I posted my question here but I would like to discuss it here as well.
The first question is what is the difference between "PLS path modeling" and "PLS regression"? To make it more general, what are structural equation modeling (SEM), path modeling and regression? To my understanding regression focuses more on prediction while SEM focus is on the relationship between response and predictors and path modeling is a special case of SEM? *My second question is how trustworthy is PLS? Recently it's been subject to many criticisms as highlighted in MikkoRönkkö and here which leads to the rejection of papers based on PLS in high tier journals such as "Journal of Operations Management" (here is the note from the journal editor). I should note my field is spectroscopy, nither management/psychology nor statistics. In those paper they are talking more about PLS as a SEM method, but to me, their criticism looks applicable to PLS regression as well.