Evaluation of Core Competitiveness of New Energy Industry and Analysis of Obstacle Factors Taking Shandong Province as an Example

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I rate the idea of the text as valuable and useful. However, I see too many shortcomings that affect the final evaluation of the text. I see in the work a disproportionate and unjustified transfer of emphasis related to the bibliography focused on Asian authors. And yet, the bulk of the problem described has been acknowledged in global research units. Footnotes from them make up a marginal share of the article's bibliography. The two assumptions made in pp86-93 are very much "going way out on a limb" given the very modest review of the world literature. 
The recommendations are loosely related to the research conducted and give little support to the research conducted. 
The usefulness of the article is limited due to the very narrow focus of the topic presented, the organic nature of the literature base to mainly Asian literature items and the very specific research focus specific to the local market with great difficulty in transferring to other markets. On the other hand, the timeliness of the literature deserves to be appreciated. 62.5% of the items are from the last five years. However, I submit for additional verification the correctness of the formatting of some literature items. 

Author Response

Respond: Thank you very much for your valuable review comments. First of all, we have re-collected references related to this paper and updated the references, replacing a large number of Chinese references. By doing so, the focus shifts from the Asian literature to the broader scope of the study, thus more appropriately providing a drawable, more general academic reference for future scholarship. Secondly, the two assumptions made in pp86-93 are very relevant to subsequent research, as this study constructs a core competitiveness evaluation system for new energy industry in Shandong province based on the connotation of industrial competitiveness theory, low-carbon development theory and high-quality development theory, which are rarely considered in the previous studies.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to review your article. I have made comments on how to improve your article. 

Please edit the abstract. There are many run-on sentences and is hard to follow.

There are a lot of stats in the first paragraph of the introduction, but there are no citations. Please cite this information. 

Please be consistent when citing in-text. Please review the journal's requirements. 

There is a lack of justification to conducting this research. Can you please provide the “so what” in the introduction. In addition, there is much literature review in the introduction. This paper would benefit from a true Introduction that engages the reader, provides a justification for the study, and contain a statement profiling the purpose of the work being discussed. Then, a Review of Literature that should contain the results of studies related to the current study are reported, providing a context for the research being presented.

The authors change from Shandong Province to Shandong province throughout. Please edit and be consistent.

In the research design, you say “the paper takes the data about new energy industry in Shandong province during 2010-2021 as the research sample.” I would change to the researchers, not the paper (this needs to be adjusted throughout). Also, data from where?

I finally see where the data is from. Why these sources? What are you taking from these sources? What is the data? More justification is need in the research design section.

Did you use a software to complete the analysis? Was their inter-rater reliability addressed? Reliability and validity of the results are important components and should be addressed. 

When addressing the major findings, the followings are to be included: the contribution of the study results to the literature; the implications of the results for academicians and others; how the findings will be useful to the profession and audiences such as companies, consumers, and educators or service providers; and what additional research is needed in this area. Please consider this in the conclusion. I still am unsure of the need for this study.

Guidance to future researchers is appropriate. Please address.

Unexpected findings are included in the discussion as are limitations of the study. Please add limitations. 

Good luck!

This paper would benefit from an extensive edit.

Author Response

Reviewer 2:

1.Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to review your article. I have made comments on how to improve your article.

Please edit the abstract. There are many run-on sentences and is hard to follow.

Respond: Thank you very much for your valuable review comments. We have rewritten abstract and split long sentences appropriately.

The new energy industry serves as a key driver for green growth, and unlocking its core competitiveness is essential for achieving sustainable development. This study focuses on the new energy industry in Shandong province from 2010 to 2021, constructing an evaluation system for core competitiveness across three dimensions: industrial competitive environment, industrial competitive strength, and industrial competitive potential. Utilizing the entropy weight TOPSIS method and the obstacle degree model, the paper delves into the evolving characteristics and hindering factors affecting the core competitiveness of the new energy industry in Shandong province. The findings reveal the following: (1) Over the study period, the core competitiveness of the new energy industry in Shandong province underwent stages of small fluctuations, slow growth, and rapid expansion, indicating an overall upward trajectory. (2) The primary obstacle to improving core competitiveness lies in the industrial competitive environment, particularly highlighted by factors such as the number of industrial service departments, existing policies, the growth rate of investment in the new energy industry, and the number of research and development personnel in large-scale new energy enterprises.

2.There are a lot of stats in the first paragraph of the introduction, but there are no citations. Please cite this information.

Respond: Thank you very much for your valuable review comments. We have noted the URL of the data source by adding a footnote to the data cited in the Introduction.

3. Please be consistent when citing in-text. Please review the journal's requirements.

Respond: Thank you very much for your careful review, we have carefully revised the formatting of the references according to the requirements of the journal.

4. There is a lack of justification to conducting this research. Can you please provide the “so what” in the introduction. In addition, there is much literature review in the introduction. This paper would benefit from a true Introduction that engages the reader, provides a justification for the study, and contain a statement profiling the purpose of the work being discussed. Then, a Review of Literature that should contain the results of studies related to the current study are reported, providing a context for the research being presented.

Respond: Thank you very much for your valuable review comments.

First of all, we have mentioned the thesis of the necessity of conducting the present study in the paper as follows:

Although the new energy sector in Shandong province has seen early development and an increasing number of enterprises, there are persistent bottlenecks that need addressing, including a small total industrial scale, weak industry driving force, and a lack of leading enterprises. These challenges significantly impede the high-quality development of new energy in Shandong province. Driven by the imperative for industrial development, evaluating the core competitiveness of the new energy industry and identifying obstacles hindering its improvement hold great theoretical and practical significance. This evaluation can pave the way for the adoption of targeted policy measures, facilitating Shandong province in realizing the goal of "making the new energy industry bigger and stronger."

Secondly, we have also summarized and refined the literature and analyzed the research gaps in it as follows. Of course, we will value your valuable comments in future research.

Reviewing the above literature, there are still two research gaps in the existing research: firstly, many scholars have carried out relevant studies on industrial competitiveness evaluation, but fewer of them have combined the connotation of regional characteristics, the concept of high-quality development and the concept of low-carbon development to construct the index system; secondly, the existing research on the obstacles to low-carbon transformation and new energy development is relatively blank, and there is an urgent need to explore the obstacles to industrial development and analyze the systematic obstacles to the new energy industry.

5. The authors change from Shandong Province to Shandong province throughout. Please edit and be consistent.

Respond: Thank you very much for your valuable review comments, we have modified it.

6. In the research design, you say “the paper takes the data about new energy industry in Shandong province during 2010-2021 as the research sample.” I would change to the researchers, not the paper (this needs to be adjusted throughout). Also, data from where? I finally see where the data is from. Why these sources? What are you taking from these sources? What is the data? More justification is need in the research design section.

Respond: I have changed the expression. Besides, the data used in this paper is mainly to reflect the competitiveness of Shandong Province's new energy industry development in various dimensions, and corresponds to the specific indicators in the evaluation system mentioned above. Since Shandong Province has not yet issued professional reports and statistical yearbooks related to the new energy industry, this paper can only manually sort out data related to the development of the new energy industry from relevant statistical bulletins, government reports and official news, such as China Statistical Yearbook, China Industrial Statistics Yearbook, China Electric Power Yearbook, and China Statistical Yearbook. Shandong Provincial government work report and press conference released data.

7. Did you use a software to complete the analysis? Was their inter-rater reliability addressed? Reliability and validity of the results are important components and should be addressed.

Respond: The results are analyzed using Excel. In addition, the data used for the indicators in this study are all from official data and relevant media reports. The indicator system collected and constructed using this method does not require inter-rater reliability testing. Only data collected from a random sample survey questionnaire needs to undergo inter-rater reliability testing. Moreover, the official nature of the data we obtained and the authority of the method we used ensure the reliability and the validity of the research results.

8. When addressing the major findings, the followings are to be included: the contribution of the study results to the literature; the implications of the results for academicians and others; how the findings will be useful to the profession and audiences such as companies, consumers, and educators or service providers; and what additional research is needed in this area. Please consider this in the conclusion. I still am unsure of the need for this study.

Respond: Thank you very much for your valuable review comments, we have deeply reflected and summarized our conclusions based on your comments, our conclusions are more in line with your expectations and we will refer to your suggestions in writing future studies.

10.Unexpected findings are included in the discussion as are limitations of the study. Please add limitations.

Respond: We have added the following content:

Like other studies, this study also has some limitations. This study conducts a small regional analysis due to the limit of the data. Besides, due to the limitation of data length, we are unable to conduct a causal analysis on this issue. Therefore, in the future, we will conduct a more comprehensive econometric analysis on the core competitiveness of the new energy industry. Future improvement of data will be beneficial for improving this issue.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I encourage the Authors to undertake further work related to the analysis of obstacles to environmental protection.

Author Response

Reviewer 3:

1.I encourage the Authors to undertake further work related to the analysis of obstacles to environmental protection

Respond: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We believe this is an idea worthy of in-depth research, and we will conduct research in related directions in the future.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

First of all, I would like to congratulate the authors for their work. However, it seems that some corrections need to be made. First of all, there seems to be a problem with the successive equations. For example, equation 6 has dj, but the definition of wi that follows has dij. If we take i to be 1, what about j in the numerator? The j in the denominator goes from 1 to n and we get the sum of d11, d12, d13,..., d1n.  Moreover, we can see Fig. 1 but there is no text which mentions Fig.1. The TOPSIS method has not been widely investigated. We need to have more information about the method with some cited previous literature. Table 1 shows causality but in the text, we cannot see the meaning of the causality and which test or techniques are used to calculate this causality. What is the interpretation of the table and which information it gives us is not written in detail? What are the variables used and what are the descriptive statistics of them not given in the paper?  Because of this missing information, it is hard to evaluate the paper. At last, we cannot see the comparison of the findings and previous literature findings. On the other hand, if we have no comparison, what is the suggestion or discussion of the results of the paper. 

Author Response

Reviewer 4:

1. First of all, I would like to congratulate the authors for their work. However, it seems that some corrections need to be made. First of all, there seems to be a problem with the successive equations. For example, equation 6 has dj, but the definition of wi that follows has dij. If we take i to be 1, what about j in the numerator? The j in the denominator goes from 1 to n and we get the sum of d11, d12, d13,..., d1n. Moreover, we can see Fig. 1 but there is no text which mentions Fig.1. The TOPSIS method has not been widely investigated. We need to have more information about the method with some cited previous literature.

Respond: We have changed the equation (6) as follows:

Then, the redundancy level, which measures the difference between the indicators, is calculated:

                                                          (6)

In addition, the weights  for each indicator were calculated from   .

2.Table 1 shows causality but in the text, we cannot see the meaning of the causality and which test or techniques are used to calculate this causality. What is the interpretation of the table and which information it gives us is not written in detail?

Respond: The causality is used for building matrix , as when conducting dimensionless quantisation, the positive indicators and negative indicators have different method. Besides, the causality is set by the literatures review. As for the positive indicators:

As for the negative indicators:

After dimensionless quantisation,  becomes  and a new matrix  is built for the next step.

3. What are the variables used and what are the descriptive statistics of them not given in the paper? Because of this missing information, it is hard to evaluate the paper.

Respond: Firstly, we used all the variables in the third column of Table 1, and we have supplemented the statistical analysis as shown below.

Table 1. Statistical description of the variables

4. At last, we cannot see the comparison of the findings and previous literature findings. On the other hand, if we have no comparison, what is the suggestion or discussion of the results of the paper.

Respond: Thank you very much for your responsible review. We have added relevant references at appropriate places in the analysis of our results and in the description of the relevant reasons to enhance the persuasiveness of our results.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have done the work of improving the article in the spheres that can be improved. However, the remaining areas result in upholding my original review of the low usefulness of the article on the extra-regional scale contained in the text. 

Author Response

I am confident that your comments provide valuable constructive and instructive insights. Shandong is strategically focusing on key areas such as wind power, nuclear energy, hydrogen energy, energy storage, lithium-ion, and others. This focus has resulted in significant progress in fostering industrial innovation, nurturing the growth of new industries and models, particularly in the realm of new energy development. In 2021, Shandong Province witnessed a remarkable increase in new energy power generation capacity, reaching 58.49 million kilowatts, marking a 28.8% year-on-year growth. This growth underscores the thriving nature of the province's new energy industry, which aims to enhance core competitiveness, elevate industrial hierarchy, fortify industry chains, and accentuate distinctive industrial characteristics (Shandong Energy Bureau ,2022) highlights the launch of the Huadian Laicheng 101 MW/206 MWh energy storage power plant demonstration project, a pioneering endeavor in Shandong's new energy landscape this year. As a province at the forefront of China's new energy industry development, conducting a comprehensive assessment of the core competitiveness of this sector and identifying potential obstacles can offer invaluable insights and recommendations for enhancing the core competitiveness of the new energy industry nationwide. I believe this article contributes significantly by providing constructive suggestions and valuable references for improving the core competitiveness of the new energy industry not only in other provinces but also across the entire country.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for reviewing my comments and making adjustments. The formatting and grammar are much improved. 

My biggest concern still lies with the lack of a review of literature to provide a true foundation for your study. I understand the justification in the introduction, but in a literature section, the results of studies related to the current study are reported, providing a context for the research being presented. A context for the manuscript study is provided by the review of literature. Thus, I would recommend adding one. 

Thank you for communicating that you used Excel. This needs to be added to the manuscript to let the reader know your procedures. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your further efforts on this article, I believe that your comments are very constructive. The literature review combing in Introduction will not only provide a relevant research base for this study but also illustrate the necessity of conducting this study and I believe that this part of the training will be strengthened in the future research. Thanks again for your efforts!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors did all the corrections I wanted from them. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your further efforts on this article.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx