The impact of mixed-ownership reform on zombie firms: Evidence from Chinese listed SOEs

Yufei Yin; Kexin Cao

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0301048

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionNovember 29, 2023
15 Jan 2024 Decision Letter - Ionela Munteanu, Editor PONE-D-23-39861Mixed-Ownership Reform and the Governance of Zombie Firms: Evidence from ChinaPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Cao, 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 29 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, Ionela Munteanu, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: 1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 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 financial disclosure: Zhejiang Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences （2024N068） Zhejiang Provincial Department of Education （Y202353848） 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. 3. We note that your Data Availability Statement is currently as follows: Data are available from all authors of this article Please confirm at this time whether or not your submission contains all raw data required to replicate the results of your study. Authors must share the “minimal data set” for their submission. PLOS defines the minimal data set to consist of the data required to replicate all study findings reported in the article, as well as related metadata and methods (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-minimal-data-set-definition). For example, authors should submit the following data: - The values behind the means, standard deviations and other measures reported; - The values used to build graphs; - The points extracted from images for analysis. Authors do not need to submit their entire data set if only a portion of the data was used in the reported study. If your submission does not contain these data, please either upload them as Supporting Information files or deposit them to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of recommended repositories, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories. If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. If data are owned by a third party, please indicate how others may request data access. 4. 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 5. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. Additional Editor Comments : You investigate the potential of mixed-ownership reform to promote the governance of zombie firms, invoking certain other conditions. Previous studies suggest that the prevalence of zombie firms is influenced by monetary policies, tax policies, interest rates, economic stability among others. Focused on the Chinese context, the current study presents evidence that mixed-ownership reform can influence zombie firms. You suggest a novel method to illustrate that the appointment of directors by non-state-owned shareholders can effectively combat zombie firms. I found your research interesting since it offers a comprehensive analysis within the Chinese context regarding the appointment of shareholders and introduces a set of compelling approaches to achieve your research objectives. Given your research focus on China, you need to spend some efforts to explain (1) why the Chinese context is particularly relevant to your research question and (2) whether the results can be generalized to other empirical settings. You may want to consider the following studies that offer different approaches to the determinants or conditions of zombie firms: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3829038, https://doi.org/10.7441/joc.2023.02.05, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.japwor.2023.101188. In addition, please consider improving the following: (3) In the caption of Table 2 and subsequent please explain the significance of numbers in paratheses; (4) insert reference to the limitations of the study before the conclusion section; (5) Please double check the English writing, there are some errors in the text. To facilitate the publication review process, I strongly recommend that the authors also provide comprehensive responses to all the recommendations formulated by the two referees, listed below. [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: Dear Authors, It was a real pleasure to read and review your research paper. I appreciate the research idea and how did you construct the paper in order to reach the proposed research objectives. But, in my opinion I would reconsider the link between the proposed hypothesis and the model from eq. (1) (also where you defined the dependent variable). Your proposed hypothesis states that: Under certain other conditions, mixed-ownership reform can promote the governance of zombie firms. So, in this conditions the governance of zombies would be the dependent variable, and from the eq (1) the dependent variable is Zombie (a composite score variable - I guess) that describe a status based on Pre-tax net profits, Asset-liability ratios and Yearly loan amounts. Based on these, I don't find a link between this status and governance. Please try to answer this question: how do you measure governance of zombie firms and what is the link between those metrics and the Zombie variable. Also, please motivate the sample period selection: why 2019 and not the current year. Kind regards, The Anonymous Reviewer Reviewer #2: The manuscript addresses a very interesting topic, but it can be published after making some adjustments. The main adjustments I recommend are: 1. Authors must use the impersonal style (to give up expressions like ...our study...we...etc.). 2. The authors must present, in the introduction, the existing situation worldwide and briefly present the European experience. 3. At the end of the literature review section, the authors must insist on identifying a research gap that justifies the completion of this study. 4. The authors must justify in the paper the choice of the country. 5. The authors must insert a discussions section. In the discussion section, the authors must interpret the results obtained in the context of similar studies that confirm or refute their results. 6. More additional references can be used in the introduction, LR, discussions sections of the paper (Blažková, I., & Chmelíková, G. (2022). Zombie Firms during and after Crisis. Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 15(7), 301.; Rodano, G., & Sette, E. (2019). Zombie firms in Italy: a critical assessment. Bank of Italy Occasional Paper, (483).; Banerjee, R., & Hofmann, B. (2022). Corporate zombies: Anatomy and life cycle. Economic Policy, 37(112), 757-803.; El Ghoul, S., Fu, Z., & Guedhami, O. (2021). Zombie firms: Prevalence, determinants, and corporate policies. Finance Research Letters, 41, 101876.) 7. The authors must improve the conclusions section taking in account the quality of the study and extend the policy implications section. 8. The authors must present the limits of the research and the future research directions ****** 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.0301048.r001
Revision 1
18 Feb 2024 Author Response Additional Editor Comments: 1. Given your research focus on China, you need to spend some efforts to explain (1) why the Chinese context is particularly relevant to your research question. Answer: Thank you for your suggestions. Choosing China as our research object is based on the following considerations: clearing out zombie companies is a challenge for both developed and developing countries. Unlike zombie firms in developed countries, Zombie firms in China have typical characteristics of government intervention. At the same time, China, as one of the world's largest economies, is currently undergoing a critical period of economic transformation, marked by the implementation of policies such as mixed ownership reform. Studying the impact of mixed ownership reform on zombie firms holds significant importance for both developing and developed countries. Different from previous literature on using external macroeconomic policy adjustments to clear out zombie firms, this article may provide a way to clear out zombie firms from the perspective of mixed-ownership reform within enterprises. 2. whether the results can be generalized to other empirical settings. You may want to consider the following studies that offer different approaches to the determinants or conditions of zombie firms: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3829038, https://doi.org/10.7441/joc.2023.02.05, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.japwor.2023.101188. Answer: Thank you for providing us with the references, which are very helpful to us. We believe the results in the article can be generalized to other empirical settings. The key point to clear out zombie firms lies in enhancing their competitiveness. There are two issues that need to be solved: one is who is a zombie firm, and the other is how to effectively clean up zombie firms. Firstly, this article proposes an improved identification standard of zombie firms based on the FN-CHK standard, which helps to improve the accuracy of identifying zombie firms. Secondly, this article confirms that the participation of non-state-owned shareholders in the corporate governance of state-owned enterprises can reduce government intervention, strengthen the competitiveness of enterprises, and thus help to clear out zombie firms. The conclusion of this article has significant implications for the clearing out of zombie firms in developed and developing countries. The firs literature (https://ssrn.com/abstract=3829038) builds the RDT model to examinate of the risks taken on by a company during the insolvency process. We believe that it makes a useful supplement to the conclusions of this article. Because not all zombie firms need to go bankrupt, some firms can be revived through some rescue measures (such as restructuring). The first literature helps to determine whether a firm is restructuring or going bankrupt. The conclusion of this article is helpful for how to restructure and leverage the advantages of heterogeneous shareholders to enhance the competitiveness. The second literature (https://doi.org/10.7441/joc.2023.02.05), soft constraint constraints are an important cause of zombie firms in Japan's manufacturing industry. The conclusions of this article show that mixed-ownership reform helps to breaking soft constraint constraints, which is beneficial for clearing out zombie firms. In the third literature (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.japwor.2023.101188), a firm is defined as a zombie firm with an interest coverage ratio of below one over the previous three years. The above literature has provided a foundation for identifying firms. However, it must be acknowledged that due to differences in financial system structure and financial environment, the identification standards for zombie firms still need to be continuously improved. This is a direction that needs to be studied on in the future. 3. In the caption of Table 2 and subsequent please explain the significance of numbers in paratheses; Answer: Thank you for your suggestions. We have added the explanation for the significance of numbers in paratheses in the caption of Table 2 and subsequent. 4. Insert reference to the limitations of the study before the conclusion section; Answer: Thank you for your suggestions. We have added the limitations of the study and the future research directions as follows: Although this article provides a comprehensive examination of the relationship between mixed ownership reform and zombie firms, there are still some limitations and directions for further exploration. Firstly, it's important to acknowledge that this article's focus on state-owned enterprises as research samples may introduce bias due to the exclusion of non-listed state-owned enterprises. This limitation could influence regression results and potentially skew conclusions. Additionally, the absence of consideration for the impact of COVID-19 on zombie firms suggests a potential subjectivity in the research findings. Therefore, we encourage future studies to broaden their scope by incorporating data from both developing and developed economies over longer temporal and spatial spans to provide a more comprehensive analysis. Secondly, while the mixed ownership reform entails the integration of state-owned and non-state-owned capital, future research could explore the effects of state-owned capital's involvement in the corporate governance of private enterprises, particularly in addressing issues related to private zombie firms. Lastly, bankruptcy represents a significant mechanism for clearing out zombie firms. Further research could delve into strategies for mitigating the employment and social stability challenges that accompany the bankruptcy of zombie firms. 5. Please double check the English writing, there are some errors in the text. Answer: Thank you for your suggestions. We have carefully checked and corrected the errors and inappropriate expressions in the paper. In future research, we will pay special attention to this point. Thank you again. Reviewer #1 1. In my opinion, I would reconsider the link between the proposed hypothesis and the model from eq. (1) (also where you defined the dependent variable). Your proposed hypothesis states that: Under certain other conditions, mixed-ownership reform can promote the governance of zombie firms. So, in these conditions the governance of zombies would be the dependent variable, and from the eq (1) the dependent variable is Zombie (a composite score variable - I guess) that describe a status based on Pre-tax net profits, Asset-liability ratios and Yearly loan amounts. Based on these, I don't find a link between this status and governance. Please try to answer this question: how do you measure governance of zombie firms and what is the link between those metrics and the Zombie variable. Answer: Thank you for your suggestions very much! We have reconsidered the meaning of the term "governance" and found that it does not accurately match the content of this article. The variable of "zombie firm" in this article is a 0-1 variable. The empirical regression results of this article show that the regression coefficient of mixed-ownership reform on zombie firms is significantly negative, and mixed-ownership reform helps to improve the efficiency of state-owned enterprises, thereby reducing the possibility of SOEs becoming zombie firms. In practical scenarios, a cohort of zombie firms such as Shandong Yanmei International Coking and Youyi Special Steel have embraced a union of "state-owned framework and private mechanisms" through mixed-ownership reform, igniting the resource integration capabilities of SOEs and invigorating market mechanisms within private enterprises. For instance, Shandong Yanmei International Coking achieved a notable milestone in the year of mixed-ownership reform (2020) by realizing a total profit of 502 million yuan, signifying a staggering 12% year-on-year growth, while concurrently reducing its debt-to-asset ratio from 104% in 2017 to 61.54% in 2020. Therefore, this article uses the term "governance" to show the positive effect of mixed-ownership reform on zombie firms. However, based on your suggestion, we believe that a more accurate expression of the hypothesis in this article should be that " Under certain other conditions, mixed-ownership reform helps to reduce the possibility of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) becoming zombie firms". At the same time, we have also made corresponding modifications in the article. Thank you again! 2. Please motivate the sample period selection: why 2019 and not the current year. Answer: Thank you for your question! The selection of sample period is mainly based on the following two considerations: (1) After 2019 means COVID-19. It causes enormous harm to the global economy, and the Chinese economy is no exception. The slowdown in macroeconomic growth may give rise to more zombie firms. After the COVID-19, it is still necessary to wait for enough time to test whether zombie firms that have carried out mixed-ownership reform before the COVID-19 or during the COVID-19 have stronger recovery capacity. At present, the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on zombie firms is rare in the existing literature, and it is challenging to accurately assess the resilience of zombie firms brought about by the mixed-ownership reform, which is also a complex problem that is worth continuing to study. We also state this in the limitations of this article. (2) This article measures the degree of non-state-owned shareholder participation in the mixed-ownership reform from equity structure and board structure. This requires manual collection and identification of information on the top ten shareholders from existing databases, including key data such as shareholding ratios and shareholder nature. Due to difficulties in data, our team has only collected data before 2019, and we are working hard on data after 2019. Thank you again! Reviewer #2: 1. Authors must use the impersonal style (to give up expressions like ...our study...we...etc.). Answer: Thank you for your suggestions. We have changed the expressions like …our study…we…etc into the impersonal style. In future writing, we will also pay special attention to this point. Thank you! 2. The authors must present, in the introduction, the existing situation worldwide and briefly present the European experience. Answer: Thank you for your suggestions. We have added the existing situation worldwide and the European experience in the second paragraph of the introduction section. This section is necessary as it contributes to the coherence of the article. In future writing, we will pay attention to this point. The modified content is as follows: The study of zombie firms originated from an examination of Japan's "lost decade" in the 1990s. The earliest academic research that defined zombie firms was conducted by Hoshi (2006) and Caballero et al. (2008). Zombie firms refer to businesses that are no longer profitable and can only survive with assistance from banks. In the case of Japan, with the deterioration of the economy, many Japanese companies were unable to even pay the interest on their debts. Under normal circumstances, these firms would have gone bankrupt. However, to avoid admitting to their shareholders that the loans were unlikely to be fully repaid, many banks allowed these struggling firms to suspend their payments. As a result, the banking industry kept these financially distressed firms afloat for an extended period of time. Zombie firms are not limited to Japan; they are prevalent in both developed and developing countries worldwide. Extensive research conducted by Adalet McGowan et al. (2018) has revealed a significant increase in the number of zombie firms across advanced economies following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Similarly, Banerjee and Hofmann (2022) found a substantial rise in zombie firms, with their prevalence increasing from approximately 4% of all listed firms in the mid-1980s to as high as 15% in 2017 across 14 OECD countries. In Europe, the issue of zombie firms became particularly pronounced after the GFC and the subsequent European sovereign debt crisis. During this period, unconventional monetary policies led to weakly capitalized banks extending loans to struggling firms, a practice known as "evergreening" (Acharya et al., 2019). The introduction of Very Long-Term Refinancing Operations (VLTROs) further exacerbated the problem, as zombie firms obtaining new and larger loans from banks faced higher expected default probabilities (Christian et al., 2021). In the context of the COVID-19 and slowdown in the global economy, central banks in various countries have implemented monetary easing policies, deepening the dependence of more enterprises on debt. The increasing number of zombie firms in the Eurozone and other countries has emerged as an urgent issue that requires immediate attention and resolution. 3. At the end of the literature review section, the authors must insist on identifying a research gap that justifies the completion of this study. Answer: Thank you for your suggestions. We have added the research gap in the literature review section as follows: While there is a sufficient literature on zombie firms and mixed ownership reform, there exist some gaps in the existing research. This article fills research gaps in two ways: (1) Effectively addressing the issue of zombie firms is a critical challenge for both developed and developing countries worldwide. This article presents research findings indicating that the introduction of non-state-owned shareholders through mixed ownership reform has a positive impact on resolving zombie firms. Compared to adopting "external" economic policies to clear out zombie firms, this article provides evidence for clearing out zombie enterprises from the perspective of "within the enterprise" and supplements the literature on clearing out zombie firms. (2) Unlike previous studies on developed economies, this article focuses on Chinese listed SOEs and empirically examines the impact of mixed ownership reform in transitional economies on zombie firms from the perspectives of equity structure and board governance. This has a profound impact on promoting sustainable and healthy economic development. 4. The authors must justify in the paper the choice of the country. Answer: Thank you for your suggestions. We have added the discussion about the choice of the country in “3.3 Date source”. Your suggestions have helped us improve the comprehensiveness of the article. Thank you again! The revised content is as follows: The reasons for selecting Chinese listed SOEs as the research sample are as follows: (1) China, as one of the world's largest economies, is currently undergoing a critical period of economic transformation, marked by the implementation of policies such as mixed ownership reform. Studying the impact of mixed ownership reform on zombie firms holds significant importance for both developing and developed countries to eliminate zombie firms, and foster sustainable and healthy economic development. 5. The authors must insert a discussions section. In the discussion section, the authors must interpret the results obtained in the context of similar studies that confirm or refute their results. Answer: Thank you for your suggestions. We have inserted a discussion in the paper. The discussion section is very useful for making the paper more comprehensive. The modified content is as follows: The results obtained in the previous article are mainly discussed in this section. Firstly, the results show that the coefficient of mixed-ownership reform to zombie firms is significantly negative, indicating that mixed-ownership reform can help reduce the possibility of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) becoming zombie firms. In reality, the issue of addressing zombie firms is of paramount importance for both developed and developing economies. However, related literature remains relatively limited. Existing studies have explored the ways to address zombie firms through several lenses, including relationship banking[60], bank competition[61], FinTech[62], digital transformation [63] and The Belt and Road Initiative[64]. Moreover, the research conducted by Ernesto et al. (2022) [65]offers valuable insigh Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301048.r002
11 Mar 2024 Decision Letter - Ionela Munteanu, Editor The impact of mixed-ownership reform on zombie firms: evidence from Chinese listed SOEs PONE-D-23-39861R1 Dear Dr. Cao, 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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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, Ionela Munteanu, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE 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: It was a pleasure to read and review your paper and I encourage you to continue the research in the field. Also, I agree with your responds and I consider that this paper could be published in this form. Reviewer #2: The authors took into account the recommendations made and considerably improved the manuscript. Considering the adjustments made by the authors, I recommend the publication of the manuscript. ****** 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 ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301048.r003
Formally Accepted
24 Jun 2024 Acceptance Letter - Ionela Munteanu, Editor PONE-D-23-39861R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Cao, 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. Ionela Munteanu Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301048.r004

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 .