Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises: Trends and Future Perspectives for Sustainability and Digitalization in Germany

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article " Small and medium-sized enterprises: Trends and future perspectives for sustainability and digitalization in Germany" addresses a critical challenge in transforming society and the economy by introducing new technologies and sustainable development goals.

The authors defined the aim of the study as provide a state-of-the-art of the existing literature related to sustainability and digitalization in SMEs to identify current trends and future perspectives within this vital sector. The article is theoretical in nature.

Strengths of this study:

-     the topic of the paper is highly significant in the context of sustainable development and Industry 4.0,

-     the applied methods are appropriate for the research purpose,

-     the research results were presented clearly and comprehensively,

-     the bibliographic review is up-to-date,

-     the paper is easy to read.

I suggest implementing the following changes, which will help to improve the article:

1.       The Introduction should include the aim of the study, research questions, or research hypotheses.

2.       In the Conclusions section, the authors did not outline the perspectives for further research.

In my opinion, the article could be published in the journal "Sustainability" after the authors consider the  provided suggestions.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you very much for your contributions. Please find attached a file with a detailed explanation of how we have addressed each of your comments. Thank you very much. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Attached ,  you  can  find  my  comments !

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you very much for your contributions. Please find attached a file with a detailed explanation of how we have addressed each of your comments. Thank you very much.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thanks for the opportunity to review the article, please note the followings:

1.       The article requires proofreading, I observed many places where English proofreading is essential. For example look at this “In most cases, we can say that large companies have competitive advantages, while small and medium-sized companies find themselves more vulnerable in this competition”.

2.       I don’t think so there is a need to report the Section number 3.1 , reader does not need to know how many times were the articles cited.

3.       I advise authors to provide a separate section after the introduction section to describe the available literature about the topic of the study before moving to material and method section.

4.       I advise renaming the title of material and method to research methodology.

5.       Please use same terminology while talking about SMEs in Germany, it is advise that you call them “small enterprises” not organizations or companies.

6.       Please describe the term SMEs in Germany, Are they different from Micro enterprises? How do you differentiate between them? Can you provide a section for the context of the study in Germany, readers will be more interested in knowing the context of the study with more details.

7.       This article has a lot of details, I appreciate the work that has been done. Still I would like to see a separate sections for theoretical and practical implications of the study.

8.       The article is not following the in text citations format required by Sustainability journal, [1]….kindly follow the style of the journal.

9.       There are so many sections with so many details, is it possible to combine some of them together?

10.   I hope the authors can arrange the article in a manner that first show the introduction section with clear research gap and motive of the study and the discuss the context of the study. The author then start discussing the literature review available (already in the article) and finally discuss the findings and discussion of the review they conducted. By this way, author will be able to follow the article and understand the conclusion of this article easily.

 

All the best.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

needs proofreading 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you very much for your contributions. Please find attached a file with a detailed explanation of how we have addressed each of your comments. Thank you very much.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

satisfied