A Comparative Analysis of Social Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurship: An Examination of International Co-Authorship Networks

Reviewer #1

The research gap covered as well as the objective pursued in the research must be additionally justified, without forgetting to refer to the parts of the research.

Thank you for your suggestion. I agree that the research gap and objectives need more profound discussion. We have added references to support our statement and discussion from different angles to deepen our understanding to the research gap. Line116, Line 140

Reviewer #1

Make a brief mention of the state of art so far in the introductory section.

Thank you for your insightful comment. We fully understand that it is important to mention the state of art in the introduction. We have added sentences to explain our state of art at the end of introduction section. Line 53

Reviewer #1

The literature review section should be more extensive to give the actor a more complete idea of the state of the art so far and to more concretely justify the research question posed in section 2.4.

Thank you for your suggestion. We truly believe that more in-depth and wide consideration on the theme can support readers to fully understand the development process of research question. We have added new discussion in the literature review section as well as in the research question section. Line 67

Reviewer #1

Figure 2 and the table presented should be produced using modern methodologies and better visualization techniques.

Thank you for your suggestion. We have followed the recent study which conducted bibliometric analysis to meet the modern style of figure to improve our visualization. Line 324

Reviewer #1

After the literature review section to be completed, it is necessary to complete the discussion section by referencing new references.

Thank you for your guidance. Following your advice, we have referred to new references in the literature review section. Line 460

Reviewer #2

Exposed limitation in terms of disparity between articles from each field of research, the solely use of English Web of Science database and the lack of empirical documents that were not published in the form of web of science articles make me doubt about the relevance of the proposed submission.

Thank you for your comment. We fully understand your comment. Therefore, we have added some sentences in the limitation section to minimize other reader’s concern in the future. First, it is not sufficient to include publication data that author cannot fully understand. Moreover, other language might have different terms and understanding the words entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. Therefore, it is important for the native speakers to conduct analysis while unifying the understanding of the concept specific to different language and countries. Regarding the article-based publication, current study aimed at understanding the researcher’s interaction in the international level to minimize the gap between practical and theoretical understanding of research field. Current data analysis and results are in line with the conclusion stated and supported by the previous study which conducted qualitative analysis. Line 534, Line 538

Reviewer #2

The main absence about the Dr Yunus research and practice on social entrepreneurship are notorious. That make me think about relevance of the proposed work in terms of the practical and successful experiences versus academic articles in the WoS database. I really would like to see this proposal with more empirical sense.

Thank you for your comment. It is our shortcomings that our current paper lack on discussion regarding successful practice conducted by practitioners including Dr. Yunus who is admired by the number of entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship researchers including ourselves. Therefore, as you suggested we would like to include successful achievement created by the great predecessors in the introduction section. Line 39

Reviewer #3

It would have also been interesting to know the reason for the relationships between authors. Know the motivation, friendship, kinship, common interests, topic of interest.

Thank you for your comments and suggestions. The relationship between authors was based on whether two or more countries have developed a publication together. Moreover, the reasons why this relationship are developed can only be estimated through the trend in results which we have perceived. First is that common language, culture, and understanding can bring researchers from different country together. On the other hand, when countries share common interests in a particular topic can also bring researchers together for conducting study. Either way, without reaching out to the researchers and asking on the reason why they decided to conduct study together we would not be able to identify the reason behind them.

Reviewer #4

The study lacks a clear identification of defining characteristics of social entrepreneurship.

Thank you for your suggestion. We agree with your comment. As suggested, we would like to add a sentence which explain the current study’s social entrepreneurship definition in the introduction section. Line 78

Reviewer #4

The lack of exploration of the diversity of interpretation and definition of social entrepreneurship may limit the scope and representation of the research, especially in non-English countries or in national systems that define social enterprises in different legal terms outside and beyond “nonprofit” and entrepreneurship.

Thank you for your comment. We fully understand and agree with your opinion. It is important to consider the different interpretation of social entrepreneurship, especially in non-English speaking countries as well as to consider different national system which cause the difference identification on social entrepreneurship. Since, our focus is to identify the difference in the research field of social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship from international co-authorship. It was considered not sufficient for us to include non-English written articles which we did not fully understand. However, in the further study, we would like to focus on each country with their different definition of social entrepreneurship as well as its conceptualization influenced by culture, language, and national system while including entrepreneurship researcher in other nation especially in Spain and China which had relatively higher ratio of article written in the field of social entrepreneurship after English. We have added a sentence which explains our decision regarding language limitation and publication-based selection of articles. Line 534, Line 539

Reviewer #4

Social entrepreneurship is a simple term with a complex range of meaning and this research does not give sufficient attention to these complexities.

Thank you for your comment. We fully understand and agree with your point. As suggested, we would like to add more discussion to the definition of social entrepreneurship which correspond to Table 1.  Line 67

Reviewer #4

The lack of understanding of SE, is exemplified in the first sentence of the paper. “social entrepreneurship is a nonprofit organization which applies entrepreneurial strategies to sustain themselves financially” Social entrepreneurship research: A review and future research. doi: 10. 1016/j.jbusres.2020.03.032.

Thank you for pointing out on this matter. This is completely our fault in creating the sentence which cause wrong identification of what social entrepreneurship is. Moreover, we do not perceive social entrepreneurship equals to non-for-profit organization. Therefore, we have changed the sentence as suggested. Again, thank you for your comment. Line 34

Reviewer #4

Eventually, it could be said: "Social entrepreneurship is the field in which entrepreneurs tailor their activities to be directly tied with the ultimate goal of creating social value."

https://timreview.ca/sites/default/files/article_PDF/Saifan_TIMReview_February2012_2.pdf

Thank you for bringing this recent citation to my attention. I’ve added this sentence in the first sentence of introduction section to explain what social entrepreneurship is as an introduction. Line 34

Reviewer #4

This paper and study could benefit from reviewing and integrating a more comprehensive analysis of the definition of SE, considering its diversity in the definitions and practices.

Thank you for your suggestion. We really appreciate your sincere guidance. Current study was developed with the goal of identifying the definition of social entrepreneurship through analyzing from regional aspects. Therefore, we have reviewed some study to incorporate for analyzing the definition of social entrepreneurship from different aspects. We’ve added more in-depth explanation of different types of definition of social entrepreneurship (Line 67) and practical example of successful social entrepreneurship as well (Line 39).

Reviewer #5

Introduction is very short. The authors need to add value or study novelty. They also need to quickly summarize the literature on the topic.

Thank you for your comment. We agree with your comments regarding the volume of introduction section. We’ve added some sentence to explain the novelty of this paper. Also, we will add the quick summarize to the literature. Line 53

Reviewer #5

They should add the paper design.

Thank you for your comment. We have developed paper design. Please refer to the attachment files.

Reviewer #5

Research question should be placed rather in the introduction.

Thank you for your suggestion. We consider the literature review section as the part of introduction section. Therefore, as suggested, we would like to place the research question at the end of introduction section. Line 157

Reviewer #5

The author needs to add the hypotheses of the study at the end of the literature review section.

Thank you for your suggestion. We have placed our literature review while following the MDPI’s instruction for authors. Regarding research question which corresponds to hypothesis is placed in the introduction section. Line 157

Reviewer #5

Why data collection is stopped at 2021 and not 2023?

Thank you for your question. The reason is that the number of publications fluctuate for one year, therefore, it is challenging to define that the year of publication after a year. Therefore, setting the year to 2021 allows us to collect all the publication including early publication to late publication to be regarded as 2021. When conducting bibliometric analysis, the fiscal year is generally set one year shorter to prevent contamination caused by variations in the timing of papers.