Hit or Miss? Evaluating the Potential of a Research Niche: A Case Study in the Field of Virtual Quality Management

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is very interesting, well-written and structured.

I do not have any critical remarks.

Author Response

Thank you for your positive review of our paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

I did like the paper.

The metholdogy using Latent Semantic Analysis, looks very promising tool for literature, state-of-art review. Methdology is well shown in the paper, with practical demonstration in a detaild way and also results validation. ‍

Author Response

Thank you for your positive review of our paper.

Reviewer 3 Report

First of all, the paper is written in perfect English and does not need language editing.

Regarding the scientific content of the paper, one of its main goals is supposed to be a development of an innovative and expedient approach to evaluate the result potential and dissemination outlook of a research topic at the beginning of an investigation endeavor.

There are small recommendations and comments to the content of the manuscript:

1.      The results of your study truly prove that the methodology emerging technological trends can be identified, and that the data can be further analyzed to obtain other useful information;

2.      I believe that the vQM can be effectively employed in smart manufacturing. To my experience, unfortunately, small and medium-sized companies have difficulties in applying the concepts, they rather focus on physical QM; This could be made clear in the manuscript;

3.      The paper fits perfectly with the Special issue focus;

4.      I am missing the aspect of sustainability in this well written manuscript; although the vQM and I4.0 are definitely in the scope of sustainable technologies/methodologies; please mention this in the manuscript.

Finally, based on the above remarks and recommendations I suggest accepting the paper for publication in this Special issue of Sustainability journal after some minor revisions.

Author Response

Response to reviewer 3 comments:

Thank you for your positive review of our paper.

Point 1: The results of your study truly prove that the methodology emerging technological trends can be identified, and that the data can be further analyzed to obtain other useful information;

Response 1: No action requested;

Point 2: I believe that the vQM can be effectively employed in smart manufacturing. To my experience, unfortunately, small and medium-sized companies have difficulties in applying the concepts, they rather focus on physical QM; This could be made clear in the manuscript;

Response 2: We have included the following phrase in the "Research implications" section clarifying the above-mentioned point: "The investigation was guided towards the first two categories, but there was also a concern about obtaining some samples as well from the third category companies, mainly from those which were preoccupied with new technologies. The reason behind this approach is that SME-type companies (from the C category) are mostly focused on concrete measures of physical QM due to resource constraints, lack of maturity and limited openness towards adopting new technologies and due to the need to obtain quick and measurable results, with a noticeable impact on their process performance and bottom line.";

Point 3: The paper fits perfectly with the Special issue focus;

Response 3: No action requested;

Point 4: I am missing the aspect of sustainability in this well written manuscript; although the vQM and I4.0 are definitely in the scope of sustainable technologies/methodologies; please mention this in the manuscript.

Response 4: We have linked and mentioned the concepts investigated in this paper as being sustainable and contributing to a company's sustainable development. As such, we have inserted the notion of sustainability in the following sections of this manuscript: "Abstract", "Keywords", "Introduction", "Features of the vQM x Industry 4.0 knowledge space - Theoretical aspects" and "Conclusions".

All modifications to the manuscript are marked with yellow and you can review them in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx