Higher Education, Technological Innovation, and Green Development—Analysis Based on China’s Provincial Panel Data
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors
It was my pleasure to review your manuscript entitled “Higher Education, Technological Innovation and Green Development Analysis Based on China's Provincial Panel Data” and advise you to prosper your current research project. In my view, your topic has touched on a critical issue in a fascinating context. However, there are many spaces to be improved in terms of argumentation, theoretical background, research method, and findings. I hope my below comments would help you develop your work into groundbreaking research in your domain.
Introduction
A concise introduction to enable the reader's understanding of the research problem.
• Introduce the paper describing what the paper is about. Expand to emphasize the problem leading to a clear set of research questions addresses.
• Give readers a one-line preview of the other sections of the paper.
Theoretical literature has not been considered and reviewed. It’s better to observe the connection between the contents. Try to explain everything except the topics in order to establish the necessary
coherence.
Insufficient transparency. The authors need to provide and explain more details on their method, including their sampling, data gathering and data analysis.
The method should be adequately described to show how the research was conducted to improve clarity and transparency.
What are the theoretical and practical implications of your study and which limitations and possible future research emerge from it? At the moment. the chapter is that is now entitled as "Conclusion" should link back to the literature and show theoretical contributions, that exceed the conclusion that some literature was "inline" with the findings of the authors.
The authors need to draw substantive conclusions from their results, and suggest, develop recommendations for further research.
- Using the following references could be beneficial as these add more evidence to the literature review section:
(2022). The effect of knowledge management on the sustainability of technology-driven businesses in emerging markets: The mediating role of social media. Sustainability, 14(14), 8602.
(2021). RESILIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE-BASED FIRMS PERFORMANCE: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF ENTREPRENEURIAL THINKING. Journal of Entrepreneurship and Business Resilience, 4(2), 7-29.
Best of luck with the further development of the paper.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “sustainability-2195991” (ID). Those comments are valuable and very helpful. We have read through comments carefully and have made corrections.
Please find my itemized responses in below and my revisions in the re-submitted files.
Q1. Moderate English changes required.
Response: Thank you very much for discovering this error. We apologize for grammatical problems and have corrected it based on your suggestions. In addition, we have asked native English editors to polish and modify the manuscript.
Q2. A concise introduction to enable the reader's understanding of the research problem.
Response: We are grateful for the suggestion. To be more clearly and in accordance with the reviewer concerns, we have revised the corresponding part in the introduction of the manuscript and deleted some background introduction to make the expression more accurate and clear.
Q3. Theoretical literature has not been considered and reviewed.
Response: Thank you for the two references you mentioned. We have read them in detail and added a section of theoretical literature review to the theoretical literature section. See 2.1.4 for details. We have also analyzed the relationship with the content and theme of the article.
Q4. Insufficient transparency.
Response: Thank you for your comments. The data used in this article are all from published data, and no questionnaire survey has been conducted. See 3.1 for more details of the model, and 3.2 for more details of the data. Since we did not express it clearly，we are sorry for your misunderstanding.
Q5. What are the theoretical and practical implications of your study and which limitations and possible future research emerge from it?
Response: We agree with the comment, and modify the conclusion part in the revised version, adding the theoretical contributions and research deficiencies of the article.
Thank you again for taking the time to review the manuscript. Look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Tonggong Zhang
Zhe Ma
Yingshi Shang
Reviewer 2 Report
1. Please rewrite the abstract: i) findings are described with numbering. I would suggest that the numbering be taken out. Just describe in a few sentences. ii) Add main contributions of this research towards the end of the abstract.
2. Few claims are made without proper citations, i.e, 1st sentence of 2nd page. There are few more. Please review your draft and add citations appropriately.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “sustainability-2195991” (ID). Those comments are valuable and very helpful. We have read through comments carefully and have made corrections.
Please find my itemized responses in below and my revisions in the re-submitted files.
Q1. English language and style are fine/minor spell check required.
Response: We apologize for the language problems in the original manuscript. The language presentation was improved with assistance from a native English speaker with appropriate research background.
Q2. Please rewrite the abstract: i) findings are described with numbering. I would suggest that the numbering be taken out. Just describe in a few sentences. ii) Add main contributions of this research towards the end of the abstract.
Response: We agreed with this comment, and revised the summary in the revised version, removed the number, and compressed the content appropriately, and described the research results in a few sentences; Due to the length of the summary, the main contribution of the article is added to the conclusion.
Q3. Few claims are made without proper citations, i.e, 1st sentence of 2nd page. There are few more. Please review your draft and add citations appropriately.
Response: We apologize for carelessness in the original manuscript. The data source of the first sentence on the second page has been added in the form of a footnote.
Thank you again for taking the time to review the manuscript. Look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Tonggong Zhang
Zhe Ma
Yingshi Shang
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
The abstract should be more precise about the research model and how it is triangulated. In the content analysis, the authors focus only on China and Chinese authors, a wider international comparison with approaches in other parts of the world would be beneficial. The research model is described exactly and the scientific implementation is without reservations, the results correspond and are clearly argued. I highly suggest including morearguments in conclusion's section because is very low in term of restating the "core" of your research. Therefore, I recommend publishing the article after the minor modifications mentioned above.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “sustainability-2195991” (ID). Those comments are valuable and very helpful. We have read through comments carefully and have made corrections.
Please find my itemized responses in below and my revisions in the re-submitted files.
Q1. English language and style are fine/minor spell check required.
Response: Thank you very much for discovering this error. We apologize for grammatical problems and have corrected it based on your suggestions. In addition, we have asked native English editors to polish and modify the manuscript.
Q2. The abstract should be more precise about the research model and how it is triangulated.
Response: We are grateful for the suggestion. To be more clearly and in accordance with the reviewer concerns, we adjusted part of the content of the summary, deleted the number and compressed the content in order to accurately explain the research topic and content.
Q3. In the content analysis, the authors focus only on China and Chinese authors, a wider international comparison with approaches in other parts of the world would be beneficial.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comments. We tried to join the international data for research, but due to the lack of data and the urgency of time, it is temporarily impossible to compare with other regions of the world. I will continue to collect data and methods, and further explore and deepen in the follow-up research.
Q4. The conclusion part lacks core basis .
Response: We agree with the comment, and modify the conclusion part in the revised version, adding the theoretical contributions and research deficiencies of the article.
Thank you again for taking the time to review the manuscript. Look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Tonggong Zhang
Zhe Ma
Yingshi Shang
Reviewer 4 Report
The article is well conceived, coherent and with a solid statistical part. The literature review is well built putting forward hypotheses which are then analysed with an econometrical model. This model is clearly explained along with the variables and how the data was collected.
The improvements to be taken into consideration are:
1. in the results part the hypotheses' acceptance/ rejection should be more thoroughly described
2. in the conclusions' part a few words about the limitations of the research should be pointed out.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “sustainability-2195991” (ID). Those comments are valuable and very helpful. We have read through comments carefully and have made corrections.
Please find my itemized responses in below and my revisions in the re-submitted files.
Q1. In the results part the hypotheses' acceptance/ rejection should be more thoroughly described.
Response: Thank you for your valuable comments. We apologize for the misplacement of the first draft and have added a description of the assumptions in the result analysis section.
Q2. In the conclusions' part a few words about the limitations of the research should be pointed out.
Response: We agree with the comment, and modify the conclusion part in the revised version, adding the theoretical contributions and research deficiencies of the article.
Thank you again for taking the time to review the manuscript. Look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Tonggong Zhang
Zhe Ma
Yingshi Shang
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear author(s),
Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper. I agree that this is an important and pertinent topic. Although the idea is a good one, there are a few areas where I would encourage the authors to give further thought, as follows:
You must have a literature title and the rest of the titles should be placed under the literature title.
In the literature section, you should explain how your title relates to sustainability.
Add practical suggestions.
Research limitations and suggestions for future research should be given in a separate title.
Use the new references 2022 and 2023 in the introduction and text of the literature.
The text of the article should be edited.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you very much for receiving your comments in such a short time. We have read through all your comments carefully and have made amendments accordingly.
Please find our itemized responses in below and our revisions in the re-submitted manuscript.
Q1. You must have a literature title and the rest of the titles should be placed under the literature title.
Response: Thanks very much for this comment. We have adjusted the structure of the paper, and describe the framework in section 2.3, please kindly check the enclosed manuscript.
Q2. In the literature section, you should explain how your title relates to sustainability.
Response: We are vey grateful for this suggestion. And, we have partially revised 2.1.4 to explain how this research relates to sustainability.
Q3. Add practical suggestions.
Response: Thank you very much for this comment. We have made some modifications to chapter 5, and added some practical suggestions in combination with the current development situation.
Q4. Research limitations and suggestions for future research should be given in a separate title.
Response: We appreciate this comment very much. We have made some modifications accordingly, and made the contributions and limitations part as a separate chapter as Chapter 6.
Q5. Use the new references 2022 and 2023 in the introduction and text of the literature.
Response: Thank you for your comment. We have added the latest year's references in the introduction and literature research section after studying the latest literature.
Q6. The text of the article should be edited.
Response: Thanks very much for your amendment, to make each sentence fluent to read, we have tried our best, and got help from one native English speaker with appropriate research background. In the future, we are going to take English studying seriously, and make the expression perfecter. Thanks again for your advice and guide.
Thank you very much for taking your time to review the manuscript. Look forward to hearing from you, and have a nice day.
Sincerely,
Tonggong Zhang
Zhe Ma
Yingshi Shang
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
I found some improvements in your article but there are still some issues:
- section 2.1.4 literature review must be renamed, or you can leave it like that as a conclusion for 2.1.
- limitations can be a new section out of the conclusion section.
- at least 70 references are advisable.
Good luck!
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thanks very much for your comments concerning our manuscript numbered “sustainability-2195991” . We have read through all your comments carefully and have made amendments accordingly. Specifically, please find our itemized responses in below.
Q1. Section 2.1.4 literature review must be renamed, or you can leave it like that as a conclusion for 2.1.
Response: Thank you very much for pointing out this mistake. We have renamed the title as “summary of previous researches”.
Q2. Limitations can be a new section out of the conclusion section.
Response: We appreciate this suggestion greatly. And we have separated the “contribution and limitations” part from the previous section 5 as Chapter 6, please check the enclosed manuscript.
Q3. At least 70 references are advisable.
Response: Thanks very much for your suggestion since it is not only useful for this paper, but also helpful in our future researches. Accordingly, we have tried our best to reference more literature. However, since the researched related to higher education and green development are quite short presently, especially the abroad researches. As a result, even though we have cited most of the latest and most authoritative references, only 52 references are involved in this paper. Thanks very for your understanding, and we feel very sorry for our inability of having 70 references involved in this paper. To make each research more perfect , we will further search relevant literature and keep studying in the future.
Thank you again for taking the time to review the manuscript. Look forward to hearing from you, and have a nice day.
Sincerely,
Tonggong Zhang
Zhe Ma
Yingshi Shang
Reviewer 4 Report
All the suggested changes were implemented. Congratulations!
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you very much for reviewing our manuscript in such a short time and for your approval and encouragement, which we greatly appreciate. Look forward to hearing from you, and have a nice day.
Sincerely,
Tonggong Zhang
Zhe Ma
Yingshi Shang
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review this paper.
