PONE-D-24-46751Spatial Layout Characteristics of Northern Wei Luoyang: A Spatial Humanities Analysis of the “Record of the Monasteries of Luoyang”PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Liu,

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Yuan Zhang, 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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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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: 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: No

Reviewer #2: 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 manuscript presents a digital approach to analyzing historical urban spaces using spatial humanities tools, specifically GIS and complex network analysis. The focus on Northern Wei Luoyang provides a valuable case study that contributes to the understanding of ancient urban planning and social stratification.

A few suggestions are as the following:

(1) Include a critical discussion of the results, considering potential alternative interpretations or explanations for the observed patterns to provide a more nuanced understanding.

�2�Discuss potential limitations or biases in the data sources used and how these might affect the study's conclusions.

�3�the paper has explained more “what”, while less interpretation of “why” and “how”, namely the reason behind the patterns.

(4) the conclusion part is rather weak in the present form.

Reviewer #2: - What are the main claims of the paper and how significant are they for the discipline?

This is a comprehensive study of urban history applied to a city in China. It mixes quantitative and qualitative methods effectively and the discussion of results is convincing. I have no expertise to evaluate the subject matter as I am neither a a urban historian nor an expert on China. From a the perspective of a scholar engaged in spatial humanities projects and as a geographic information scientist, I found the study well conducted if not especially innovative. The use of the GIS and the spatial analytical methods applied are appropriate to address the research questions, but fairly common, as is the complex network analysis. This is not a criticism per se, but the claim in the abstract (and implied elsewhere) that this is a "new digital framework" is unwarranted. While the application area may be novel, something I am in no position to judge, the methods and the analytical framework certainly are not. As a final note, the maps and figures in the manuscript are well done and meaningful.

- Are the claims properly placed in the context of the previous literature? Have the authors treated the literature fairly?

I cannot comment on the topical literature (i.e., urban history of China) but the spatial humanities and also the network analysis literature are not up to date. For example, the authors may have benefited from applying principles and methods from social spatial network analysis (see in particular the work of Clio Andris and others on the subject). A deeper dive in the literature would be welcome but is not necessary, as the analytical tools used by the authors are quite standard and appear sufficient to justify their conclusions. As a suggestion, perhaps for future work, in addition to spatial social networks, the use of corpus linguistics, natural language processing, and even AI could have been used here.

- Do the data and analyses fully support the claims? If not, what other evidence is required?

On the surface, yes. But the data have not been provided so I am unable to judge.

- Are original data deposited in appropriate repositories and accession/version numbers provided for genes, proteins, mutants, diseases, etc.?

No, although the authors state that data will be provided "upon acceptance of the manuscript."

- Are details of the methodology sufficient to allow the experiments to be reproduced?

No, at least as concerns spatial analysis. No details are provided on the parameters entered for kernel density analysis and for the calculation of mean centers and standard deviation ellipses. They should.

- Is any software created by the authors freely available?

ArcGIS is not, but I believe the other programs mentioned are freely available.

- Is the manuscript well organized and written clearly enough to be accessible to non-specialists?

The manuscript is well organized and very clearly written. There are several typos and other minor issues, including in no particular order: a) spelling mistakes and typos include, but are not limited to, "fortyyear" (line 80), wrongly spaced quotation marks (110, 11, and elsewhere), "highdefinition" (120) "ex-ample" (276), "con-centration" (299), etc. Also, no need to write "Mr." in line 102 and "was" in line 301 is grammatically incorrect in line 301; b) "Geographic Information Systems (GIS)" should be spelled out only the first time it appears. Everywhere else just write "GIS"; c) GIS is called a "method" in the abstract but a technology elsewhere (e.g., line 32). GIS is a tool or a technology, not a method (Kernel density is a spatial analytical method); d) the content of the paragraph between line 142-145 is repeated immediately below in lines 146-150 with slightly different wording, keep only one; e) I would replace the word "alignment" with "georeferentiation" in line 151; f) the term "spatialized map" (369 and elsewhere) is redundant, just write "map"; g) the term "spatial location" (340) is also redundant, just use "locational"; h) the term "like" in line 355 is not needed.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Spatial Layout Characteristics of Northern Wei Luoyang: A Spatial Humanities Analysis of the “Record of the Monasteries of Luoyang”

PONE-D-24-46751R1

Dear Dr. Liu,

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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Kind regards,

Yuan Zhang, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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

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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 #1: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

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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 #1: 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 #1: 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 #1: (No Response)

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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 #1: No

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