PSTR-D-22-00060

A transition support system to build decarbonization scenarios in the academic community

PLOS Sustainability and Transformation

Dear Dr. Gratiot,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Sustainability and Transformation. After careful consideration based on the reviewer comments received, we feel that it has significant merit but does not yet fully meet PLOS Sustainability and Transformation'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 within 60 days Nov 15 2022 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 SustainTransform@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pstr/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Atiq Zaman, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS Sustainability and Transformation

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Dear Authors,

Please address reviewers' feedback and submit your revised article.

Kind regards,

Atiq Zaman

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Sustainability and Transformation’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. 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

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Sustainability and Transformation 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

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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: This is a well-done study in a crucial field, namely academia and GHG emissions. The topic is not only important because of the relatively large impact that certain research activities have, but also due to the danger of researchers believing themselves exempt from reduction efforts due to them engaging in unsustainable activities in the name of "a good cause."

As a general recommendation, I missed a clearer justification for the use of game-based participatory approaches in creating emissions reduction pathways. What do participatory methods achieve compared to purely mathematics-based recommendations, and what do games (or, more specifically, role-plays) add on top of that? In combination with this, I encourage authors to describe better their hoped outcomes. Should the output be considered a framework of realistic measures for certain sectors of academia, or is there also a hope for participants' real-world inspiration and behavior change?

Other comments refer to the lack of details regarding lexical analysis methods and visualization, and to the lack of suitable discussion of limitations, especially the gap between in-game action and real-world impact, which is heavily dependent on social context as per this very study's results.

Apart from the above, the study features generally clear and well-presented results, and an excellent discussion section. Some of the ideas presented could be used already in the introduction to frame some of the issues in this area.

I thank the authors for their work and I hope that the comments provided will help them strengthen their paper further. Below, I share my comments organized by section and line of the manuscript.

Abstract

149: etc... -> etc.

Author summary

163: upscale -> upscaled?

165: "you and I" are researchers, and it seems to be assumed that every reader will be, too. However, energy poverty exists even in the Western world, not to mention the Global South. I would appreciate a nuanced expression of who has lived in a world of infinite energy, and been part of it, and who never had the chance.

Introduction

201: "the academic activities" -> academic activities

227: give a comparison with the average GHG footprint in those countries and even the desirable footprint.

Materials and methods

243: If possible, cite these tools properly as literature is.

297: At this point I missed whether they were they academics or not, which is not mentioned until line 531. One other question at this point is why focus on role-playing a different persona instead of focusing on the area that they know best? Was it possible that some of the participants had an intimate knowledge of their role-played positions, while others had not? How was this accounted for and mitigated? Was the awareness phase done in a way that everyone was acquainted with the work of technicians, researchers and professors? Is the reason mostly so that they would form stereotypical research groups?

330: source for these institutions' carbon footprints? Is it Labos 1point5?

445: at this point I am missing a justification as to why engage in these complex workshops in order to find possibilities for emissions reduction that seem mostly mathematical and could be presented in a top-down way. If the participants are role-playing, they are not even necessarily experts in their assigned areas of research in-game. Is the goal to find particular combinations that will yield social acceptance? Is the role-playing supposed to bring attitude changes to the participants, or affect self-efficacy? Please note that if participants are not all academics, there is a gap in usefulness here. All of this could be added to the introduction.

468: what method was used for the alternative categorization? Was a form of qualitative text analysis used? What was the approach to untangle this "lexical field"? A reference would be useful here.

Results

541: It is very difficult for me to read the finer print in figure 3. Make sure to upload it in sufficient quality for the final version, or change it somehow. The concrete actions are in French, too, which is inconsistent with the rest of the paper. I am also not sure whether having all those lexical fields, many of which are extremely redundant, helps the reader, although it helps in traceability of the analysis. But can examples be given instead? I also do not understand the purpose of the smallest spheres. What is the purpose of having several different ones that mean essentially the same, e.g. "avion -> train", "train au lieu d'avion", etc.? Shouldn't they be grouped? Also, how does one voice "->"? Is this verbal or written data in the source?

576: Since it has been proposed that one of the outcomes is seeing the popularity of various measures, I will expect as a limitation of this approach the idea that university-level policies may be a different or complementary route to take, apart from voluntary reductions and alternatives. Without policy at the large scale, many individuals may struggle to refuse to fly to a conference where "everyone else" will be, for example.

600: this is very interesting because it highlights the usefulness of using this method: there is a gap between what is theoretically possible and what people actually do. Is the game attempting to affect the players' real-life choices via this role-play? How? All of these should be in the introduction, at least briefly. Furthermore, if group interactions are important, were these teams real-life teams too? If different, how are these individuals going to apply their solutions from the game to a completely different social environment?

Discussion

762-772: this is the key to much of my criticism. How does this study, or future studies, work to mitigate this divide between hypothesis within a game and real-world constraints?

All of this discussion section is very valuable and I would like to see some of the references being used in the introduction to frame the usefulness of such a study and method.

886: add to the limitations some of the issues raised above, chiefly the distance between role-playing someone else in a game, with presumably fictional colleagues, and actually doing it in real life as part of a real environment.

Reviewer #2: Dear authors. Congratulations on the team’s effort in achieving such an ambitious undertaking. It was interesting reading the revised version of the manuscript. However, my main critique or suggestion for improvement is to include in the introduction section one or two paragraphs about carbon tunnel vision, which is a limitation of the proposed game-based transition support system. Decarbonisation is a critical component of the transition to a more sustainable society, but not the only one. It is essential to present this limitation to avoid “blind spot” bias and misuse of the proposed tool. It is a minor adjustment and a quick fix that will strengthen the manuscript’s quality.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Alessandro Sanches Pereira

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A transition support system to build decarbonization scenarios in the academic community

PSTR-D-22-00060R1

Dear Dr. Gratiot,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'A transition support system to build decarbonization scenarios in the academic community' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Sustainability and Transformation.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

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 SustainTransform@plos.org.

Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Sustainability and Transformation.

Best regards,

Atiq Zaman, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS Sustainability and Transformation

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Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):

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. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Sustainability and Transformation’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. 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 Sustainability and Transformation 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

**********

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 am not sure if this will reach the authors since I selected acceptance, but I appreciate the way they have addressed my comments and wish them all the best in their future endeavors.

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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.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

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