Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 26, 2024
Decision Letter - Chenfeng Xiong, Editor

PONE-D-24-12158Research on Community Emergency Management Policy in China Based on Policy Text ToolPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Du,

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.lease submit your revised manuscript by Nov 30 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,

Chenfeng Xiong

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

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

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. We suggest you thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar. If you do not know anyone who can help you do this, you may wish to consider employing a professional scientific editing service. The American Journal Experts (AJE) (https://www.aje.com/) is one such service that has extensive experience helping authors meet PLOS guidelines and can provide language editing, translation, manuscript formatting, and figure formatting to ensure your manuscript meets our submission guidelines. Please note that having the manuscript copyedited by AJE or any other editing services does not guarantee selection for peer review or acceptance for publication. Upon resubmission, please provide the following: ● The name of the colleague or the details of the professional service that edited your manuscript ● A copy of your manuscript showing your changes by either highlighting them or using track changes (uploaded as a *supporting information* file) ● A clean copy of the edited manuscript (uploaded as the new *manuscript* file)

3. Please note that funding information should not appear in any section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript.

4. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: “This research is supported by the project of "Wisdom Emergency Management Key Laboratory" (No. 2023ZHYJGL-4) of the Sichuan Provincial Key Laboratory of Philosophy and Social Sciences and the Youth Fund for Humanities and Social Sciences Research of the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (No. 23YJCZH051).”

Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

5. We note that your Data Availability Statement is currently as follows: “All relevant data are within the manuscript and in Supporting Information files.”

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.

Additional Editor Comments:

The editor agrees with the two reviewers that the paper does have its scientific merit in advancing the understanding of emergency management policy in China. Yet, the paper needs a thorough revision to increase its quality and paper organization before it can be accepted for publication at PLOS One.

In addition to the reviewers' comments, the Editor has the following major comments:

First of all, the paper needs to have a much better discussion of their methodology. There are multiple methodlogical components of the study, including text selection, content analysis, (social?) network analysis, policy analysis, etc. It is warranted that the authors create an overarching framework (or a flowchart at the higher level) that integrates these parts together (along with input data, and outputs/policy recommendations). The paper in its current form is very fragmented and needs a methodological framework as its backbone.

Secondly, please make thorough check on the methodology description and make sure they are all adequately discussed. For instance, the content analysis and (social?) network analysis need more discussion and technical details. Also, arguably the method is no longer a social network problem but rather you used network and graph to represent different linkages of texts/words, if the Editor understood it correctly. Then, such a generalization needs to be formulated and discussed in the paper.

Third, please revise the policy recommendation and embed them in your Section 5. This is because many of your recommendations are backed up by your analysis findings, they should be discussed inline with your anlaysis results/visualizations. Evidences should then be cited to support each policy implication/recommendation item. In Section 6, you merely revisit these recommendations.

Last but not least, the paper lacks a discussion of contribution. Please highlight your innovation, whether it is within technical/methodological frame, or about empirical findings/policy suggestions, the readers should be informed on why this article is cutting-edge and has the value for publication at an impactful journal such as PLOS One.

[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: No

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: The research of community emergency management in China is a field worthy of attention, and the selection of this field is worthy of full affirmation. Based on the analysis of policy texts, this paper puts forward reasonable suggestions for community emergency management in China, which is also worthy of affirmation. On the whole, the article is worth publishing. However, it is also necessary to pay attention to the following problems: First, there are too few policy text names listed in Table 1, and the policy text names directly related to the topic of this paper should be listed. The number of existing policy text names is small, and it is not clear which policy text is directly related to this paper. Second, there are many errors in the language of this paper. It is recommended that professional service organizations make comprehensive changes to the text language.

Reviewer #2: I reviewed the paper titled “Research on Community Emergency Management Policy in China Based on Policy Text Tool.” The author analyzed the current status and existing problems of the CEMP system and provided suggestions for the usage of policy instruments, reforming policy goals, and assessing the degree of compatibility.

I have several comments and questions:

Abstract: "community emergency management policy (CEMP)" should be changed to "Community Emergency Management Policy (CEMP)" for consistency.

Line 13: There is an inconsistency between "two dimensional analysis framework of 'policy tool-policy goal'" and line 128: "two-dimensional analysis framework of 'policy tools-policy objectives'." These terms should be unified.

Line 143: The word "plans" is duplicated.

Line 482: In the 6.2 Policy Recommendations section, I suggest adding steps for emergency management evaluation. Based on the evaluation results, identify the effectiveness of policy tools and then give recommendations according to their effectiveness. The emergency scenario should be considered when evaluating the effectiveness of policy tools.

Questions:

Q1: On Line 140, would using "community emergency" as a keyword provide more comprehensive data results?

Q2: On Line 141, why did you choose those three keywords? Several other keywords, such as "emergency response," "emergency rescue," and "emergency drills," are mentioned frequently in the paper. Why were they not selected?

Q3: On Line 216, are the tools listed in Table 2, "Division of CEMP Tools," sourced from the Magic Weapon Legal Database of Peking University?

**********

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: Yes:  bangfan liu

Reviewer #2: Yes:  Ya Ji

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/ . PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org . Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Revision 1

We sincerely thank the editor and all reviewers for their professional comments on our articles, which helped us improve our manuscript. The point-by-point response to the comments is given below.

Comments from the editor:

General Comments:

The editor agrees with the two reviewers that the paper does have its scientific merit in advancing the understanding of emergency management policy in China. Yet, the paper needs a thorough revision to increase its quality and paper organization before it can be accepted for publication at PLOS One.

Specific comments:

1.First of all, the paper needs to have a much better discussion of their methodology. There are multiple methodlogical components of the study, including text selection, content analysis, (social?) network analysis, policy analysis, etc. It is warranted that the authors create an overarching framework (or a flowchart at the higher level) that integrates these parts together (along with input data, and outputs/policy recommendations). The paper in its current form is very fragmented and needs a methodological framework as its backbone.

Answer: We agree. We think this is a good suggestion. By building an overall framework to integrate the methods used, the context of the article can be clearer. Therefore, we have created a general research framework, and put it in Part 3.1 of this paper, and added a frame diagram (see Fig. 1)(Line. 132-148).

2.Secondly, please make thorough check on the methodology description and make sure they are all adequately discussed. For instance, the content analysis and (social?) network analysis need more discussion and technical details. Also, arguably the method is no longer a social network problem but rather you used network and graph to represent different linkages of texts/words, if the Editor understood it correctly. Then, such a generalization needs to be formulated and discussed in the paper.

Answer: We agree. We have thoroughly checked the method description according to the editor's suggestion, and added more discussion and technical details to the research method in part 3.3 of the paper, and added an exposition of the use of network and graphic to express the relationship between keywords in social network analysis. (Line.176-179; 186-194; 312-317)

3.Third, please revise the policy recommendation and embed them in your Section 5. This is because many of your recommendations are backed up by your analysis findings, they should be discussed inline with your anlaysis results/visualizations. Evidences should then be cited to support each policy implication/recommendation item. In Section 6, you merely revisit these recommendations.

Answer: We agree. We have revised the policy recommendations according to the editor's suggestions and embedded them in Part 5, discussed them together with the research results, and added references to supporting evidence, and revisited these policy recommendations in Part 6. (Line.332-344; 366-368; 386-388; 400-408; 423-427; 434-438; 444-448; 470-474; 484-488; 502-505; 513-515; 519-552)

4.Last but not least, the paper lacks a discussion of contribution. Please highlight your innovation, whether it is within technical/methodological frame, or about empirical findings/policy suggestions, the readers should be informed on why this article is cutting-edge and has the value for publication at an impactful journal such as PLOS One.

Answer: We agree. We have emphasized our innovation and the value of the article in the research framework and policy suggestions. (Line.133-136; 554-557)

Comments from the reviewers:

Reviewer 1

General Comments:

The research of community emergency management in China is a field worthy of attention, and the selection of this field is worthy of full affirmation. Based on the analysis of policy texts, this paper puts forward reasonable suggestions for community emergency management in China, which is also worthy of affirmation. On the whole, the article is worth publishing. However, it is also necessary to pay attention to the following problems:

Specific comments:

1. First, there are too few policy text names listed in Table 1, and the policy text names directly related to the topic of this paper should be listed. The number of existing policy text names is small, and it is not clear which policy text is directly related to this paper.

Answer: We agree. We sincerely thank you for your valuable suggestions. We have added policy texts directly related to the theme of this article in Table 1, which makes the display of policy texts clearer. Such as “Opinions on Further Playing the Role of Emergency Broadcasting in Emergency Management”; “Opinions on Improving and Perfecting the Comprehensive Service Functions at the Village Level” , etc.(Line.166)

2.Second, there are many errors in the language of this paper. It is recommended that professional service organizations make comprehensive changes to the text language.

Answer: We agree. Thank you for your advice. We found a professional organization (AJE) to polish our article, and we tried our best to revise it. These changes will not affect the content and framework of the paper, so we didn't list the changes here. In addition, according to the suggestion of AJE, we revised the title of the article to “Community Emergency Management Policy in China Using a Policy Text Tool”. We uploaded the polished version to the supporting information, and we hope that the revised manuscript will be accepted by you. (Line.1-2)

Reviewer 2

1.Abstract: "community emergency management policy (CEMP)" should be changed to "Community Emergency Management Policy (CEMP)" for consistency.

Answer: We agree. We have made corresponding changes in the abstract to maintain consistency. (Line. 11)

2.Line 13: There is an inconsistency between "two dimensional analysis framework of 'policy tool-policy goal'" and line 128: "two-dimensional analysis framework of 'policy tools-policy objectives'." These terms should be unified.

Answer: We are very sorry for our careless mistakes. Thank you for reminding us. We have unified the terms in these two places. (Line.15 and Line126)

3.Line 143: The word "plans" is duplicated.

Answer: We are very sorry for our careless mistakes. We have deleted the redundant words.(Line.154)

4.Line 482: In the 6.2 Policy Recommendations section, I suggest adding steps for emergency management evaluation. Based on the evaluation results, identify the effectiveness of policy tools and then give recommendations according to their effectiveness. The emergency scenario should be considered when evaluating the effectiveness of policy tools.

Answer: Thank you for your suggestion. We have added relevant explanations to the assessment in the emergency management assessment step, and suggested that emergency scenarios should be considered. (lines 533-538) .

5.On Line 140, would using "community emergency" as a keyword provide more comprehensive data results?

Answer: We sincerely thank you for your careful reading. We tried to use "community emergency" as the key word to search. In addition to the policy texts already covered by other key words, we supplemented the policy text "Opinions on Further Improving the Emergency Management Capability at the Grass-Roots Level" (2024) and listed it in Table 1. (Line.158 and Line.166)

6.On Line 141, why did you choose those three keywords? Several other keywords, such as "emergency response," "emergency rescue," and "emergency drills," are mentioned frequently in the paper. Why were they not selected?

Answer: We sincerely thank you for your careful reading. The keywords we selected cover the policy texts about community emergency management, but we still try to search carefully again with keywords such as "emergency response", "community emergency rescue" and "community emergency drill", and supplement the policy texts by adding five policy texts such as "People's Republic of China (PRC) Emergency Response Law" (2024). As shown in Table 1. (158-159; 166)

In addition, we extended the policy text retrieval time from 2004-2023 to 2004-2024. At the same time, after adding relevant search keywords, the number of policy texts increased from 81 to 87. "5.Quantitative analysis of CEMP Texts" has updated the corresponding charts and data in the text.(See Fig3; Fig5; Fig6; Fig7 ) (Line.272; 324-327; 348; 354; 363-364; 379; 395-397; 414-416; 420-421; 431-432; 441; 455-456; 461; 466-467; 476-477; 490-493; 500;507-508)

7. On Line 216, are the tools listed in Table 2, "Division of CEMP Tools," sourced from the Magic Weapon Legal Database of Peking University?

Answer: Clarification. Thank you for your question. The tools classification listed in Table 2 "Division of CEMP Tools" adopts Rothwell and other policy tools classification standards. See Reference [34] for details.(Line.211-213; 223-225)

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Chenfeng Xiong, Editor

PONE-D-24-12158R1Community Emergency Management Policy in China Using a Policy Text ToolPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Du,

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.

 Thank you for revising your manuscript according to editor's and reviewers' comments. The two reviewers are happy with the revision. However, the editor's original comments are not fully addressed. First of all, the authors' responses provided page and line number of the revision to each comment, however, the line number seemed not exactly accurate. Can you double check and make sure the pointed location is exactly what you have revised for each of the comments? Then, specifically, the authors did not address the contribution concern well, which was my fourth point in the Round-1 review. What exactly is innovative in this research? What contributions made by the article warrant a publication in Plos-One? Please explain explicitly in the paper's conclusion section. The current responses from the authors have pointed their "contributions" to the paper's "Limitation" section, which is confusing. 

Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 15 2025 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,

Chenfeng Xiong

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: (No Response)

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: In response to the review comments, the author of the article has carefully considered and made corresponding modifications or responses. The revised manuscript has met the publication standards and it is recommended to publish it.

Reviewer #2: Thanks! I have no other comments on this paper, my previous comments are addresses and answsered clearly.

**********

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:  liu bangfan

Reviewer #2: Yes:  Ya Ji

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/ . PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org . Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Revision 2

We sincerely thank the editor for his professional comments on our articles, which helps us to improve our manuscripts. The point-by-point response to the comments is given below.

Comments from the editor:

General Comments:

Thank you for revising your manuscript according to editor's and reviewers' comments. The two reviewers are happy with the revision. However, the editor's original comments are not fully addressed.

Specific comments:

1.First of all, the authors' responses provided page and line number of the revision to each comment, however, the line number seemed not exactly accurate. Can you double check and make sure the pointed location is exactly what you have revised for each of the comments?

Answer: Thank you for your careful inspection. We are sorry for our carelessness. According to your opinion, we made corrections so that the revised page number and line number of each comment in reply correspond to the position in the text one by one. See "Correction" below for the specific modifications, and the modified contents have been marked in red. (See the second page of this letter for details.)

2.Then, specifically, the authors did not address the contribution concern well, which was my fourth point in the Round-1 review. What exactly is innovative in this research? What contributions made by the article warrant a publication in Plos-One? Please explain explicitly in the paper's conclusion section. The current responses from the authors have pointed their "contributions" to the paper's "Limitation" section, which is confusing.

Answer: Thank you for your professional advice. We have made a serious revision according to your suggestion. In the conclusion of chapter 7, we clearly explain the innovation and contribution value of this study.(Line. 553-586)

Correction:

Comments from the editor:

4.Last but not least, the paper lacks a discussion of contribution. Please highlight your innovation, whether it is within technical/methodological frame, or about empirical findings/policy suggestions, the readers should be informed on why this article is cutting-edge and has the value for publication at an impactful journal such as PLOS One.

Answer: We agree. We have emphasized our innovation and the value of the article in the research framework and policy suggestions. (Line.133-136; 553-586)

Comments from the reviewers:

Reviewer 2

6.On Line 141, why did you choose those three keywords? Several other keywords, such as "emergency response," "emergency rescue," and "emergency drills," are mentioned frequently in the paper. Why were they not selected?

Answer: We sincerely thank you for your careful reading. The keywords we selected cover the policy texts about community emergency management, but we still try to search carefully again with keywords such as "emergency response", "community emergency rescue" and "community emergency drill", and supplement the policy texts by adding five policy texts such as "People's Republic of China (PRC) Emergency Response Law" (2024). As shown in Table 1. (158-159; 166)

In addition, we extended the policy text retrieval time from 2004-2023 to 2004-2024. At the same time, after adding relevant search keywords, the number of policy texts increased from 81 to 87. "5.Quantitative analysis of CEMP Texts" has updated the corresponding charts and data in the text.(See Fig3; Fig5; Fig6; Fig7 ) (Line.17; 163-164; 259; 272; 297; 324; 326; 327; 348; 354; 362-364; 379; 395; 397; 410; 414-416; 420-421; 431-432; 441; 450; 455-456; 461; 466-467; 476-477; 490-493; 500; 507-508; 517)

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response_to_Reviewers_auresp_2.docx
Decision Letter - Chenfeng Xiong, Editor

Community Emergency Management Policy in China Using a Policy Text Tool

PONE-D-24-12158R2

Dear Dr. Du,

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,

Chenfeng Xiong

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Thank you for the effort addressing my remaining comments. The updated version reads good to me. Thumb up.

Reviewers' comments:

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Chenfeng Xiong, Editor

PONE-D-24-12158R2

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Du,

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. Chenfeng Xiong

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

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

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

Learn more at ASAPbio .