fracer, 2019" appears. - The reference "Héraud, J., & Muller, E. (2022)" appears in the bibligraphy. However, its corresponding citation does not appear in the text. In the opinion of this reviewer, the manuscript meets the criteria of the journal and is suitable for publication with major revision. ****** 6. 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296765.r001
Revision 1
18 Nov 2023 Author Response Response to Reviewers Reviewer #1: The article describes the use of cluster analysis to identify cities in Kazakhstan with the highest potential for smart city development. It is a well-written article, providing a clear exposition of the context, methodology, and results, which can be easily understood by readers unfamiliar with the topic. However, there is no methodological innovation, and the results and their discussion do not contribute novelty to the current knowledge on the subject. Regarding the methodology, an agglomerative cluster analysis is employed with three different forms of linkage between groups (Ward's criterion, Complete, and Single), applied to a dataset of 38 cities described by a set of 26 demographic, economic, and social variables. The methodology was previously used in a recent study, focusing on regions rather than cities, also in Kazakhstan. The material presented in Section 3 "Methods and Data" is standard material covered in a university course on data analysis or multivariate statistics. The results of the three cluster analyses are disparate, but all of them indicate the existence of clusters formed by the two or three major cities, while the rest of the cities are agglomerated into a single cluster or two clusters. The conclusions drawn are overly generic, failing to fulfill the main objective of the article, which, in the authors' own words, is " to provide meaningful and actionable insights for policymakers and urban planners." The significance of the variables considered in the study and their influence in creating an appropriate environment for smart city development is not described. Therefore, the analysis and discussion of the results are superficial, and no conclusions are drawn from the data analysis that were not already known. Clearly, data analysis can be used to confirm existing knowledge; however, the conclusions should still be supported quantitatively by the results of the analyses. Finally, the data contained in the supplementary Excel file includes anomalous values (e.g., a percentage of 45,000 in unemployment, and this is not the only case). My recommendation would be for the authors to improve their variable dataset, discuss its relationship with smart city development, better justify the connection between the obtained clusters and the group's positioning towards the city's evolution into a smart city, and contrast the results with previous studies, either in the same geographical area or through similar analyses in other regions. Dear Reviewer #1, Thank you for your thorough review and constructive comments on our manuscript. We appreciate your acknowledgement of the article's clarity and exposition. Below, we address each of the concerns you raised. 1. Lack of Methodological Innovation and Novelty: We understand the concern about the lack of methodological innovation. While the methodology used is not new, we argue that its application to the specific context of Kazakhstan is valuable, at least for the country’s policy-makers. However, the results obtained can also be used for comparison with city analyzes in other countries. This is not the purpose of this work, so it was not done. 2. Generic Conclusions and Lack of Actionable Insights: We recognize the critique that the conclusions are overly generic. In the revised manuscript, we provided more detailed interpretation of clusters and possible ways of their development. We also elaborated on some variables that are of the most importance for certain clusters. 3. Influence of Variables on Smart City Development: We acknowledge that the original manuscript did not thoroughly discuss the significance of each variable. In the revised version, we elaborated on this by detailing how each variable influences the potential for smart city evolution, and provided additional references supporting our choice of variables. 4. Comparisons with Previous Studies: We have highlighted differences with previous research on the topic, but have not made further comparisons with work from other countries beyond what is already presented in the article. 5. Anomalies in the Supplementary Excel File: We apologize for the oversight and thank you for pointing out the anomalous data values. This, however, did not affect the analysis in any way, since during the analysis the data set was checked for outliers and anomalies before calculations. They were corrected in the R dataframe, but not in the original table that was sent. We hope that these revisions will address your concerns and improve the manuscript. Reviewer #2: Title: Discovering smart cities' potential in Kazakhstan: a cluster analysis The manuscript is an interesting study on the potential for the development of smart cities in Kazakhstan. However, there are some issues that can improve the manuscript: It would be interesting to obtain more information on the type and quality of the data used for the study. A special mention should also be made and development in more depth to the origin of the data. I have observed that the term “smart city” appears in the manuscript written in different ways, such as by "smart city" or smart city (with "" or without ""). The form of denomination should be unified. Perhaps the second option is more appropriate since the name smartcity is common in the field of research on the city. The citations and bibliographical references must be reviewed. For example: -The reference "Villessuzanne et al. (2021)" does not appear in the bibliography. -The citation "(West, 2017)" appears in the text while the reference "West, G. (2018)" appears in the bibliography. It seems that one is wrong. -In the text it mentions "Kubina and Vodak" (page 4) while in the bibliography it includes bibliographical reference "Kubina, M., Šulyová, D., & Vodák, J." -In the text he cites "(Frazer, 2015)" twice, while in the bibliography only the reference "Fracer, 2019" appears. - The reference "Héraud, J., & Muller, E. (2022)" appears in the bibligraphy. However, its corresponding citation does not appear in the text. Dear Reviewer #2, Thank you for your feedback on our manuscript titled "Discovering smart cities' potential in Kazakhstan: a cluster analysis." We appreciate your comments on the study's interest level and have taken your suggestions seriously. Below are our responses to each point you raised. 1. Type and Quality of Data: We understand your argument that the manuscript lacked sufficient information regarding the type and quality of the data. We mentioned that the data was taken from the state statistics agency of Kazakhstan, and this is the only source of such extensive data, the quality of which is ensured by state standards. The data type is assumed to be quantitative, since the stated cluster analysis methods support only quantitative data. If we misunderstood your comment about "data type", please clarify what exactly is meant and we will make the necessary additions. 2. Consistency in the term “smart city”: Thank you for pointing out the inconsistency in the terminology. We will standardize the term to "smart city" without quotation marks throughout the manuscript. 3. Citations and Bibliographical References: We apologize for the inconsistencies and errors in the citations and references. We have corrected each point as follows: • Added "Villessuzanne et al. (2021)" to the bibliography. • Rectified the discrepancy between "(West, 2017)" in the text and "West, G. (2018)" in the bibliography. • Unified the names for "Kubina and Vodak" in the text and "Kubina, M., Šulyová, D., & Vodák, J." in the bibliography. • Corrected the citation "Frazer, 2015" to match with the available reference "Fracer, 2019" in the bibliography. • Included a corresponding citation for "Héraud, J., & Muller, E. (2022)" in the text. Thank you again for your careful reading and helpful suggestions. We believe that these changes will improve the quality and readability of the manuscript. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Answers for reviewers ID.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296765.r002
18 Dec 2023 Decision Letter - Rahul Priyadarshi, Editor Discovering smart cities' potential in Kazakhstan: a cluster analysis PONE-D-23-17894R1 Dear Dr. Vasa, 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, Dr. Rahul Priyadarshi Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296765.r003
Formally Accepted
4 Mar 2024 Acceptance Letter - Rahul Priyadarshi, Editor PONE-D-23-17894R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Vasa, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, 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 customercare@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 Dr. Rahul Priyadarshi Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0296765.r004

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