Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 11, 2023
Decision Letter - Han Lin, Editor

PONE-D-23-41651Can Digital Transformation Promote Green Innovation in Enterprises? The moderating Effect of Heterogeneous Environmental RegulationsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Huang,

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 Feb 16 2024 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,

Han Lin

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

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

   "Supported by The Project of Cultivation for young top-motch Talents of Beijing Municipal Institutions (BPHR202203211), Innovation Centre for 

Digital Business and Capital Development of Beijing Technology and Business University (SZSK202237) and Academic Research Projects of Beijing Union University (SK10202201)"

We note that you have provided funding information that is not 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: 

   "Supported by The Project of Cultivation for young top-motch Talents of Beijing Municipal Institutions (BPHR202203211), Innovation Centre for Digital Business and Capital Development of Beijing Technology and Business University (SZSK202237) and Academic Research Projects of Beijing Union University (SK10202201)."

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

3. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. 

When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section.

4. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: 

   "Supported by The Project of Cultivation for young top-motch Talents of Beijing Municipal Institutions (BPHR202203211), Innovation Centre for Digital Business and Capital Development of Beijing Technology and Business University (SZSK202237) and Academic Research Projects of Beijing Union University (SK10202201)."

Please state what role the funders took in the study.  If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." 

If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. 

Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

5. 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. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a pre-existing iD in Editorial Manager. Please see the following video for instructions on linking an ORCID iD to your Editorial Manager account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcclfuvtxQ

6. In the online submission form, you indicated that "The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request." 

All PLOS journals now require all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript to be freely available to other researchers, either 1. In a public repository, 2. Within the manuscript itself, or 3. Uploaded as supplementary information.

This policy applies to all data except where public deposition would breach compliance with the protocol approved by your research ethics board. If your data cannot be made publicly available for ethical or legal reasons (e.g., public availability would compromise patient privacy), please explain your reasons on resubmission and your exemption request will be escalated for approval. 

Additional Editor Comments:

The theoretical contributions could be better articulated, linking them back to the identified conversants and the research methods employed. This, in tandem with an explicit depiction of how the results impact our understanding of the research topic, would substantially elevate the study's contribution. It would be beneficial if the authors could identify the papers they aim to contribute to and delineate their novel addition to the existing discourse.

It might be helpful with new citations of up-to-date and high-quality papers on the subjects covered in manuscript and engaged the previous literature in this journal.

Also, the author(s) should carefully format the manuscript following the guidance of the journal, such as the headers, references, and so on. There are mistakes in the citation (reference), such as missing volume, issue and page.

The authors are recommended to examine and proof the language. In addition, there are some typos and grammatical errors that need further attention.

[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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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: This paper has a novel research theme and provides an important reference for the implementation of enterprise digital transformation strategy. In addition, this paper has made a solid review of the existing literature, and the theoretical analysis is clear and direct, but there are several contents that can be optimized as follows.

1. The content of the revelation part of the paper is repeated, so it is suggested to sort it out again.

2. At present, the marginal contribution of the article is too much, please briefly present the marginal contribution of the article.

Reviewer #2: Digital transformation is an important way for enterprises to achieve green innovation. This paper takes listed manufacturing companies in China as samples, empirically tests the impact of digital transformation on enterprise green innovation and its intermediate mechanism, and expands the relevant research on digital transformation. However, this article would be more complete if it could be improved in the following aspects.

1. Supplement the chapter arrangement of the paper at the end of the introduction.

2. Make clear the theoretical contribution of this paper compared with existing research.

3.The writing specification of the article should be further matched with the publication requirements,such as author format and references.

**********

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.

Revision 1

Journal Requirements

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

Response: Thanks for your comments. Modifications have been made in the article.

2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure:

"Supported by The Project of Cultivation for young top-motch Talents of Beijing Municipal Institutions (BPHR202203211), Innovation Centre for Digital Business and Capital Development of Beijing Technology and Business University (SZSK202237) and Academic Research Projects of Beijing Union University (SK10202201)."

Response: Thanks for your comments. This study was funded by the General Project of the Beijing Social Science Foundation (23GLB020).

Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."

If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed.

Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

The sponsor of the article is the corresponding author of the article

PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author.

4. In the online submission form, you indicated that "The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request."

All PLOS journals now require all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript to be freely available to other researchers, either 1. In a public repository, 2. Within the manuscript itself, or 3. Uploaded as supplementary information.

This policy applies to all data except where public deposition would breach compliance with the protocol approved by your research ethics board. If your data cannot be made publicly available for ethical or legal reasons (e.g., public availability would compromise patient privacy), please explain your reasons on resubmission and your exemption request will be escalated for approval.

We selected Chinese manufacturing listed companies from 2010 to 2021 as our research sample, which involves official data from many companies. We only conducted statistical analysis on the data, and the companies did not authorize the data, so it is inconvenient to provide it. Please understand!

Additional Editor Comments:

1. The theoretical contributions could be better articulated, linking them back to the identified conversants and the research methods employed. This, in tandem with an explicit depiction of how the results impact our understanding of the research topic, would substantially elevate the study's contribution. It would be beneficial if the authors could identify the papers they aim to contribute to and delineate their novel addition to the existing discourse.

Response: Thanks for your comments. Revised in the article, detailed in sections 5.1-5.4, conclusion and outlook.

2. It might be helpful with new citations of up-to-date and high-quality papers on the subjects covered in manuscript and engaged the previous literature in this journal.

Response: Thanks for your comments. Journal articles were cited in references 20, 24, and 29.

3. Also, the author(s) should carefully format the manuscript following the guidance of the journal, such as the headers, references, and so on. There are mistakes in the citation (reference), such as missing volume, issue and page.

Response: Thanks for your comments. The article has been extensively revised.

4. The authors are recommended to examine and proof the language. In addition, there are some typos and grammatical errors that need further attention.

Response: Thanks for your comments. The article has been extensively revised.

Reviewers' comments:

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1:

This paper has a novel research theme and provides an important reference for the implementation of enterprise digital transformation strategy. In addition, this paper has made a solid review of the existing literature, and the theoretical analysis is clear and direct, but there are several contents that can be optimized as follows.

1. The content of the revelation part of the paper is repeated, so it is suggested to sort it out again.

Response: Thanks for your comments. The conclusion and presentation have been rephrased, and duplicate content has been removed.

2. At present, the marginal contribution of the article is too much, please briefly present the marginal contribution of the article.

Response: Thanks for your comments. The marginal contribution is elaborated in the article, which is reflected in sections 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, and conclusion.

Reviewer #2:

Digital transformation is an important way for enterprises to achieve green innovation. This paper takes listed manufacturing companies in China as samples, empirically tests the impact of digital transformation on enterprise green innovation and its intermediate mechanism, and expands the relevant research on digital transformation. However, this article would be more complete if it could be improved in the following aspects.

1. Supplement the chapter arrangement of the paper at the end of the introduction.

Response: Thanks for your comments. The concluding part of the introduction has been modified.

2. Make clear the theoretical contribution of this paper compared with existing research.

Response: Thanks for your comments. The conclusion and presentation have been rephrased and discussed in detail.

3.The writing specification of the article should be further matched with the publication requirements,such as author format and references.

Response: Thanks for your comments. Modifications have been made in the article.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Han Lin, Editor

Can Digital Transformation Promote Green Innovation in Enterprises? The moderating Effect of Heterogeneous Environmental Regulations

PONE-D-23-41651R1

Dear Dr. Huang,

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,

Han Lin

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 #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

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

**********

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Han Lin, Editor

PONE-D-23-41651R1

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Huang,

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. Han Lin

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .