This article critically analyzes the paper published in PLOS ONE titled "Unpacking the optimistic mindset of business students towards entrepreneurship." PLOS ONE is indexed/abstracted by Clarivate's SCIE (IF 2023: 2.9), Scopus, PubMed Central, DOAJ, and many other for-profit companies love to index journals publishing unacceptably erroneous papers. PLOS ONE charges a fee of USD 2,382 as mentioned here. We wonder how charging this high fee for publishing such crap is justified.

Our chief concern is about the population of the study and sample, which don't align with the study's main objective. The ultimate objective of this study was to investigate the impact of various study variables on "Entrepreneurial Success," which is the "dependent variable," as shown in Figure 1, Research Framework (p. 7). On page 4, the authors mention:

"Entrepreneurial success refers to achieving goals through an entrepreneurial venture established to develop a position in the market…"

Keeping the definition of "Entrepreneurial Success" in mind, read the "Methodology" section (p. 8), the authors mention:

"The study's target population comprised business students who were currently enrolled in Chinese government-sector universities. The students of entrepreneurial courses were actual population of the study."

First, it is clear that the population of the study consists of students enrolled in entrepreneurial courses in various Chinese government-sector universities. Now, the question arises at what level these students were studying. In section "Findings and analysis" (p. 9), the authors report:

“The students were students of the bachelor programs enrolled in entrepreneurial course”.

The second point, which is clear, is that the sample elements were students of bachelor programs in entrepreneurship-related courses. Now let's look at the scale items used to tap "Entrepreneurial Success" (p. 10), as shown below:

We know that the ultimate objective of this study was to investigate the impact of various study variables on "Entrepreneurial Success." We question: How many bachelor's-level students were the owners of different entrepreneurship projects? Were bachelor's-level students experts in entrepreneurship, or were they just novices? How long have bachelor's-level students been running their entrepreneurial projects so that they can expect to have a high income in the next following years, delight in the success they achieved, perceive sufficient income in the first three years of establishment, and perceive having a high income for the last few years?

In fact, declaring students of entrepreneurial courses as the study population and sampling bachelor's-level students to test the study hypotheses was a completely wrong sampling strategy. Bachelor's-level students, in any country/university, are new to any courses they pick, for instance, engineering, medical, or business education. Usually, they don't have any experience to run successful entrepreneurial projects or hold expertise to evaluate "Entrepreneurial Success." This critical study variable can only be tapped by sampling people who successfully started and managed entrepreneurial projects (or even unsuccessful projects). They must understand strategies to initiate, handle, and sustain such projects. They must have generated sizeable revenues or reasonable income and achieved their goals to evaluate "Entrepreneurial Success." Therefore, we conclude that the study population and sample don't reflect the domain authors investigated in this study. Bachelor's-level students cannot give their response to questions and situations they never experienced.

Our next concern on this study is about basic statistical essentials required for single-shot design. The authors didn’t provide any information about non-response bias (NRB) and common method bias (CMB). We wonder how this significant information was left unreported. Reporting non-response bias (NRB) and common method bias (CMB) is necessary for primary, single-informant data studies.

Similarly, standard correlation matrix and tabulated descriptive statistics are missing. Control variables were also not included and reported in the analysis. We wonder how these significant components can be left unaddressed.

Now, we shall look at the sampling method adopted by the authors. On page no. 8 (see below pic.), the authors mentioned that "cluster sampling" was used to collect data. However, how the sampling was conducted and final clusters were achieved were not reported. Important information about cluster sampling stages, cluster size, cluster variability, cluster sampling bias, and randomness method is completely missing.

Based on the above analysis, we conclude that the major problem, misalignment of study population/sample with study objective, makes this study highly questionable and flawed because the inferences made to prove the hypotheses cannot be justified. We wonder why editors and reviewers of PLOS ONE completely failed to identify and rectify such horrible mistakes. We recommend the editors of PLOS ONE immediately retract this flawed paper and improve their academic and intellectual capabilities to conduct a good desk and peer review.

Don't hesitate to comment on our article and share your experiences with such journals publishing questionable research.

Update: On 19 May, 2025, The PLOS Publication Ethics Team contacted us and assured to initiate investigation and corrective action. We look forward to see update and corrective action.

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