Providing a Roadmap for Future Research Agenda: A Bibliometric Literature Review of Sustainability Performance Reporting (SPR)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This review provides reasonable information regarding roadmap for future research agenda. The article abridged useful data and well written. However, it can be improved further for the given points:

·         All captions to tables and figures must be more informative

·         Label figure axis for the all figures

·         What is meant by ‘n’ in Fig. 1?

·         Conclusion section is too much lengthy. It must be condensed into maximally 5 to 10 lines.

Author Response

Comment: All captions to tables and figures must be more informative. Label figure axis for the all figures

Response: Thank you for this observation; all figures' axis are now labelled for ease of understanding. 

Comment: What is meant by 'n' in Fig. 1?

Response: N represents number. 

Comment: Conclusion section is too much lengthy. It must be condensed into maximally 5 to 10 lines.

Response: While we welcome this comment, there is no strict or acceptable guideline/standard about the length of conclusion. Nonetheless, the conclusion section is now summarised further to reflect the study's key findings, limitations, and recommendations for research and practice.

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic of the article is worthy of investigation. However, the following needs to be addressed:

-  The abstract should include the main results and conclusions. List the main ones by name.

-The problem is not well organized, and the gap is unclear.

1-     At the end of the introduction, it is important for adding the significant of this study.

2-     In the introduction section, the research question should be added to represent the philosophy of the research.

4-For convenience, detail flow chart instead of simple one should be added for illustrating the research methodology and all used analysis.

---The contribution of this study is vague. The authors should clarify how this study contributes to the construction body of knowledge and how the findings of this study can benefit the construction industry practitioners.

-The novelty with respect to the literature is not clear.

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Author Response

Comment: The abstract should include the main results and conclusions. List the main ones by name.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. The abstract has been appropriately revised to reflect the reviewer's comment and suggestion.

Comment: The problem is not well organised, and the gap is unclear.

Sub-comment 1: At the end of the introduction, it is important for adding the significant of this study.

Response: The later part of the introductory section has been edited to reflect this comment.

Sub-comment 2: In the introduction section, the research question should be added to represent the philosophy of the research.

Response: The later part of the introductory section has been edited to reflect this comment.

Sub-comment 3: For convenience, detail flow chart instead of simple one should be added for illustrating the research methodology and all used analysis.

Response: Thank you for this comment. The figure is included to provide a snapshot of the methods used to retrieve and analyse relevant articles. The figure has now been sufficiently explained for clarity. 

Comment: The contribution of this study is vague. The authors should clarify how this study contributes to the construction body of knowledge and how the findings of this study can benefit the construction industry practitioners.

Response: This observation is not particularly relevant and consistent to the themes of our study considering that the bibliometric analysis does not focus on the construction industry or any particular industry. The goal of the review is to understand the pattern and evolution of research on sustainability performance reporting. The contribution is obvious throughout the manuscript; the study emphasises the need for communication instead of reporting, and provides a roadmap for future research.

Comment: The novelty with respect to the literature is not clear.

Response: The literature review section has been rearranged to reflect this comment. Also, the conclusion section has been edited to clearly state the study findings including their implications for practice and theory. 

Reviewer 3 Report

I find the topic of this paper interesting, as it offers readers a good perspective on corporate sustainability reporting, which is an issue at the forefront of discussions when addressing performance. The authors provide in the paper a bibliometric review of papers published in the 2 major databases, Web of Science and Scopus. The methodology is sound and carried on well and the findings are interesting and open avenues for future research. 

Given the heightened interest in open science, I suggest the authors to include "open access" to characterize the 59 papers remaining in the study. Moreover, they mention 13 studies that were not found, but no explanation is provided for them., i.e., what does "not found" mean? 

Author Response

Comment: Given the heightened interest in open science, I suggest the authors to include "open access" to characterise the 59 papers remaining in the study. Moreover, they mention 13 studies that were not found, but no explanation is provided for them., i.e., what does "not found" mean?

Response: This is a useful suggestion, but not all the journals included in the study are open access and including open access could mislead readers, particularly scholars who are interested in the field. The reason for excluding the 13 articles has been included in the manuscript.

Thank you for your encouraging and valuable comment.

Reviewer 4 Report

Line 128 (p. 3) – “sustainability reports should focus on social, economic, and environmental dimensions”, why don’t you consider the “governance dimension”? Many scholars argue that ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) defines the three main factors/dimensions to measure the level of sustainability of each financial activity, but in the research all aspects related to governance aspects (bribery and corruption, ethics, executive compensation, political lobbying, board diversity, etc), were not investigated.  

Line 254 (p. 6) – “using the following keywords: corporate sustainability reporting, socially responsible investment, global reporting initiative, sustainability index, and global reporting framework”, Why did you (only) use these keywords? For example, you could include “non-financial disclosure” or “CSR disclosure”, etc.

Line 259 (p. 6) – The "papers selection process” is poorly described, it’s no clear the parameters in selecting journals and, in other words, how you have selected and identified the relevance and appropriate studies (you go from 1145 to little less than 60). "An analysis was performed to verify that all selected journal articles' discussion was about sustainability performance-related issues from a reporting or disclosure perspective", okay but how? I think you need to improve the description of the method/methodology. 

Author Response

Comment: Line 128 (p. 3) – “sustainability reports should focus on social, economic, and environmental dimensions”, why don’t you consider the “governance dimension”? Many scholars argue that ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) defines the three main factors/dimensions to measure the level of sustainability of each financial activity, but in the research all aspects related to governance aspects (bribery and corruption, ethics, executive compensation, political lobbying, board diversity, etc), were not investigated. 

Response: Thank you for the comment; however, the suggestion is outside the scope of this bibliometric analysis of peer-reviewed studies. It is worth emphasising that the focus of this bibliometric review is on sustainability performance reporting, and the analysis conducted has been informed by this study purpose and the findings from the papers investigated. 

Comment: Line 254 (p. 6) – “using the following keywords: corporate sustainability reporting, socially responsible investment, global reporting initiative, sustainability index, and global reporting framework”, Why did you (only) use these keywords? For example, you could include “non-financial disclosure” or “CSR disclosure”, etc.

Response: Again, the study focuses on sustainability performance reporting, not CSR or financial disclosure. 

Comment: Line 259 (p. 6) – The "papers selection process” is poorly described, it’s no clear the parameters in selecting journals and, in other words, how you have selected and identified the relevance and appropriate studies (you go from 1145 to little less than 60). "An analysis was performed to verify that all selected journal articles' discussion was about sustainability performance-related issues from a reporting or disclosure perspective", okay but how? I think you need to improve the description of the method/methodology. 

Response: Thank you for this useful comment; the section has been clearly explained for clarity and to address the reviewer's concern.  

Thank you for your contribution in improving our manuscript.

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

The improvements made and the explanations provided are satisfactory.

Author Response

Thank you.