Cohort profile: Genetic data in the German Socio-Economic Panel Innovation Sample (SOEP-G)

Philipp D. Koellinger; Aysu Okbay; Hyeokmoon Kweon; Annemarie Schweinert; Richard Karlsson Linnér; Jan Goebel; David Richter; Lisa Reiber; Bettina Maria Zweck; Daniel W. Belsky; Pietro Biroli; Rui Mata; Elliot M. Tucker-Drob; K. Paige Harden; Gert Wagner; Ralph Hertwig

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0294896

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 24, 2023
24 Feb 2023 Author Response Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response letter.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294896.r001
4 Jul 2023 Decision Letter - José Alberto Molina, Editor PONE-D-23-05350Cohort Profile: Genetic data in the German Socio-Economic Panel Innovation Sample (SOEP-G)PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Koellinger, 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 Aug 18 2023 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, José Alberto Molina 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 note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section. 3. Please expand the acronym “NIH/NICHD” (as indicated in your financial disclosure) so that it states the name of your funders in full. This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized. Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. 5. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. 6. We note that Figure 2 in your submission contain map images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission: (1) You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figure 2 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license. We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text: “I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.” Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an ""Other"" file with your submission. In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].” (2) If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only. The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful: USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/ Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/ USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/# Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ 7. 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. 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: Yes 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: This paper highlights the wealthof the SOEP data to conduct health and genetic studies. Specifically, the authors emphasize the genetic data collectedin the SOEP. I think that the article is very well written and suitable for publication, but some minor corrections should be made before publication. Specifically, when I come across the manuscript, I do not see the motivation behind this work. I think it is important to improve it, by pointing out the specific information gathered in the SOEP-IS sample, in order to serve as a "guide" for future research. Furthermore, the contribution of the paper is not described. Finally, possible future research lines, taking advantage of this dataset knowledge, should be pointed out, for both practitioners and researchers from different disciplines: economics, medical, health, social sciences,... In Section 2 (list all Sections/Sub-sections), describe in more detail the GSOEP data, in general terms. The focus of the survey, the target respondent (individual vs. household), the panel data structure, the time period availaible at the time of writing the article,... In Page 9, I would prefer to include a Table and show both mean and SD of the SOEP-G and Census sample statistics. It would be more visible to readers to identify potential differences between SOEP-G and census data. In the last Section, you could suggest possible improvements of the health and genetic measures collected in this survey for future waves. Reviewer #2: This paper, which details the genetic data collection for approximately 2,600 individuals in the German Socio-Economic Panel, is well written and provides an invaluable resource for researchers. Those investigating sociodemographic and economic questions using genetic data will find this particularly beneficial. However, I have two suggestions to improve the paper further: The authors note in their discussion of Figure 4 that "younger birth cohorts are on average substantially taller than older birth cohorts". It would add weight to their observation if they referenced previous studies that have also found this, such as the one available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2809930/, which highlights the role of the socioeconomic environment (namely, income and disease). This paper is clear, well-written, and I believe will be highly cited, offering considerable assistance to the research community across various fields in utilizing genetic data in demographic and socioeconomic research. Perhaps this can be emphasized in the paper, with examples of recent research such as those available at the following links: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32587483/ https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/705415 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537121000580 Additionally, I identified a few minor typographical errors, and I recommend the authors proofread the article to find any others: p.14: .28. p.15: The genotype missingness rate was greater than 5% in 484 individuals. p.16: indication of genotyping error ****** 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: No 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.0294896.r002
Revision 1
17 Oct 2023 Author Response Journal 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. We implemented style instructions. Please let us know if any additional changes need to be made. 2. We note that the grant information you provided in the ‘Funding Information’ and ‘Financial Disclosure’ sections do not match. When you resubmit, please ensure that you provide the correct grant numbers for the awards you received for your study in the ‘Funding Information’ section. We listed the correct grant numbers (as far as available) and funding information in the “Funding Information” section of the online submission system. 3. Please expand the acronym “NIH/NICHD” (as indicated in your financial disclosure) so that it states the name of your funders in full. This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. We expanded the NIH/NICHD acronym and included the updated financial disclosure statement in the cover letter. 4. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/dataavailability. Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized. Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-accessrestrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. We are in the process of making the raw genetic data available via the European Genome-Phenome Archive. We will make the URL, accession number, or DOI available to you before publication. As mentioned in the Data Availability statement, DIW Berlin shares the genetic principal component and all polygenic indices constructed in a standard phenotype file (contact email soepmail@diw.de). We have uploaded this minimal dataset as a Supporting Information file for the reviewers and editors. Please note that this dataset should NOT be published in this manuscript because the file contains sensitive personal information. Researchers who wish to access that data must apply (https://www.diw.de/en/diw_01.c.601584.en/data_access.html). 5. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. We updated the Data Availability statement in the online submission statement and added it to the cover letter. 6. We note that Figure 2 in your submission contain map images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. Figure 2 satisfies your requirements. We added the following note to Figure 2: “Own illustration based on spatial datasets from Reference [29] under data license Germany – attribution – Version 2.0 dl-de/by20 (https://www.govdata.de/dl-de/by-2-0)” Reference [29]: Federal Agency for Catography and Geodesy. Administrative areas Germany 1:250,000 as of 31.12. In: Bundesamt fuer Katographie und Geodaesie [Internet]. 31 Dec 2021. Available: https://gdz.bkg.bund.de/index.php/default/digitale-geodaten/verwaltungsgebiete/verwaltungsgebiete-1-250-000-stand-31-12-vg250-31-12.html And here is the text from https://www.govdata.de/dl-de/by-2-0 describing the dl-de/by20 license: “Data licence Germany – attribution – version 2.0 (1) Any use will be permitted provided it fulfils the requirements of this "Data licence Germany – attribution – Version 2.0". The data and meta-data provided may, for commercial and non-commercial use, in particular be copied, printed, presented, altered, processed and transmitted to third parties; be merged with own data and with the data of others and be combined to form new and independent datasets; be integrated in internal and external business processes, products and applications in public and non-public electronic networks. (2) The user must ensure that the source note contains the following information: the name of the provider, the annotation "Data licence Germany – attribution – Version 2.0" or "dl-de/by-2-0" referring to the licence text available at www.govdata.de/dl-de/by-2-0, and a reference to the dataset (URI). This applies only if the entity keeping the data provides the pieces of information 1-3 for the source note. (3) Changes, editing, new designs or other amendments must be marked as such in the source note.” 7. 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. We rechecked our references. To the best of our knowledge, they are complete and correct and do not contain retracted publications. Reviewer #1 This paper highlights the wealth of the SOEP data to conduct health and genetic studies. Specifically, the authors emphasize the genetic data collected in the SOEP. I think that the article is very well written and suitable for publication, but some minor corrections should be made before publication. Specifically, when I come across the manuscript, I do not see the motivation behind this work. I think it is important to improve it, by pointing out the specific information gathered in the SOEP-IS sample, in order to serve as a "guide" for future research. Furthermore, the contribution of the paper is not described. Finally, possible future research lines, taking advantage of this dataset knowledge, should be pointed out, for both practitioners and researchers from different disciplines: economics, medical, health, social sciences,... Thank you for your comments! Our primary motivation for collecting genetic data in the SOEP-IS sample was to create additional research opportunities and further enhance the value of this rich, longitudinal, population-based dataset. The contribution of the paper is to describe the newly collected genetic data and to offer first results afforded by them. We clarified this in the rewritten abstract, which now reads as follows: “The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) serves a global research community by providing representative annual longitudinal data of respondents living in private households in Germany. The dataset offers a valuable life course panorama, encompassing living conditions, socioeconomic status, familial connections, personality traits, values, preferences, health, and well-being. To amplify research opportunities further, we have extended the SOEP Innovation Sample (SOEP-IS) by collecting genetic data from 2,598 participants, yielding the first genotyped dataset for Germany based on a representative population sample (SOEP-G). The sample includes 107 full-sibling pairs, 501 parent-offspring pairs, and 152 triads, which overlap with the parent-offspring pairs. Leveraging the results from well-powered genome-wide association studies, we created a repository comprising 66 polygenic indices (PGIs) in the SOEP-G sample. We show that the PGIs for height, BMI, and educational attainment capture 22∼24%, 12∼13%, and 9% of the variance in the respective phenotypes. Using the PGIs for height and BMI, we demonstrate that the considerable increase in average height and the decrease in average BMI in more recent birth cohorts cannot be attributed to genetic shifts within the German population or to age effects alone. These findings suggest an important role of improved environmental conditions in driving these changes. Furthermore, we show that higher values in the PGIs for educational attainment and the highest math class are associated with better self-rated health, illustrating complex relationships between genetics, cognition, behavior, socio-economic status, and health. In summary, the SOEP-G data and the PGI repository we created provide a valuable resource for studying individual differences, inequalities, life-course development, health, and interactions between genetic predispositions and the environment.” Pages 4-6 in the introduction describe our motivation for this work in greater detail. In particular: “While genetically informed study designs are already common in medical research and have yielded numerous important insights into disease mechanisms, the use of genetic data in the behavioral and social sciences is still relatively rare.16 Nevertheless, integrating genetic data into the research of the behavioral and social sciences (e.g., economics, psychology, sociology, political science) opens up new possibilities to (i) control for genetic confounders that are otherwise unknown and that may lead to biased empirical results, (ii) increase the statistical power of empirical analyses by absorbing residual variance in multiple regression analyses, yielding smaller standard errors of the estimated parameters, (iii) study the interactions of genetic factors and environmental exposures, (iv) use random genetic differences among individuals to identify causal pathways, and (v) better understand how social (dis)advantages are transmitted across generations and how parents, peers, teachers, and policymakers can potentially alleviate or amplify such (dis)advantages. Thus, integrating genetic data into the behavioral and social sciences offers researchers new tools to study key questions in their fields to reach more robust inference on the basis of their empirical analyses. … These considerations motivated us to collect genetic data in the Innovation Sample of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP-IS), with the goal of contributing additional value to the already existing and widely known interdisciplinary and longitudinal SOEP data set that is accessible and frequently used by the global scientific community. The addition of genetic data to this sample opens up many new research opportunities for both the medical and the social-science research community.” We have also added examples for possible future research lines in the article's discussion section: “Opportunities for future research The genetic data we added to the SOEP-IS sample opens a broad range of opportunities for future research. For example, social scientists and economists who are studying the effects of environmental or policy changes on behavior or socio-economic outcomes can now use the PGIs we constructed in the SOEP-IS to control for otherwise unobservable genetic confounds (e.g., to estimate the returns to schooling) and to detect gene-environment interactions (e.g., heterogeneous responses to policy interventions such as changes in tobacco taxes on smoking behavior). The PGIs can also be used as exogenously given proxies for outcomes that do not change over the life course (e.g., to study genetic predisposition for health on labor market outcomes) or as proxies for outcomes that are not observed in the SOEP-IS data otherwise (e.g., blood pressure and triglycerides levels). Furthermore, the family data structure in the SOEP-IS, in combination with PGIs, enables new ways to study intergenerational transmission of inequalities in health and well-being as well as studies that identify how environmental factors such as parenting style influence the developmental trajectory of children.” In Section 2 (list all Sections/Sub-sections), describe in more detail the GSOEP data, in general terms. The focus of the survey, the target respondent (individual vs. household), the panel data structure, the time period availaible at the time of writing the article,... We describe the focus of the GSOEP data, the sampling procedure, the panel data structure and the available time periods on pages 6-17. Figure 1 illustrates the lifecourse perspective of the sample. Figure 2 shows the geographic distribution of genotyped participants. Box 1 provides an overview of the available variables. On p. 15, we refer to the online companion for the entire data collection (http://companion-is.soep.de/), which provides a full overview of all collected variables, survey design, questionnaires, and the target population. Tables 1 and 2 provide descriptive statistics of the sample. We also included references to articles that describe the SOEP and the SOEP-IS samples in even greater detail: [22] Richter D, Schupp J. The SOEP Innovation Sample (SOEP IS). Journal of Contextual Economics – Schmollers Jahrbuch. 2015;135: 389–400. [23] Goebel J, Grabka MM, Liebig S, Kroh M, Richter D, Schröder C, et al. The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik (Journal of Economics and Statistics). 2019. In Page 9, I would prefer to include a Table and show both mean and SD of the SOEP-G and Census sample statistics. It would be more visible to readers to identify potential differences between SOEP-G and census data. Our manuscript contains a comparison of our sample with the census with gender, age, and region in the text on p. 9. We agree that comparisons for other variables would be desirable. Unfortunately, that is not possible. One reason is that there are no published figures from the census that we can easily fall back on. An analysis of the microdata would be required, which we do not have access to. The other reason is that definitions of variables in the SOEP and the census (e.g. for employment) do not match perfectly (the devil is in the details) or that the census does not collect those data (e.g. smoking, drinking). The team at DIW Berlin has already spent months trying to accomplish a broader comparison of the SOEP data and the census, unfortunately without success. In the last Section, you could suggest possible improvements of the health and genetic measures collected in this survey for future waves. We added the following text on p. 32: “Future expansions of the collected health data, e.g., digital health records or extended health surveys conducted by trained medical professionals, would further increase the utility of the SOEP samples for epidemiological research. Furthermore, the resolution and completeness of the collected genetic data could be improved further, e.g., by high-throughput sequencing methods. We have stored residual DNA samples for this purpose. Access to those samples can be requested via DIW Berlin.” Reviewer #2 This paper, which details the genetic data collection for approximately 2,600 individuals in the German Socio-Economic Panel, is well written and provides an invaluable resource for researchers. Those investigating sociodemographic and economic questions using genetic data will find this particularly beneficial. Thank you very much for your positive and constructive comments! However, I have two suggestions to improve the paper further: The authors note in their discussion of Figure 4 that "younger birth cohorts are on average substantially taller than older birth cohorts". It would add weight to their observation if they referenced previous studies that have also found this, such as the one available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2809930/, which highlights the role of the socioeconomic environment (namely, income and disease). Thank you for this great reference! We now cite this paper in the discussion of Figure 4. We also highlighted this finding in the revised abstract. This paper is clear, well-written, and I believe will be highly cited, offering considerable assistance to the research community across various fields in utilizing genetic data in demographic and socioeconomic research. Perhaps this can be emphasized in the paper, with examples of recent research such as those available at the following links: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32587483/ https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/705415 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537121000580 Thank you. We now cite these three studies on p. 4: “Thus, integrating genetic data into the behavioral and social sciences offers researchers new tools to study key questions to reach more robust inferences based on their empirical analyses, as illustrated by several recent examples [18–20].” Additionally, I identified a few minor typographical errors, and I recommend the authors proofread the article to find any others: p.14: .28. Fixed (this was a reference that was wrongly formatted) p.15: The genotype missingness rate was greater than 5% in 484 individuals. This was not a typo, unfortunately. The text following this statement and a substantial part of the Supplementary Information talk about possible reasons for this and how we addressed this issue. p.16: indication of genotyping error Fixed. We have carefully proofread the article again and made minor grammatical changes throughout the text. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PLOS ONE - Response Letter.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294896.r003
13 Nov 2023 Decision Letter - José Alberto Molina, Editor Cohort Profile: Genetic data in the German Socio-Economic Panel Innovation Sample (SOEP-G) PONE-D-23-05350R1 Dear Dr. Koellinger, 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 for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, 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, José Alberto Molina 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 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: I have no additional comments. The authors have addressed all my suggestions and the paper is suitable for publication in the journal. Reviewer #2: Thank you for your revisions. I have no further comments. In my opinion, the paper is ready to be published. ****** 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 Reviewer #2: No ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294896.r004
Formally Accepted
17 Nov 2023 Acceptance Letter - José Alberto Molina, Editor PONE-D-23-05350R1 Cohort Profile: Genetic data in the German Socio-Economic Panel Innovation Sample (SOEP-G) Dear Dr. Koellinger: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. 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 Professor José Alberto Molina Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294896.r005

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 .