Currency risk analysis of belt and road initiative countries

Mengyang Li; Wencui Liu; Lei Wang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0307209

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 3, 2024
8 Apr 2024 Decision Letter - Poowin Bunyavejchewin, Editor PONE-D-24-08628A Currency Risk Analysis of Belt and Road Initiative CountriesPLOS 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. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: Both reviewers have recommended the same: major revisions. Please carefully review all comments made by the two reviewers and revise accordingly. Additionally, the revised manuscript should be edited and proofread by professional English editing services to ensure the final text is flawless in terms of writing quality. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by May 23 2024 11:59PM. 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Please kindly revise as necessary and re-upload. [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: I Don't Know ****** 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: I found this study very interesting as it provides valuable insights into currency risk analysis in Belt and Road Initiative countries. Nonetheless, I suggest authors consider the following comments to significantly improve the overall quality of their manuscript. 1/ Authors should add a section on the literature review establishing the theoretical context and describing the results of previous studies on the subject. 2/ You must provide references or justification supporting each of the thirteen variables involved in the construction of the CCI index (see table 1) and each equation/model. 3/When discussing the results, add additional references and stylized facts that explain/justify the results. You should also compare your results to those of previous studies. 4/The conclusion should also present the detailed policy and practical implications of your findings and highlight the limitations of the study and avenues of research for future analyses. Reviewer #2: The relevance of the topic is well presented. It deals with an interesting, timely and economically beneficial topic, but it needs significant development. My specific suggestions are: The literature review is very superficial, only tangentially referring to the debates and methodologies, not presenting the research niche in depth. What is missing from the literature review is a more detailed description of the other methodologies that have been used to research the topic. From this, it could be deduced why the author uses this methodology to answer his research question. I miss the operationalisation derived from the theoretical framework. I would suggest a more in-depth presentation of the theoretical background that underpins this methodology. It refers to different models (e.g. Anchor Effect of Currency), but we do not know in depth what those models say. In the theoretical introduction, the models used and their main findings should be discussed, so that we can later better understand the results that are compared with them. From row 92, the description of the indicators should also be provided in Table 1. There is no detailed description that would justify a textual description. The content of Table 2 (data sources) should be included in Table 1, two tables are unnecessary. Can you provide data on the original database, the number of unestimated observations per variable? Give us a better insight into the database. Improve the graphical appearance of the charts, they are now very undemanding. Figures 3, 7, and 10 are not suitable for comparison in their present form. This can be submitted as an appendix, but I would suggest that the authors cluster the countries based on the results. It would be much better to illustrate their results. In the text, they could explain the reasons behind the clusters. In line 303, the author refers to "discussions on currency competitiveness", but we do not find anything about them in the theoretical background. The conclusion is very brief. More detail should be given on the results of this research, what it adds to the literature, what its limitations are, and what other new research directions the authors have discovered during their research. What region-specific policy recommendations can they make based on their findings. For Editors: The methodology seems right to me, but I'm not familiar with it, so it's worth asking other reviewers. I'm not a native English speaker, so I can't fully judge the correctness of the language. It was understandable to me. ****** 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.0307209.r001
Revision 1
18 May 2024 Author Response Response to Editor’s comments Comment 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: We have carefully reviewed PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming, and have made the necessary adjustments. Our revised manu-script now adheres to all the specified guidelines. Comment 2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: “the State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology: Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, CAS (E1510107)” 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. Response: Regarding the financial disclosure provided, we acknowledge the support of the State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology: Xinjiang Institute of Ecol-ogy and Geography, CAS. In accordance with your request, we confirm that the fun-ders played no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to pub-lish, or preparation of the manuscript. Comment 3. We note that Figures 3,7,8 and 10 in your submission contain [map/satellite] images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manu-script, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot pub-lish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission. Response: We have addressed the issue raised by the editor and reviewer by replacing Figures 3, 7, 8, and 10 with new figures. The original figures were based on standard map production with the map approval number GS(2016)1667 from the Chinese Min-istry of Natural Resources (http://bzdt.ch.mnr.gov.cn/), and the basemap remains un-altered. We have also improved our result displays and discussions as suggested by Reviewer #2, who pointed out the shortcomings of the original figures in making a comparison between five currencies. In response to this feedback, we have tried an-other way to display our results and supporting data for our discussion. We have grouped the results from 142 countries by a new method that labels them according to their currency competition status and further discuss these groups, thereby improving our paper. Comment 4. We are unable to open your Supporting Information file [PlosoneData.7z]. Please kindly revise as necessary and re-upload. Response: We have re-uploaded our data file. We hope that it can be opened success-fully this time. Response to reviewer’s comments Reviewer #1 Comment 1. I found this study very interesting as it provides valuable insights into currency risk analysis in Belt and Road Initiative countries. Nonetheless, I suggest authors consider the following comments to significantly improve the overall quality of their manuscript. Response: Thank you for your valuable feedback. We appreciate your positive com-ments on the study and are grateful for your suggestions to improve the overall quality of our manuscript. We will carefully considered and addressed the comments you have provided to enhance the value and impact of our research. Comment 2. Authors should add a section on the literature review establishing the theoretical context and describing the results of previous studies on the subject. Response: Thank you for your feedback. We have addressed your suggestion by in-cluding a section on the literature review to establish the theoretical context and de-scribe the results of previous studies on the subject. Specifically, we have added three sections on the literature review, covering debt sustainability issues, currency risk, and currency competition. The literature review on debt sustainability issues explores the existing research on debtors’ solvency and economic stability, while also highlighting the significance of currency risk. This can be found in lines 51-72 of the manuscript. The literature review on currency risk is organized into two dimensions and can be found in lines 73-106. Additionally, we have included a section on the currency competition theory as a new entry point for our research, which can be found in lines 107-140. We believe that these additions provide a comprehensive theoretical context and an overview of previous studies on the subject. Thank you for your valuable input. Comment 3. You must provide references or justification supporting each of the thir-teen variables involved in the construction of the CCI index (see table 1) and each equation/model. Response: Included references for each variable used in our CCI index, and the mod-ifications made can be found in lines 161-183 and 212-216. Comment 4. When discussing the results, add additional references and stylized facts that explain/justify the results. You should also compare your results to those of pre-vious studies. Response: Additional references and stylized facts have been incorporated into the Discussion section to further explain and justify the results. The characteristics of cur-rency competitiveness, bilateral trade, and bilateral investment are summarized using the data, and the results are compared with previous studies. We have added facts about the characteristics of CCI before and after BRI and com-pared them with the literature (Lines 443-456). The characteristics of CCI at present and in future expectations have been included, aligning with the literature (Lines 474-477). A comparison of the results of this paper with the literature in the continental group-ings has been added (Lines 544-549). We have included a comparison between the outcomes of this study and those in the existing literature, demonstrating similar trends but with more detailed findings (Lines 599-609). Comment 5. The conclusion should also present the detailed policy and practical im-plications of your findings and highlight the limitations of the study and avenues of research for future analyses. Response: The conclusions have been revised to address the specific concerns raised by the reviewer. We have provided more detailed policy and practical implications of our findings, as well as highlighted the limitations of the study and avenues for future research. Specifically, we have revised the presentation of results in the conclusions to provide more detail on the research results (Lines 613-633), added policy recommen-dations and discussed the marginal contribution of the paper (Lines 634-641), and in-cluded content on limitations and future research directions (Lines 642-647). Thank you for the valuable feedback, and we believe these revisions have strengthened the conclusions of the paper. Reviewer #2 Comment 1. The relevance of the topic is well presented. It deals with an interesting, timely and economically beneficial topic, but it needs significant development. Response: Thank you for your feedback. I appreciate your recognition of the rele-vance of the topic. I I have provided a more comprehensive and in-depth analysis. Comment 2. The literature review is very superficial, only tangentially referring to the debates and methodologies, not presenting the research niche in depth. What is miss-ing from the literature review is a more detailed description of the other methodolo-gies that have been used to research the topic. From this, it could be deduced why the author uses this methodology to answer his research question. I miss the operationali-sation derived from the theoretical framework. I would suggest a more in-depth presentation of the theoretical background that underpins this methodology. It refers to different models (e.g. Anchor Effect of Currency), but we do not know in depth what those models say. In the theoretical introduction, the models used and their main findings should be discussed, so that we can later better understand the results that are compared with them. Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have supplemented the literature re-view in the introduction with three sections, debt sustainability issues, currency risk, and currency competition. Lines 51-72 provide a compendium of literature perspec-tives on debt sustainability issues, lines 73-106 introduce the content of the literature studies on currency risk, and lines 107-140 review the literature on currency competi-tion used in this paper. In addition, we have added a brief introduction to the Anchor Effect of Currency to the literature review in lines 125-127, which is described in detail in the Methods sec-tion in lines 178-211. We believe that these additions address the concerns raised and provide a more in-depth presentation of the theoretical background that underpins the methodology used in this research. Comment 3. From row 92, the description of the indicators should also be provided in Table 1. There is no detailed description that would justify a textual description. The content of Table 2 (data sources) should be included in Table 1, two tables are unnecessary. Can you provide data on the original database, the number of unesti-mated observations per variable? Give us a better insight into the database. Response: Revised Tables 1 and 2 to address the reviewer’ s comments. The descrip-tion of the indicators has been added to Table 1, and the content of Table 2 (data sources) has been included in Table 1 as well. This eliminates the need for two sepa-rate tables. We have also provided citations for the 13 indicators in the textual de-scriptions. Additionally, we have updated Table 2 to include information on the original database, as well as the number of unestimated observations per variable. This provides a better insight into the database. Comment 4. Improve the graphical appearance of the charts, they are now very un-demanding. Figures 3, 7, and 10 are not suitable for comparison in their present form. This can be submitted as an appendix, but I would suggest that the authors cluster the countries based on the results. It would be much better to illustrate their results. In the text, they could explain the reasons behind the clusters. Response: We have improved the graphical appearance of the charts by removing the map displays for Figures 3, 7, and 10, and made changes to the results display. We have presented the results in both temporal and spatial dimensions. Under the spatial dimension, we have modified the results display by showing the Top 20 CCI countries by currency and continent of the 4th quarter of 2020 (Table 5), and the CCI distribu-tion in BRI countries in the 4th quarter of 2020 ranked from highest to lowest for each currency (Fig 2), paving the way for the grouping by currency competition status in section 4.2.2. In the Discussion, we have grouped the results of the study CCI in a spatial perspec-tive, retaining the original continent grouping and adding a new grouping on the state of currency competition. We have also added new discussion based on this grouping. We believe these changes have significantly improved the graphical appearance of the charts and the overall presentation of the results. Comment 5. In line 303, the author refers to "discussions on currency competitive-ness", but we do not find anything about them in the theoretical background. Response: Added a section on currency competition and competitiveness in the liter-ature review of the introduction, specifically in lines 107-140. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Comment 6. The conclusion is very brief. More detail should be given on the results of this research, what it adds to the literature, what its limitations are, and what other new research directions the authors have discovered during their research. What re-gion-specific policy recommendations can they make based on their findings. Response: We have revised the conclusion to provide more detail on the research re-sults, specifically in lines 613-633. We have included region-specific policy recom-mendations and highlighted the paper’s contribution based on the findings in lines 634-641. Additionally, we have added content on the limitations of the study and future research directions in lines 642-647. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307209.r002
25 Jun 2024 Decision Letter - Poowin Bunyavejchewin, Editor PONE-D-24-08628R1Currency risk analysis of belt and road initiative countriesPLOS 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. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: The quality of the English needs to be improved. Therefore, I request that you consult professional English-editing services (e.g., Editage, Enago, etc.) and obtain an English-editing certificate from the service provider to be submitted along with the edited version of this manuscript.============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 09 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, Poowin Bunyavejchewin 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. [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 ******** 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: (No Response) ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: (No Response) ****** 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: (No Response) ****** 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: (No Response) ****** 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 considering all of my previous comments. The paper has substantially been improved. I have no further suggestions. 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: Yes: Diby Francois Kassi 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.0307209.r003
Revision 2
27 Jun 2024 Author Response Response to Editor’s comments Comment 1. ACADEMIC EDITOR: The quality of the English needs to be improved. Therefore, I request that you consult professional English-editing services (e.g., Editage, Enago, etc.) and obtain an Eng-lish-editing certificate from the service provider to be submitted along with the edited version of this manuscript. Response: Thank you for your feedback. We have already engaged professional Eng-lish-editing service (LetPub) to improve the quality of the manuscript. We have ob-tained an English-editing certificate from the service provider and will submit it along with the edited version of the manuscript. Response to reviewer’s comments Reviewer #1 and #2 Comment 1. All comments have been addressed. Response: Thank you for your feedback. We have carefully addressed all comments and made the necessary revisions. We appreciate your time and effort in reviewing our work. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307209.r004
1 Jul 2024 Decision Letter - Poowin Bunyavejchewin, Editor Currency risk analysis of belt and road initiative countries PONE-D-24-08628R2 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. 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 Editorial Manager® 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, Poowin Bunyavejchewin Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Although I do not believe the English quality is flawless, the authors do possess an English-editing certificate. Therefore, it should be sufficient to recommend that the Editor-in-Chief accept this version of the manuscript. Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307209.r005
Formally Accepted
4 Jul 2024 Acceptance Letter - Poowin Bunyavejchewin, Editor PONE-D-24-08628R2 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Wang, 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 Mr. Poowin Bunyavejchewin Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307209.r006

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