PONE-D-23-38795Exploring the spatial spillover implications of ports in the Yangtze River Delta region on the economic prosperity of citiesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Shi,

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==============================Authors need to make their research more presentable. Please go over the suggestions made by the reviewers carefully especially Reviewer 1 ==============================

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Muhammad Khalid Bashir, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This paper selects panel data from 20 ports in the Yangtze River Delta region and their host cities, then carries out the empirical examination of the implications that ports have on the prosperity of urban economies. The topic is worth studying, but the article still has some problems that need to be corrected:

1. A literature review was conducted on “the interrelation between port enhancement and regional economic prosperity” and “the interrelation between financial development and economic prosperity”, respectively, but should logically link them together. Meanwhile, “literature review” is not simply a list of literature.

2. The theoretical value and practical implications of the study are not clearly presented in the introduction or literature review.

3. Instead of listing each common models, the research article needs to articulate the applicability and strengths of the chosen one.

4. What is the reason behind the conclusion of the paper that “the indirect stimulus on the economies of surrounding cities is more pronounced compared to the direct implications on the economies of the host cities”?

5. Generally, research articles need to have an “Discussions” section before “Conclusions”, in which they need to go deeper and improve on the previous research. I suggest that you should restructure this article.

6. The writing of this article is not standard, with many grammatical and formatting errors, such as incorrect line numbers. I strongly advise seeking the assistance of a native English speaker or a professional language editor to enhance the clarity and coherence of your paper.

Reviewer #2: I thoroughly reviewed the manuscript title “Exploring the spatial spillover implications of ports in the Yangtze River Delta region on the economic prosperity of cities”. Based on several reasons I would recommend major revisions of the manuscript.

Some of my points are as under:

The language and sentence structures of this manuscript are at times incomprehensible. The writing style in general is awkward at too many instances. The paper needs extensive editing.

This is basically repetition of existing work. Similar studies have also been published in other journals. Author(s) should add a separate paragraph (in the Introduction Section) explaining the shortcomings of previous research and how this study is different from existing studies. I mean contribution of this study in existing literature.

I found several inconsistencies in the 2nd section “Literature review and theoretical hypotheses”.

Author(s) should discuss/explain hypotheses in the last paragraph of the Introduction Section.

Rewrite hypotheses in a scientific way.

Similarly, writing style in the Literature Review section is awkward. Author(s) should add a separate section only on literature review: provide the comments of the cited papers after introducing each relevant work. What readers require is, by convinced literature review, to understand the clear thinking/consideration why the proposed approach can reach more convinced results. This is the very contribution from authors. In addition, authors also should provide more sufficient critical literature review to indicate the drawbacks of existed approaches, then, well define the main stream of research direction, how did those previous studies perform? Employ which methodologies? Which problem still requires to be solved? Why is the proposed approach suitable to be used to solve the critical problem? We need more convinced literature reviews to indicate clearly the state-of-the-art development.

The models used in the analyses are appropriate.

The Discussion Section is missing. Author(s) should add the Discussion Section and that must have a convincing and strong literature to support the findings and unfortunately the writing style in general in the results section is awkward.

The conclusion needs revision. Authors should write what they have actually concluded based on the study’s findings. It should not be the repetition of the abstract.

All the best!

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Exploring the spatial spillover effects of Yangtze River Delta ports on urban economic growth

PONE-D-23-38795R1

Dear Dr. Shi,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Muhammad Khalid Bashir, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Authors are requested to re-write the Abstract in order to reflect conclusions and implications.

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 #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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 #2: I have thoroughly reviewed the revision of the manuscript. The paper can be accepted for publication.

Reviewer #3: This articel is designed to explore the spatial spillover effects of Yangtze River Delta ports on urban economic growth. The authors found that: (1) The YRD ports significantly contribute to economic growth in both the port cities and their surrounding areas, with the indirect impact on neighboring cities being more substantial than the direct effect on the cities themselves; (2) The beneficial spillover effects of the YRD ports on the economic growth of nearby cities vary in intensity over different spatial ranges, marked by distinct boundary effects and geographical attenuation. The influence extends up to approximately 110km; (3) Within the various elements impacting the economic growth of cities in the YRD, financial development prominently exhibits a threshold effect on urban economic growth; (4) Upon analyzing heterogeneity, inland and coastal port cities manifest divergent spillover effects, with inland port cities predominantly exerting a positive spillover on adjacent regions.. The overall methodology and procedures were valid, and it's well written. However, the ABSTRACT should be re-summarized as there is no conclusions and implications.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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