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Article
Peer-Review Record

Aging in China: An International and Domestic Comparative Study

Sustainability 2020, 12(12), 5086; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12125086
by Jie Feng 1, Ganlin Hong 2, Wenrong Qian 2,*, Ruifa Hu 3,* and Guanming Shi 1
Reviewer 1: Anonymous
Reviewer 2: Anonymous
Reviewer 3:
Sustainability 2020, 12(12), 5086; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12125086
Submission received: 17 April 2020 / Revised: 14 June 2020 / Accepted: 14 June 2020 / Published: 22 June 2020
(This article belongs to the Section Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In my opinion, this article is a good starting point for more advanced analyzes.

The article is interesting, quite well written. The authors of the study undoubtedly collected a lot of statistical data, which are asking for a more thorough analysis using more advanced statistical and econometric methods. However, the article lacks such analyzes.

There is a lack of literature review on research on population aging. There are many interesting studies available in the Internet that use spatial statistics, shift-share methods, trend models, etc. (for example: Junming Li, Xiulan Han, Xiangxue Zhang, Sixian Wang, Spatiotemporal evolution of global population ageing from 1960 to 2017, BMC Public Health. 2019; 19: 127. Published online 2019 Jan 30. doi: 10.1186/s12889-019-6465-2; Ling Yang, Kai Zhao, Zhen Fan, Exploring Determinants of Population Ageing in Northeast China: From a Socio-Economic Perspective, Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Nov; 16(21): 4265. Published online 2019 Nov 2. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16214265; Yuanyuan Wu, Yuxiang Song, Tingting Yu, Spatial Differences in China’s Population Aging and Influencing Factors: The Perspectives of Spatial Dependence and Spatial Heterogeneity, Sustainability 2019, 11(21), 5959; https://doi.org/10.3390/su11215959). Authors should review the literature and see what methods are currently used in this type of analysis. The article was developed by five authors, so it should present more advanced analyses.

Abstract: should provide information on the used research methods and the data (their sources).

Introduction: should also provide information on the used research methods and the data (their sources); the structure of the article could be presented.

Line 67: what is the source of this forecast?

Figure 1, 2 and 3: legends should be placed below the charts, then the chart lines would be clearer.

Figure 4, 5 and 6: legends are too small; the descriptions should specify to which year.

Selected data from Tables 2 and 3 could be shown in charts or maps, it would be more interesting. Such long tables should not be presented in the text, the recipient will not pay attention to them anyway (tables could be presented in the attachment).

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper addresses a topical subject related to aging with a particular focus on China from a national and international perspective and brings interesting advances in this research area. However, at the same time, I see several sources of improvement regarding:

  1. Th Abstract - should also briefly state the methodological credentials and the relevance of the study/research performed from an own innovative perspective, not only to state the objective and main findings.
  2. In the Introduction, the authors should clearly state how the research performed detaches from other studies since the aging phenomenon has been extensively approached in the literature, but this research views it from a different angle: why is it different from previous research, justify it, please. Also, please clearly state/underline the innovations brought by this research in the scientific field, along with authors own extensive contribution. The introduction should end with a general paragraph on the structure of the paper to orient the reader about the contents of the manuscript and how each section is being configured/approached.
  3. I would suggest to further substantiate the theoretical framework and to provide additional groundings to support the research endeavor, as well as to relate your own findings to the ones of other studies, basically a sound literature review is missing in this current form of the manuscript and there are few bibliographic references addressed.
  4. I would suggest to further outline the importance of the results obtained. Please explain in more details the results and relate them to other empirical findings and theoretical grounds, including for the indicators selected for the domestic and international comparison. I would suggest to also develop an own empirical model (e.g. a macroeconometric model or spatial analysis model to estimate the impact of the aging phenomenon in China), not only to rely on presenting various indicators/data extracted from official databases, but rather to use these indicators to configure an own operational model, this would bring significant valued added to the research endeavor.
  5. The discussion and conclusion section is rather weak, please enhance this section as well.
  6. Please also state the research limitations and provide accurate ways to cope with these limitations.
  7. Other sections which would benefit from further work would be the policy implications of own findings, and future research directions, both could be augmented.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Aging in China is an urgent issue which deserves more attention in international academic debates. So from that perspective, your contribution is welcome. However, in its current version, your manuscript reads more like an introductory text in a textbook or encyclopedia than as an academic article. Most of what you present is already quite well known. Even though you may indeed present more recent data than in earlier publications, and maybe also more data at provincial level, the results of your analysis mostly seem to confirm earlier insights and do not really add a new perspective. Moreover, your analysis remains at a mostly descriptive level, even though you are suggesting relations between indicators/ variables, without having the evidence to confirm such suggested relations?

What I miss and should be added / elaborated to bring your manuscript closer to what is expected of an academic article in an international peer-reviewed journal is:

  • a clearer problem statement: why this article, what do you intend to add to the relevant debates and literature?
  • a research question!
  • a more substantial literature review of the 'state of the art' on your research topic;
  • an introduction and justification of the data sources and methodology;
  • an analysis that goes beyond the descriptive data you are presenting, so an analysis that really tries to explore possible correlations between variables.
  • a more critical reflection on the limitations of your data and analysis (and how follow-up research could overcome these limitations).

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The Authors supplemented the text - added a review of the literature, introduced elements of spatial analysis. Nevertheless, the amendments were introduced very chaotically, without any diligence. The text has not gained on quality - special attention should be payed on the description of the results regarding the occurrence of spatial autocorrelation (global and local). Models should be describe and compare in more detail.

In my opinion, the manuscript in its current form (especially the analysis section) is not suitable for publication in Sustainability journal.

Lines 272-3: The map is missing.

Line 318: Why were these two statistics used? Is this important for the study? If so, why?

Line 333 - Interpretation of results obtained is missing. If two statistics were used, the differences should be explained

Line 335 - What does positive spatial autocorrelation mean in this case?

Line 336-8: Maps for Local Moran’s I and its significance should be presented. The conclusions should refere to the grouping of regions with similarly low or high values of the analysed variable, since we are dealing with positive autocorrelation .

Lin 350: On what basis were these models chosen - were any tests used in the selection (for example in OLS estimation)?

Line 361: I am not able to assess the correctness of the results because the table is illegible in my pdf file.

Line 363: What's going on here?

Lines 371-7: Was there a spatial autocorrelation of the random component in the OLS model? Was it removed in the spatial model? Does the
spatial model better describe the studied phenomenon than OLS? There is
no information on the quality of this model. The results of the estimation should be properly described, the models should be compared - both the parameters and tests talking about their quality.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have improved their manuscript according to the observations received. 

Author Response

Thank you for your comments and suggestions.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for taking my comments and those of the other reviewers into account. I think your manuscript has improved substantially. It is now clearer what the research is about and why this is relevant / important to research and what your research adds to existing literature. The literature review is maybe still a bit short (you could discuss the literature you refer to a bit more instead of merely mentioning it or only write a few lines about it?), but it does add something that was still missing in your earlier manuscript version. The added analyses definitely are useful additions, making your manuscript more analytical and more academic. In your 'Results and discussion' section, you may want to elaborate the discussion part a bit more; now it seems to be mostly results and just a bit of discussion?

A few minor issues that may still need further clarification:

  • page 2, line 74: what do you mean with "The geology of aging"?
  • page 10, line 318: Hypothesis 1 may be a bit confusing to readers (it was to me) in terms of what scale level we are talking about: in the hypothesis you refer to 'local development', but in your analysis you use regional development parameters, right? So is this about local, or about regional development? Probably regional?

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Significant changes were introduced in the manuscript, especially in the analytical part. Thanks to this, the article has gained quality.

In my opinion, references to literature should be introduced in point 4.1, especially for the SARAR model - only two reference are made (Moran 1950, Cliff and Ord 1981).

The manuscript requires text editing.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

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