Shipping Bunker Cost Risk Assessment and Management during the Coronavirus Oil Shock

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. The Abstract should be constructed as follows: Purpose of the article, methods, results, conclusions, and recommendations/future directions. The elements of novelty made by the author are not clear now.
2. The execution of the article does not correspond to the requirements of the journal. This article is now a draft of the study.
3. All tables, figures, formulas must have references or the indication “author's development”. All the formulas of the article are in the “Methods” section of other authors, there are no references - this is plagiarism.
4. The article has many figures and tables, while the authors do not describe them in any way. In order to form general conclusions, it is necessary to generate local conclusions for each figure or table for 5-7 lines.
5. All elements of the article do not meet the requirements for the original author's research:
   • Other authors have not been sufficiently researched (13 references in total). The section “Introduction” lists all relevant publications, which are relevant to the research topic. It is determined which issues are currently disclosed on the research problem, and what remains unsolved. The general direction of the author's own research is determined. The basis of the review should be articles of scientific journals and scientific monographs (including in foreign languages). The description of the degree of study (scientific elaboration) of the selected topic ends with the resulting conclusion that it is not yet disclosed in the research topic or partially disclosed, and that has not received proper coverage in the literature, so it needs further development. Thus, the place of own research in a concrete field of knowledge is defined. This section should contain a justification of the need and relevance of the study (the volume of this section - 1.5-2 pages). It is also necessary to highlight the purpose and objectives of the study.
   • “Methods” section. Please explain why this particular methodology was chosen and what its advantages are. Why were the criteria of statistical sampling agreement chosen - Chi-squared test, Anderson – Darling test (A-D) and Kolmogorov – Smirnov (K-S)? Please analyze other authors. As well, highlight the hypotheses of your research. To increase interest in the author's research, build an algorithm/scheme for your research.
   • The authors emphasize “Discussion”, while there is no discussion at all. Please compare the results with other studies: agree or contradict.
   • The results represent a set of tables and figures, now it resembles the laboratory work of students.
   • Conclusions are not related to research results in any way. In the “Introduction” section, please highlight the research goals, hypotheses in the “Methods”, prove in the results, reflect the degree of evidence in the “Conclusions”. Please highlight the constraints in the “Conclusions”.

6. What is the novelty of the author's research? What is proposed or improved for the first time. The authors used well-known methods and a well-known program for calculations, there are no author's suggestions. The research is chaotic, confusing, of no interest to the scientific community and practitioners.

Author Response

Thank you for the comments and suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

The topic is quite significant taking into consideration ongoing policy changes and eco-requirements regarding maritime shipping  industry. The research presented is valuable. However, the manuscript requires better, and more persuasive, presentation of the reasoning process and discussion of the results. Now, it is rather a ‘working paper’ than a final scientific publication.

Some examples of areas for research presentation improvement:

1. Monte Carlo simulations – more data about the procedure should be provided. For example: it is not clear whether you used a beta distribution based on the descriptive statistics from Table 2? How many drawings were used and other assumptions? What was a final shape (parameters) of the distribution obtained? Please provide better description on that.
2. What distribution you used or should be used for LSFO+MGO in Monte Carlo simulation? Is Beta applicable?
3. As you write, LNG is relevant only in the context of newly build ships. But then, it does not take into account several other costs which may make this alternative inappropriate despite its initial appeal. You should elaborate more on it (incl. assessment of other cost) to have clear strategy outcome from your study.
4. From where comes the data on fuel consumption? Could you show (average) statistics on fuel consumption for different categories of propulsion, which you fed into your calculations? (for Formula 1)

I hope this will improve presentation of your interesting research.

Author Response

Thank you for the comments and suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This is interesting topic and very actual regarding the current situation of the oil market. The scientific soundness of this article is appropriate and there are no major comments from the reviewer. The content of the article is full of research materials and graphs, which gives to the article bit higher impact for the expert readers. Its also possible for non expert readers to understand the main thoughts and content in general. However the text composition could be used differently in order to make the authors statements clearer and stronger.

Author Response

Thank you for the comments and suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

It should be noted that the received document with the article does not include the marking of the comments to the article. Due to this, I take a cue from the document with the reviewer’s responses. I also want to mention that:

The authors have entirely ignored the following comments:

1. The formatting of the article does not meet the requirements of the magazine. The given article is currently presented as the draft copy of the research.
2. The article contains many pictures and schemes. Herewith, the authors do not provide any description for them. To formulate general conclusions, it is necessary to form local conclusions for 5-7 lines to each picture or scheme.
3. The authors distinguish the “Discussion” section, but the discussion itself is absent. Compare the obtained results with other research papers: do they correspond or contradict each other.
4. The “Results” section is presented as a set of tables and pictures. It resembles the laboratory work of students now.
5. The findings are not related to the research results. You should highlight the research objectives in the “Introduction” section, hypotheses – in the “Methods” section, evidence – in the “Results” section, the degree of proof in the “Conclusions” section. In the “Conclusions” section, you should also point research limitations and perspectives for further research.
6. The style and language of the scientific article also require improvement.

When it comes to other comments, it seems that the authors do not understand them. None of the corrections and responses meets the content of my comments.

I can make the following general conclusion – the authors’ corrections are still at the Round 1 stage. My comments were not considered when correcting the article.

Author Response

Thank you for the comments and suggestions and please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for addressing my previous concerns and general improvement of your paper. Now, I would like to refer only to some minor issues/amendments:

3. Table 3. Best fit distribution of fuel portfolio types’ cost:

Could you extend this information by presenting the significance levels (p-values) for each test statistic? This could be done in the table 3 by adding the new rows below. Or please insert this additional data in a new table in Appendix.

Please carefully check the spelling and grammar of the manuscript. There are still some mistakes, even in the Abstract, for example the third sentence: “First, the VaR of various shipping-fuel-cost combination over a 59 ten-year period are stimulated” – it should be ‘simulated’ instead of ‘stimulated’.

Also formatting of your paper requires some additional work.

Author Response

Thank you for the comments and suggestions and please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report