A study on substitution characteristics and competitive performance of Chinese super league teams under the five-substitution rule

Tong Chen; Liang Chen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0322241

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 11, 2025
11 Feb 2025 Author Response https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0322241.r001
2 Mar 2025 Decision Letter - Jovan Gardasevic, Editor PONE-D-25-03456A Study on Substitution Characteristics and Competitive Performance of Chinese Super League Teams under the Five-Substitution RulePLOS ONE Dear Dr. Chen, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 16 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. 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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. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a pre-existing iD in Editorial Manager. 3. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: The work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China[23BYT044] Please state what role the funders took in the study. 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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 ******** 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: It is not clear from the abstract which sport it is. That is unacceptable. The study is interesting. It provides information that an adequate substitution strategy can improve team performance. I would recommend that the proofreader look at this text. I think the academic style of English could be improved. There are too many complex sentences that make it difficult to understand. Like for example this one: "A stable substitution structure centered around core players is conducive to better seasonal performance." That could be said more simply. There are many such sentences throughout the text as well. A paragraph on Limitations of the study should be added to the Discussion. Also a paragraph with recommendations for coaches. Something like this: Coaches can optimize their substitution strategy by... I will recommend that the manuscript be published with minor corrections. Reviewer #2: Very current and interesting topic. Especially since there is little research on this issue, and the load and recovery of athletes in modern competitive calendars can be decisive in achieving results. The results of the study are clearly presented, the methodology is respected. The language is understandable. The discussion is very detailed. ****** 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: Bojan Masanovic Reviewer #2: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/ . PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org . Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0322241.r002
Revision 1
11 Mar 2025 Author Response Dear Editor Gardasevic, Thank you for giving us the opportunity to submit a revised draft of our manuscript titled "A Study on Substitution Characteristics and Competitive Performance of Chinese Super League Teams under the Five-Substitution Rule" [PONE-D-25-03456] to PLOS ONE. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers have dedicated to providing valuable feedback on our manuscript. We have incorporated changes that reflect all the suggestions provided by the reviewers. All changes are highlighted in red in the revised manuscript. Please see below for our point-by-point responses to the reviewers' comments. We hope that our work can be improved again. Response to Comments of Reviewer #1� Comment 1�It is not clear from the abstract which sport it is. That is unacceptable. The study is interesting. It provides information that an adequate substitution strategy can improve team performance. Response to comment 1:We sincerely appreciate your careful review and your interest in our research topic. Regarding your comment on the lack of clarity in distinguishing the sport in the abstract, we acknowledge that this was an unacceptable oversight on our part. We sincerely apologize for this mistake. Based on your suggestion, we have carefully revised and supplemented the abstract by explicitly specifying that our study focuses on soccer. This modification ensures that readers can clearly understand the context of our research. We genuinely hope that these improvements enhance the clarity and quality of the abstract. Thank you again for your valuable feedback. Comment 2�I would recommend that the proofreader look at this text. I think the academic style of English could be improved. There are too many complex sentences that make it difficult to understand. Like for example this one: "A stable substitution structure centered around core players is conducive to better seasonal performance." That could be said more simply. There are many such sentences throughout the text as well. Response to comment 2:Thank you for bringing these concerns to our attention. We sincerely apologize for any confusion caused by the previous version of the manuscript. We have taken significant efforts to enhance both the language quality and overall readability. We also sought the assistance of native English speakers to refine the language for improved precision and cohesion. Additionally, we have conducted a thorough revision of the abstract, introduction, and discussion sections, refining inappropriate expressions and improving the overall structure and language. We have reorganized the logic and terminology to enhance the professionalism of the writing. Furthermore, we have simplified complex sentences by removing redundant elements to make the text more concise and readable. For example, we revised "A stable substitution structure centered around core players is conducive to better seasonal performance." to "a substitution strategy centered around some soccer players contributes to better seasonal performance. " (See Abstract). Similar modifications have been made throughout the manuscript to improve sentence structure and grammar. All revised sentences have been highlighted in red for your convenience in reviewing these changes. Comment 3�A paragraph on Limitations of the study should be added to the Discussion. Also a paragraph with recommendations for coaches. Something like this: Coaches can optimize their substitution strategy by... Response to comment 3:We are grateful for your insightful comment, which allowed us to incorporate an important discussion on the limitations of this study and practical recommendations for coaches. Acknowledging research limitations and providing guidance for soccer coaches in substitution strategies is highly meaningful, as it not only highlights areas that require further investigation but also offers practical applications for coaching decisions. We sincerely apologize for the initial omission of this crucial aspect. Based on your recommendation, we have added the following content to the discussion section: Despite providing valuable insights into substitution strategies in CSL teams, this study has several limitations. First, the analysis is based on data from a single season, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. Second, this study does not fully account for goal difference and match context, all of which can significantly influence substitution decisions.Thus, further research is needed to examine how substitution strategies interact with goal difference, match phase, and opposition strength, while multi-season and cross-league analyses, along with player workload metrics, could enhance understanding and predictive accuracy of substitution decisions. These findings may be useful for coaches when they deciding substitute or replaced players. Coaches can optimize their substitution strategy by considering players’ importance within the substitution network and their performance. A highly centralized substitution network may contribute to greater team seasonal performance.Therefore, maintaining consistent substitute or replaced players in critical positions to ensure that they can seamlessly integrate into the tactical system could be beneficial.(See Discussion) Thank you once again for your constructive feedback. We truly appreciate your time and effort in reviewing our manuscript. Response to Comments of Reviewer #2� Comment 1�Very current and interesting topic. Especially since there is little research on this issue, and the load and recovery of athletes in modern competitive calendars can be decisive in achieving results. The results of the study are clearly presented, the methodology is respected. The language is understandable. The discussion is very detailed. Response to comment 1:We sincerely appreciate your positive feedback on our study. We are delighted that you found the topic both current and interesting, particularly given the limited research on this issue. The impact of soccer substitute within modern competitive calendars is indeed a crucial factor in the athlete load and recovery , and we are pleased that our study contributes to this important area of research. We are also grateful for your acknowledgment of the clarity of our results presentation, the rigor of our methodology, and the comprehensiveness of our discussion. Ensuring methodological accuracy and providing a detailed interpretation of findings were key priorities in our work, and it is encouraging to receive such recognition. Think you and best regards. Yours sincerely Chen Tong Corresponding author: Name: Chen Liang E-mail: cullencl@126.com Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0322241.r003
16 Mar 2025 Decision Letter - Bruno Travassos, Editor PONE-D-25-03456R1A Study on Substitution Characteristics and Competitive Performance of Chinese Super League Teams under the Five-Substitution RulePLOS ONE Dear Dr. Chen, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 30 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, Bruno Travassos 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: The authors should revise the manuscript according to reviewers suggestions. Also, before acceptance, the authors should improve the description about the concepts: substitution networks, substitution links and also a further explanation about what means in terms of the game the concept "Higher density indicates closer substitution relationships among players, while lower density reflects looser connections". The point is what means closer substitution relationship? These concepts are fundamental for a clear understanding of the manuscript and its results. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: (No Response) ******** 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: The author has answered the questions posed. He has adopted the suggested advice. He has added the necessary details. I consider that this manuscript can now be published. Reviewer #2: respected, I looked carefully at the corrections you made. I also looked at the comments and corrections of other colleagues. I think that the work is now much better and ready for reception. I hope that the comments contributed to a better final version of the paper, and that is our common goal in our scientific community. Also, I hope we all learned something that can help us in our next works. good luck. ****** 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: Bojan Masanovic Reviewer #2: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/ . PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org . Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0322241.r004
Revision 2
17 Mar 2025 Author Response Response to Comment of Editor: "The authors should revise the manuscript according to reviewers' suggestions. Additionally, the authors should improve the description of the concepts: substitution networks, substitution links, and further explain the meaning of the concept 'Higher density indicates closer substitution relationships among players, while lower density reflects looser connections.' The point is, what does 'closer substitution relationship' mean?" Response:We greatly appreciate the editor’s insightful comments. To improve clarity and provide a deeper understanding of these key concepts, we have made the following revisions: Substitution Networks: We have clarified that substitution networks is a social network constructed based on the substitution patterns of a team during matches where nodes represent players (substitutes or players substituted off) and edges represent substitution relationships during the match. These relationships capture the dynamics of player changes, which reflect substitution strategies. Substitution Links: We further define substitution links as the connections between the player substituted off and the player who replaces them. We also explain how these links are formed and analyzed in our model. Density of Substitution Networks: We have expanded on the explanation of network density. A higher density indicates that players on the team have a diverse set of substitution interactions, showing that the team’s substitution decisions involve a wider range of player combinations. A lower density, on the other hand, suggests that substitution decisions tend to involve only a small set of players, reflecting less variability in the team’s substitution strategy. These revisions are included in Section Methods of the manuscript, where we now provide a more comprehensive explanation of these terms to ensure the concepts are fully understood by readers. Response to Comments of Reviewer #1� We sincerely appreciate your positive feedback and recognition of our improvements. Your comments have been instrumental in enhancing the clarity and quality of our manuscript. Response to Comments of Reviewer #2� Thank you very much for your encouraging words and constructive feedback. We are grateful for your support and recognition of our efforts to improve the manuscript. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response_to_Reviewers_auresp_2.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0322241.r005
19 Mar 2025 Decision Letter - Bruno Travassos, Editor A Study on Substitution Characteristics and Competitive Performance of Chinese Super League Teams under the Five-Substitution Rule PONE-D-25-03456R2 Dear Dr. Chen, 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, Bruno Travassos Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0322241.r006
Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Bruno Travassos, Editor PONE-D-25-03456R2 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Chen, 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. Bruno Travassos %CORR_ED_EDITOR_ROLE% PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0322241.r007

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