The Competitiveness of Regional Urban System in Hubei Province of China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The reviewed paper is about urban competitiveness in Hubei Province. 
The research is very technical and lacks a broader theoretical perspective and critical embedding in previous research. The presentation of the results is not clear and the discussion is practically absent. In my opinion, this paper should not be published in its present form. I am also not convinced if its shortcomings can be overcome without redesigning the whole analysis and conducting it again.
The word “research” in the title is needless – every article presents some kind of research.
The structure of the paper is not correct. The introduction should contain a description of the problem that the authors want to solve, questions they want to answer, and not theories and previous research. The latter should be in the second section of the paper.
The authors do not explain properly the main concept of their research i.e. urban competitiveness. Yes, there are many definitions and perspectives but the authors should clearly describe which approach they use and why.
The review of the existing literature on urban competitiveness is very technical. Authors list the research and explain each of them separately. They should conduct a proper, critical analysis of the existing literature, not just refer few papers. The literature review should also prove the research gap that the proposed research wants to fill, as well as provide grounds for the methodology used in the analysis. At the moment we do not know how previous research fuels research described in the manuscript.
I didn’t find a clear statement of the paper’s aim, research questions and/or hypothesis. It seems that the aim was the analysis itself which is not enough for the scientific article.
Some basic information about the analysed cities (e.g. population, GDP, economic structure) should be added.
When describing the construction of the index the authors should precisely explain each component AND justify why it was included in the index. The justification should refer to previous studies with a clear indication of the sources of inspiration (now the authors only vaguely state that they are based on “related research” – this is very convenient but it does not tell the reader how exactly the index was built and if its construction is justified). The lack of justification and logical explanation of the components of the index is even more visible when we look at the composition of the index which raises many questions. I mention only the most obvious:
-    Why the Economic strength is measured by the total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery and not services – the analysis is about cities, not rural areas (!)
-    in the infrastructure component number of health institutions is mentioned twice; the vague description of the indicator makes it difficult to understand why green areas and investment of fixed assets are included and not roads or public services infrastructure; why health and not schools? And what do you mean by “so on” (line 148) – did you also add some other, not described components?
-    open communication – why only domestic tourists? What types of transport are included in “passenger transport volume”?
-    what is the justification for including “the added value of the tertiary industry” in the Resident
life component. The tertiary sector includes also business services.
The article cited in lines 42-45 has two authors.
I don’t understand Table 3 – is the second column correct?
Figure 4 is very difficult to read since the lower bars are very small and difficult to distinguish.
Figures 5 and 6 are incorrect. Line graphs should not be used if there is no continuous variable on the x-axis.
On the map (that should be figure 7, not 6), diagrams are so small that it is impossible to see any differences between the provinces. The legend does not explain the different sizes of the graphs on the map. The blue colour scale is incorrect – the intensity of the colour does not change in the same direction as the presented values.
The sentence in lines 341-346 is impossible to understand.
The discussion section does not contain any information that this section should present. The authors repeat the same information about their study instead of discussing the results, comparing them with previous research and the theory, explaining the possible reasons why such results were obtained critically assessing the results’ value and limitations.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Point 1: The reviewed paper is about urban competitiveness in Hubei Province. The research is very technical and lacks a broader theoretical perspective and critical embedding in previous research. The presentation of the results is not clear and the discussion is practically absent. In my opinion, this paper should not be published in its present form. I am also not convinced if its shortcomings can be overcome without redesigning the whole analysis and conducting it again.

Response 1: Thank you very much for your comments, which are very enlightening to me. After carefully considering your comments and suggestions, this paper redesigned the experiment and analysis, revised the introduction part to better lead to the research purpose of this paper, rewrote the whole discussion part, and improved the conclusion part.

Point 2: The word “research” in the title is needless – every article presents some kind of research.

Response 2: The title of the article has been changed to” The Competitiveness of Regional Urban system in Hubei Province of China”

Point 3: The structure of the paper is not correct. The introduction should contain a description of the problem that the authors want to solve, questions they want to answer, and not theories and previous research. The latter should be in the second section of the paper.

Response 3: The revised manuscript summarizes the previous studies and introduces its own research objectives, contents and methods step by step. When reading Land's articles, we noticed that the literature reviews of many articles were put in the introduction, so we did not adjust the structure of this manuscript.

Point 4: The authors do not explain properly the main concept of their research i.e. urban competitiveness. Yes, there are many definitions and perspectives but the authors should clearly describe which approach they use and why.

Response 4: We believe that urban competitiveness is a comprehensive force, which will be improved with the development of the city.

Point 5: The review of the existing literature on urban competitiveness is very technical. Authors list the research and explain each of them separately. They should conduct a proper, critical analysis of the existing literature, not just refer few papers. The literature review should also prove the research gap that the proposed research wants to fill, as well as provide grounds for the methodology used in the analysis. At the moment we do not know how previous research fuels research described in the manuscript

Response 5: Thank you for your teaching. The revised manuscript has made a responsive summary and comment on the literature mentioned in the literature review.

Point 6: I didn’t find a clear statement of the paper’s aim, research questions and/or hypothesis. It seems that the aim was the analysis itself which is not enough for the scientific article.

Response 6: The purpose of this work was to study the status quo of urban system competitiveness in any region and explore the internal factors that affect urban competitiveness.

Point 7: When describing the construction of the index the authors should precisely explain each component AND justify why it was included in the index. The justification should refer to previous studies with a clear indication of the sources of inspiration (now the authors only vaguely state that they are based on “related research” – this is very convenient but it does not tell the reader how exactly the index was built and if its construction is justified). The lack of justification and logical explanation of the components of the index is even more visible when we look at the composition of the index which raises many questions. I mention only the most obvious:

-    Why the Economic strength is measured by the total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery and not services – the analysis is about cities, not rural areas (!)

-    in the infrastructure component number of health institutions is mentioned twice; the vague description of the indicator makes it difficult to understand why green areas and investment of fixed assets are included and not roads or public services infrastructure; why health and not schools? And what do you mean by “so on” (line 148) – did you also add some other, not described components?

-    open communication – why only domestic tourists? What types of transport are included in “passenger transport volume”?

-    what is the justification for including “the added value of the tertiary industry” in the Resident ife component. The tertiary sector includes also business services.

Response 7: This paper redesigned the evaluation index system and explained each index.

- The index of the total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery has been removed. Third industry index and economic structure index were added.

- The number of beds in health facilities was retained in the infrastructure section, while another indicator was deleted. Fixed asset investment is divided by sector into infrastructure, manufacturing and real estate. We did not find the infrastructure investment in each state, so we chose fixed asset investment instead. In the revised manuscript, transportation and water and power supply were added to the infrastructure section. In the part of science, technology and culture, we selected the number of college students, so we did not select the school index. Green area is put into the quality of life section.

- Foreign tourists have also been added. The type of transport includes road, rail and civil aviation.

- The added value of the tertiary industry has moved to the economic sector.

Point 8: The article cited in lines 42-45 has two authors.

Response 8: The author's name has been added to the manuscript

Point 9: I don’t understand Table 3 – is the second column correct?

Response 9: An unknown error occurred and has been fixed.

Point 10: Figure 4 is very difficult to read since the lower bars are very small and difficult to distinguish.

Response 10: The figure is redrawn, the legend is enlarged, and the color contrast is more obvious.

Point 11: Figures 5 and 6 are incorrect. Line graphs should not be used if there is no continuous variable on the x-axis.

Response 11: Taking time as X-axis, the change chart of urban competitiveness score is redrawn

Point 12: On the map (that should be figure 7, not 6), diagrams are so small that it is impossible to see any differences between the provinces. The legend does not explain the different sizes of the graphs on the map. The blue colour scale is incorrect – the intensity of the colour does not change in the same direction as the presented values.

The sentence in lines 341-346 is impossible to understand

Response 12: This section has been deleted.  

Point 13: The discussion section does not contain any information that this section should present. The authors repeat the same information about their study instead of discussing the results, comparing them with previous research and the theory, explaining the possible reasons why such results were obtained critically assessing the results’ value and limitations.

Response 13: This paper rewrites the discussion part, discusses the experimental results, the possible reasons for the results and some shortcomings of the experiment. Again, thank you very much for your careful comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

1. Some revisions to English are needed. For example, “index” in plural form is “indices” (not “indexes”).
2. The fonts of different letters in the same words are different (e.g. in the Abstract).
3. There is no need to mention the affiliations of mentioned authors in the paper.
4. In the Introduction, please present the integrated models instead of mentioning some ideas from different authors.
5. In the Introduction, please add the analysis of the urban competitiveness models by the model of creative city and creativity in the urban areas.
6. Please connect better the models mentioned in the Introduction with your research in the main text and in the discussions.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper examines the urban competitiveness of cities in Hubei province and its influencing factors. It needs substantial revision before publication. The authors are advised to revise the paper thoroughly in terms of theoretical framework, language, figures, reference formatting, and writing style.

(1) This paper lacks a solid conceptual framework. The authors list a detailed review of previous research on urban competitiveness, however, there is no clear logical connection between the points at all. In paragraph 2, the manuscript summarizes the three ways to define urban competitiveness – productivity, attractiveness, and a more comprehensive perspective. In paragraph 3, the discussion turns to the influencing factors of urban competitiveness. However, there is a lack of critical discussion on the link between definitions and influencing factors. Precisely the same problem exists in the literature review in each paragraph. Proper summaries and comments on the existing literature are needed, which can define the current research gap and help form the research questions for this paper.

(2) It is noticeable that the way of citing references fails to follow a proper academic style. Most citations are like this: Douglas Webster of Stanford University…… Peter Karl Kresl of Bucknell University in the United States……Pengfei Ni of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences……It’s not all that necessary to list the author and their affiliations in the text. In addition, in line 39, the year of the reference is missing. Please rephrase these paragraphs to meet the academic style.

(3) Many arguments or statements in the paper lack necessary literature supports and evidence. For example, there is no support for the point that “The influencing factors of urban competitiveness can be roughly summarized into two categories: hard power and soft power” and the explanation of hard power and soft power, as well as explanations of the research findings including the statement that the comprehensive science and education strength of Wuhan “is second only to Beijing and Shanghai”. In addition, in the abstract and introduction sections, the authors put forward that “the difference in competitiveness between cities in the region is gradually narrowing”; however, this point is not explained in later empirical specification and discussion.

(4) I understand this is an empirical study about Hukou province, however, what’s the contribution of this study to the broader urban competitiveness studies, and to both China studies and international literature?

(5) The readability of the tables and figures is far from satisfactory, which makes them difficult to follow. For example, there is an unknown problem with the weight column in table 3. And the colors used in Figures 2 and 3 are too similar, and the patterns are useless apart from dizzying the readers. Another example is figure 6, the color scheme is not pleasant, and it adopts the pie charts to demonstrate the proportions of each index, making it almost impossible to compare differences in the composition of the indices. Last but not least, the formatting is not consistent, such as the font.

(6) The language needs substantial revision and improvement. Many sentences are lack logical flow and hard to understand. Professional language editing services are required. For example, in the abstract section, the sentence “Design contains economic strength, infrastructure, technology and culture, open 13 communication and residents living five level indicators and 27 secondary indexes of evaluation 14 index system”.  Or, it is inaccurate to describe the quality of life as “residents’ life”, which makes statements like “the impact of residents' life on urban competitiveness” confusing. There are also several spelling errors in the manuscript such as the subtitle in line 104.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

Point 1: This paper lacks a solid conceptual framework. The authors list a detailed review of previous research on urban competitiveness, however, there is no clear logical connection between the points at all. In paragraph 2, the manuscript summarizes the three ways to define urban competitiveness – productivity, attractiveness, and a more comprehensive perspective. In paragraph 3, the discussion turns to the influencing factors of urban competitiveness. However, there is a lack of critical discussion on the link between definitions and influencing factors. Precisely the same problem exists in the literature review in each paragraph. Proper summaries and comments on the existing literature are needed, which can define the current research gap and help form the research questions for this paper.

Response 1: Thank you for your comments. In the revised manuscript, we better summarize and comment the previous studies mentioned in the paper.

Point 2: It is noticeable that the way of citing references fails to follow a proper academic style. Most citations are like this: Douglas Webster of Stanford University…… Peter Karl Kresl of Bucknell University in the United States……Pengfei Ni of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences……It’s not all that necessary to list the author and their affiliations in the text. In addition, in line 39, the year of the reference is missing. Please rephrase these paragraphs to meet the academic style.

Response 2: Yes, we have revised it.

Point 3: Many arguments or statements in the paper lack necessary literature supports and evidence. For example, there is no support for the point that “The influencing factors of urban competitiveness can be roughly summarized into two categories: hard power and soft power” and the explanation of hard power and soft power, as well as explanations of the research findings including the statement that the comprehensive science and education strength of Wuhan “is second only to Beijing and Shanghai”. In addition, in the abstract and introduction sections, the authors put forward that “the difference in competitiveness between cities in the region is gradually narrowing”; however, this point is not explained in later empirical specification and discussion..

Response 3: Arguments not supported by evidence have been deleted. The discussion section also explains the argument that the competitiveness gap of cities within the region is gradually decreasing.

Point 4: I understand this is an empirical study about Hukou province, however, what’s the contribution of this study to the broader urban competitiveness studies, and to both China studies and international literature?.

Response 4: The competition of cities is more within the region, and the development of cities should promote the progress of the whole region. This paper takes Hubei Province as the research area and is also applicable to other regions in China. The method in this paper is very easy to popularize.

Point 5: The readability of the tables and figures is far from satisfactory, which makes them difficult to follow. For example, there is an unknown problem with the weight column in table 3. And the colors used in Figures 2 and 3 are too similar, and the patterns are useless apart from dizzying the readers. Another example is figure 6, the color scheme is not pleasant, and it adopts the pie charts to demonstrate the proportions of each index, making it almost impossible to compare differences in the composition of the indices. Last but not least, the formatting is not consistent, such as the font.

Response 5: The revised manuscript has revised these charts comprehensively to make them look clearer and the font has been unified.

Point 6: The language needs substantial revision and improvement. Many sentences are lack logical flow and hard to understand. Professional language editing services are required. For example, in the abstract section, the sentence “Design contains economic strength, infrastructure, technology and culture, open 13 communication and residents living five level indicators and 27 secondary indexes of evaluation 14 index system”.  Or, it is inaccurate to describe the quality of life as “residents’ life”, which makes statements like “the impact of residents' life on urban competitiveness” confusing. There are also several spelling errors in the manuscript such as the subtitle in line 104.

Response 6: The revised manuscript has been modified through MDPI's English editing service

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I would like to thank the Authors for revising the paper, especially since it required conducting the analysis one more time. Most of my comments were taken into account however, I still think that at the moment the discussion section needs improvement. My main concern is that this part does not present any reference to the previous research and theoretical literature so does not show how the results obtained by the authors correspond with other studies and theoretical concepts (the discussion section does not have even a single reference to the literature!).

Author Response

Thank you for your comments and suggestions. The discussion section of the manuscript has now been further refined by referring to existing studies, adding interpretations of the results and suggestions, and reflecting on the experiment.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have made notable improvements to the paper in terms of formatting and figures, but there is still room for enhancement before publication. The authors are advised to further revise the manuscript in terms of theoretical framework, explanation of the results, and language.

1)     Literature and reference: Firstly, the reference style of the manuscript does not comply with any referencing style in academic writing. For instance, the authors used two referencing styles, for example, from lines 81-84, Kangning Xu (2002) [8,9], and the authors also used two verb tenses when reviewing the existing literature, for example, line 81 and line 84. Furthermore, the connection between the third paragraph (line 64) and the other two sections of the literature review is unclear. Neither is the connection between the existing studies and the paper. In addition, the authors fail to identify the knowledge gap in existing studies, which leads to an unclear theoretical contribution of this paper. Lastly, the authors failed to present a solid theoretical foundation when constructing the evaluation index system of urban competitiveness.

2)     The paper lacks the necessary interpretations of the findings. The author should reflect on existing studies on the urban competitiveness of cities in the Wuhan urban agglomeration. For instance, the authors revealed that the weight of science was declining and therefore, the gap between the cities in terms of science, technology, and culture was gradually narrowed in line 409. This finding is counterintuitive, but the authors failed to give a convincing explanation of the results. This issue applies to almost all the empirical findings in this paper, which undermines the credibility of the research results.

3)     The authors should clarify the meaning and logic of their writing in a more concise, cohort, and accurate way. Firstly, the current language is verbose but simultaneously ambiguous. For example, the summary of the first definition of urban competitiveness in line 36 is too rambling. Another instance is the introduction of the data source, “The index data were obtained from the database of the Bureau of Statistics, namely, various yearbooks, which were very easy to obtain and reproducible.” The authors presented the database in a not necessarily wordy way but failed to clarify the time of the data. Such crude writing abounds in this paper; the authors should review the whole manuscript carefully and abandon the informal writing styles such as “of course”. Secondly, there are noticeable errors in the translation of terminology. For example, “road-person ratio”, “number of students in institutions of higher learning”, etc. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf