PONE-D-24-22830A novel hybrid PSO-MIDAS model and its application to the U.S. GDP forecastPLOS ONE

Dear Dr.  Shen,

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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

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Sercan Ergün

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

We have now received the reviewers’ reports, and after careful consideration, we have decided that your manuscript requires major revisions before it can be considered for publication.

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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

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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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

Reviewer #3: No

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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: The following comments are provided for improving the manuscript:

1. The authors need to clearly explain what makes their work new and different, especially because there are already similar PSO-MIDAS models out there. Other researchers like Xiang (2018), Rosso and colleagues (2021) have worked on models of this kind.

[1] Xiang, C. (2018). Study on Forecast of Real Estate Prosperity Index Based on MIDAS Model Corrected by Mixed Kernel Function SVM. DOI: 10.12677/AAM.2018.712182

[2] Rosso, M. M., Cucuzza, R., Di Trapani, F., & Marano, G. C. (2021). Nonpenalty machine learning constraint handling using PSO‐SVM for structural optimization. Advances in Civil Engineering, 2021(1), 6617750.

2. The paper mainly compares its model with basic MIDAS models, but this doesn't show enough how the paper improves on what's already out there. So, the authors should also include how their model does compared to other well-known models, like those that predict things over time or models that look at data at the same frequency.

3. The paper needs to give a clearer and fuller explanation of how it combines the PSO algorithm with the MIDAS model, and what benefits this combination offers. The current explanation is too brief and doesn't show that the study's methods are strong and reliable.

4. The use of the PSO algorithm with only three explanatory variables should be justified. The authors need to clarify how the algorithm's benefits manifest in this context and why it was chosen over other variable selection methods.

5. The parameter settings listed in Table 1 need further elucidation. The authors should provide a rationale for these choices, supported by relevant references to enhance the credibility of their methodological approach.

6. The manuscript relies exclusively on RMSFE to evaluate forecasting accuracy, which is overly simplistic. Commonly used metrics such as MAPE and comparative tests like Diebold-Mariano tests are missing. Incorporating these would allow for a more nuanced assessment of the model's efficacy.

7. The conclusion should be expanded to include actionable policy recommendations and a discussion on the broader applications of the research. This would increase the paper's relevance and practical value.

Reviewer #2: The data used for the study are all provided and the statistical and/or data analysis carried out have all been done according to best practices with the requisite rigour. It is important, however, to consider the following observations:

1) More rigour in justifying the choice of PSO for the optimization specifically as against the general comments made in comparison with other possible techniques

2) How does the MIDAS approach in the work of Philip H. Franses (2016) "Yet Another Look at MIDAS Regression" relate (positively or otherwise) with that adopted in this work

3) There should be more rigour in describing and contrasting between the other Information Criterion approaches apart from the 2 mentioned (BIC & AIC) here, such as Hannan-Quim, Schwarz (or Schwarz-Bayesian) etc

4) In the analysis and conclusion, it is inferred that the accuracy of the results are enhanced with a larger forecast horizon. So how poorly does the model behave for a "small" forecast horizon and indeed, what is large enough for the forecast horizon

The manuscript is written intelligibly well, in standard English and with minimal editorial corrctions

Reviewer #3: 1. “When using the Mixed Data Sampling (MIDAS) regression model to forecast GDP, determining the mixed frequency lag structures using traditional lag structure selection methods reduces forecast accuracy”- Modify this line. Abstract should not start with when.

2. Author must constructively change the abstract in terms of adding only best numerical values to the result. The Author needs to write in a consistent way. Also author mention error analysis of result.

3. Please modify the objective section for a clear understanding i.e novelty part should be clearly mentioned.

4. Author must mention where they got data and frequency of data. Statistical analysis of data must be given in Tabular format (Like Table no 1, 10.1061/(ASCE)IR.1943-4774.0001689, not for citation purposes, only for checking Table 1 ).

5. Please add more recent literature (2024) in terms of the PSO-MV-MIDAS Model for better understanding.

6. Author must add study flowchart, which will clearly specify the research done in this study.

7. Comparison statement (compare with other research articles) must be added in the result and discussion section to better visualize the proposed research.

8. Author must add future scope in the last portion of the manuscript.

9. Advantages and limitations of the proposed model must be added.

10. For better analysis of the result author must add a histogram plot

11. Author must provide a flow chart, pseudo code of proposed individual models.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Han Liu

Reviewer #2: Yes: Muhammed Bashir Mu'azu

Reviewer #3: No

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PONE-D-24-22830R1A novel hybrid PSO-MIDAS model and its application to the U.S. GDP forecastPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Shen,

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:

Revised manuscript has still some concerns to be dealt with. So, the decision is Minor Revision.

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 18 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,

Sercan Ergün

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.

Additional Editor Comments:

Revised manuscript has still some concerns to be dealt with. So, the decision is Minor Revision.

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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 #4: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #5: 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 #4: Partly

Reviewer #5: Yes

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

Reviewer #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: 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 #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: 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 #4: Yes

Reviewer #5: 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 #4: The manuscript presents a well-structured and methodologically sound study that contributes to the field of economic forecasting.

the manuscript could benefit from additional discussions on the practical implications of the findings and a more detailed exploration of the PSO algorithm’s optimization process.

1- Expand the discussion on the implications of the findings for economic policy and forecasting practices.

Reviewer #5: The authors have revised the manuscript properly by incorporating all of the corrections/suggestion, therefore, it is recommended for publication in its present form.

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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.

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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 #4: Yes: Hadi Abbasian

Reviewer #5: No

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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.

PONE-D-24-22830R2A novel hybrid PSO-MIDAS model and its application to the U.S. GDP forecastPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Shen,

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 manuscript has critical concerns to deal with. 

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 13 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,

Sercan Ergün

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.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

The manuscript has critical concerns to deal with.

[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 #6: (No Response)

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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 #6: Yes

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

Reviewer #6: 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 #6: No

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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 #6: 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 #6: Feng Shen et. al. have presented a Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm to determine the lag parameters for contributing factors in GDP forecasting using the MIDAS model. The manuscript is well presented and the analysis is robust.

There are a few further improvements that I would like to suggest to add clarity, and improve understanding:

1. It will be helpful to include temporal plots of actual vs forecasted GDP, and to derive conclusions about the models’ ability to forecast positive vs negative growth, since RMSE does not account for sign.

2. Line 80 - Sentence is unclear.

3. Line 98 - Chapter -> Section

4. Line 118 and Abstract - Could you please clarify the metric which is improved by 10%? The abstract mentions forecast accuracy, which could be further clarified as X-month forecast accuracy.

5. Eq 1 - The term u_{t+1} is undefined. It is not clear why there is a future time term on the right hand side of the equation. Same for Eq 2, 6.

6. Eq 2 - Does the equation make an assumption that the high frequency data X^{M} is monthly? This also applies to later parts of the manuscript and would be helpful to clarify.

7. Line 233 - It would be helpful to describe “large” as a typical number for the parameters to be estimated. For example, 100 vs 10,000.

8. Line 234 - Please expand and describe RMSFE at first usage.

9. Line 246 - Is the PSO algorithm capable of always finding the global optimum, or does it simply perform better than other optimization algorithms in finding the global solution? The sentence is confusing.

10. Line 265 - What is the purpose of r1 and r2 in the equation? Is this how randomness is introduced in the algorithm?

11. Line 295 - It is not clear why the lag parameters are continuous. Wouldn’t they be discrete - 0, 1, 2, 3, …?

12. Line 400 - The meaning of optimization effect is unclear.

13. Line 401 - The summary numbers in the text - 37%, 25%, 15% - are hard to interpret from Table 3. It would be helpful to add more explanations behind calculating these results. Also applies to later results.

14. Line 414 - Please expand and describe MAPE at first usage.

15. Line 419 - Please describe the Diebold and Mariano test.

16. Line 486 - It is subjective to state that the model was significantly better given the variability in performance. I would suggest removing “significantly”.

17. Line 492 - It would be helpful to include the units of forecast horizon, such as, 2 quarters.

18. Line 491 - Is this conclusion correct for each of the three variables in the univariate model?

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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 #6: No

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[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.

A novel hybrid PSO-MIDAS model and its application to the U.S. GDP forecast

PONE-D-24-22830R3

Dear Dr. Shen,

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,

Sercan Ergün

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: