Shared Logistics—Literature Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The research reviews the shared logistics issues and the topic is interesting. As a reviewer I will make some comments in the following:

1.     Abstract

The abstract is well organizaed, but the abstract can mention important research resluts for one or two sentences.  Please revise this

2.     Key word

Please revise your keywords carefully thinking of the key words/sentences that authors will likely type in Google Scholar (or similar engines) to find an article dealing with your topic. To make sure your work will appear at the top of search engines, use your keywords in your title and repeatedly in your abstract.

3.     Introduction

“We hope that our work will be useful to researchers who intend to study and analyze the subject of shared logistics as the basic reference point for what has already been done in this young concept and what is missing; which authors and to what extent raised the issue.”

The above paragraph is very fuzzy. Please revise this.

4.     Methods of Analysis

In general, previous studies use a meta-analysis method to explore the research issues by using the same key words “shared logics”.  Please demonstrate why you use the Desk analysis, visual analysis and benchmark datasets of approaches. The meta-analytical procedure was developed by Hunter and Schmidt (2004). Please revise this.

5.     Discussion and results

I recommend that the author(s) can answer the research questions mentioning in the introduction: (some questions is not answered yet). Please summary these.

“………This literature review aims to answer the following questions:

• What topics related to shared logistics are discussed?

• In which regions of the world this innovation is particularly appreciated ?

• Is the topic treated more often as the subject of modeling or are concepts and visions of future frameworks drawn ?

• What areas of shared logistics are not sufficiently addressed in the literature ?

• What are the recommendations for future publications?......... “

I suggest that the author(s) can answer the questions one by one for achieving the research questions.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the time sacrificed to our paper and your valuable comments. We revised everything according to them.

The research reviews the shared logistics issues and the topic is interesting. As a reviewer I will make some comments in the following:

1. Abstract

The abstract is well organizaed, but the abstract can mention important research results for one or two sentences.  Please revise this

We revised this, thank you

2. Key word

Please revise your keywords carefully thinking of the key words/sentences that authors will likely type in Google Scholar (or similar engines) to find an article dealing with your topic. To make sure your work will appear at the top of search engines, use your keywords in your title and repeatedly in your abstract.

We added some important keywords, thank you

3. Introduction

“We hope that our work will be useful to researchers who intend to study and analyze the subject of shared logistics as the basic reference point for what has already been done in this young concept and what is missing; which authors and to what extent raised the issue.”

The above paragraph is very fuzzy. Please revise this.

We revised this

4. Methods of Analysis

In general, previous studies use a meta-analysis method to explore the research issues by using the same key words “shared logics”.  Please demonstrate why you use the Desk analysis, visual analysis and benchmark datasets of approaches. The meta-analytical procedure was developed by Hunter and Schmidt (2004). Please revise this.

 Lines 130-138 explain the reasons for the choice of method. Thank you for that suggestion

5. Discussion and results

I recommend that the author(s) can answer the research questions mentioning in the introduction: (some questions is not answered yet). Please summary these.

“………This literature review aims to answer the following questions:

• What topics related to shared logistics are discussed?

• In which regions of the world this innovation is particularly appreciated ?

• Is the topic treated more often as the subject of modeling or are concepts and visions of future frameworks drawn ?

• What areas of shared logistics are not sufficiently addressed in the literature ?

• What are the recommendations for future publications?......... “

I suggest that the author(s) can answer the questions one by one for achieving the research questions.

There is a section titled “Answering to the research questions” that contains replies one by one. We didn’t change this part, but we added the line numbers, so these are 642-691

Kind regards, Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks for the review of a prospective enormous subject matter,

In fact, I am reserved if you have got the entire literature by employing a single phrase. I would have suggested other combinations of words during searching relevant literature. Yet once you have finished your research, this limitation should be indicated in the conclusion and suggestions sections including in the abstract.

1. literature on thoughts and facts in the introduction part is marginally cited; which leads to the conclusion of plagiarism. For example, if you began 2017 as the benchmark, what are the sources of information? So, I suggest inserting appropriate citations either from the reviewed papers or other literature.

2. Despite a generally good narration, some language issues still require editing. Don't refer you instead try to rephrase as readers...

3. Despite using web of science and google scholar, you only presented google scholar. Do the articles from the web of Science fully overlap with that of google scholar and hence are redundancies? or did you just ignore them? 

4. You can't have two captions for the same figure (3). What is the measurement scale? frequency? Percent?

5. why is the need to repeat the things incorporated in Table 2 again under  Fig 6. Fig 6 is also poorly described and I suggest removing it.

6. There is ultimately a mix of titles and presentations. For example, under 4, it states discussion and results. How come results come after discussion? and there is no citation in the discussion. And again 5 states answering to the questions that should have been responded to under the discussion section. And 6 states remarks. I believe this is a scientific article. Despite being a useful research area, I find the current presentation unusual and in some cases unacceptable. So, I suggest the authors rearrange the sections, avoid redundancies in the results section and make a language editorial for possible publication. 

Good luck!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the time sacrificed to our paper and your valuable comments. We revised the submission.

In fact, I am reserved if you have got the entire literature by employing a single phrase. I would have suggested other combinations of words during searching relevant literature. Yet once you have finished your research, this limitation should be indicated in the conclusion and suggestions sections including in the abstract.

Thank you for that comment. We elaborated the methodology section and limitations section.

1.literature on thoughts and facts in the introduction part is marginally cited; which leads to the conclusion of plagiarism. For example, if you began 2017 as the benchmark, what are the sources of information? So, I suggest inserting appropriate citations either from the reviewed papers or other literature.

We believe that the introduction may contain author's content, we will quotes where we analyze literature, we need to explain why we conduct the review and as authors with the area of expertise in logistics, we believe that we can define some statements. There is no plagiarism in the slightest.

2. Despite a generally good narration, some language issues still require editing. Don't refer you instead try to rephrase as readers...

The paper was now revised by a professionalist.

3. Despite using web of science and google scholar, you only presented google scholar. Do the articles from the web of Science fully overlap with that of google scholar and hence are redundancies? or did you just ignore them? 

Lines 117-128 – we clarified the methods, thank you for that suggestion.

4. You can't have two captions for the same figure (3). What is the measurement scale? frequency? Percent?

We believe we do not have two descriptions under the same figure. We were taught that whenever a figure comes up, you need to make a reference to it in the body text. As for the second question, it is simply a number of papers of the type.

5. why is the need to repeat the things incorporated in Table 2 again under  Fig 6. Fig 6 is also poorly described and I suggest removing it.

We repeated the entries from table 2 (it has changed the number to ‘1’, because we removed table 1) to illustrate which topics are most often analyzed by the authors as part of the shared logistics topic, to show more vividly which areas are analyzed most often and which are least often analyzed.

6. There is ultimately a mix of titles and presentations. For example, under 4, it states discussion and results. How come results come after discussion? and there is no citation in the discussion. And again 5 states answering to the questions that should have been responded to under the discussion section. And 6 states remarks. I believe this is a scientific article. Despite being a useful research area, I find the current presentation unusual and in some cases unacceptable. So, I suggest the authors rearrange the sections, avoid redundancies in the results section and make a language editorial for possible publication. 

It is now Discussion and limitations, then Answering research questions and Final remarks.

Please allow us to add some comments. Section names are the result of reviewers' suggestions from a previous review. Moreover, two reviewers asked us to highlight answers to research questions because they could not find them. Finally, the entire review is based on numerous citations, because this is a literature review, so we wanted to include our summary of the entries from previous sections in the Discussion, because we thought re-citing would be repeating a section from the substantive analysis. However, it's not good if you have a cognitive dissonance when reading, so kindly please point out if it's acceptable now or still a bit messy.

 Respectfully

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper does not presents a big novelty since it intends to present a literature review in the field (SLR).

The protocol used for the SLR is not presented or referred and since we noticed the lack of some information: about the planning phase (no indiciation of the search string or strings), no information about inclusion and exclusion criteria. I tried to replicate the search using Google Scholar, but differently from the authors I got more than 20,000 results for the same time frame. I am not able to explain the difference.

There is no indication about choosing the final papers: are they based on title+abstract initial analysis? Or? Which criteria supports the final set of papers?

The authors used VosViewer, but only in a limited way. Also the discussion does not adds much to the field or can support future research in this area.

So, I recommend the authors to most completely explain the used protocol, describe each single step, and everything else that is lacking.

Also, we need a deeper discussion, with a critic point of view. Otherwise, there is no future use for this paper.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for the time sacrificed to our paper and your valuable comments. He improved the paper significantly.

The paper does not presents a big novelty since it intends to present a literature review in the field (SLR).

The protocol used for the SLR is not presented or referred and since we noticed the lack of some information: about the planning phase (no indiciation of the search string or strings), no information about inclusion and exclusion criteria. I tried to replicate the search using Google Scholar, but differently from the authors I got more than 20,000 results for the same time frame. I am not able to explain the difference. There is no indication about choosing the final papers: are they based on title+abstract initial analysis? Or? Which criteria supports the final set of papers?

The results for the years 2017 - 2021 are 421, perhaps the reason you get 20,000 is not using quotation marks.

The criteria for selecting the final articles for analysis are described very precisely in the lines 118-129.

The authors used VosViewer, but only in a limited way. Also the discussion does not adds much to the field or can support future research in this area. So, I recommend the authors to most completely explain the used protocol, describe each single step, and everything else that is lacking. Also, we need a deeper discussion, with a critic point of view. Otherwise, there is no future use for this paper.

Indeed, thank you for that comment. We have elaborated all the sections – introduction, where we describe the value of research, discussion of limitations, future research. The paper is now more insightful.

Respectfully

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

General Comments:

This paper attempts to compile a review of literature related to the board topic of Shared Logistics, with an ultimate aim to answer a number of questions around this scope. The review has reviewed a significant volume of literature which provide a good basis for the findings generated. It is recommended that the manuscript be considered to publish after carefully addressing the following suggestions that might help to further enhance the manuscript.

1.   Purpose of Review – Usually a literature review is to be done with an aim to identify some knowledge gaps for some follow-up research to be conducted by the authors concerned. The manuscript currently specified a list of questions to be answered by the review, which appears to be making sense, but appeared to be lacking a clear objective for identifying knowledge gaps for follow-up research.

2.   Shared Logistics – As mentioned in the manuscript, definition of the term “shared logistics” can be very different for different studies. It is suggested that the authors could consider better define this term first with support of appropriate literature with an aim to see if there is any relatively common understanding can be generalised. It might help identifying the direction for the review and how the reviewed literature is related to this common understanding.

3.   The authors should further justify the selection of 2017-2021 as the period for the review, which deem to be updated but relatively short, as it appears that literature are available in earlier years.

4.   Modelling vs Conceptual (Table 1, Figure 3, Table 2) – The authors attempted to classify the literature according to “type”, that is whether they are a modelling or conceptual studies, but then also included categories like book, case study, report, review, thesis etc. These classifications appeared to be quite confusing as to what “types” are referring. More elaborations are required to clarify them.

5.   Section 3 Substantive Analysis – Again, it is unknown why this section is classified or organised in the current form. Are they a result from the literature review or would there be any support for this classification?

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you so much for your time and valuable review. We’ve rewritten and improved the paper.

General Comments:

This paper attempts to compile a review of literature related to the board topic of Shared Logistics, with an ultimate aim to answer a number of questions around this scope. The review has reviewed a significant volume of literature which provide a good basis for the findings generated. It is recommended that the manuscript be considered to publish after carefully addressing the following suggestions that might help to further enhance the manuscript.

1. Purpose of Review – Usually a literature review is to be done with an aim to identify some knowledge gaps for some follow-up research to be conducted by the authors concerned. The manuscript currently specified a list of questions to be answered by the review, which appears to be making sense, but appeared to be lacking a clear objective for identifying knowledge gaps for follow-up research.

We elaborated on the importance of our work.  

2. Shared Logistics – As mentioned in the manuscript, definition of the term “shared logistics” can be very different for different studies. It is suggested that the authors could consider better define this term first with support of appropriate literature with an aim to see if there is any relatively common understanding can be generalised. It might help identifying the direction for the review and how the reviewed literature is related to this common understanding.

 We elaborated on the section and added more about the generalization in limitations.

3. The authors should further justify the selection of 2017-2021 as the period for the review, which deem to be updated but relatively short, as it appears that literature are available in earlier years.

 Lines 118-128 explain the methodology more in details now.

4. Modelling vs Conceptual (Table 1, Figure 3, Table 2) – The authors attempted to classify the literature according to “type”, that is whether they are a modelling or conceptual studies, but then also included categories like book, case study, report, review, thesis etc. These classifications appeared to be quite confusing as to what “types” are referring. More elaborations are required to clarify them.

 We elaborated on why we believe it is important to distinguish the types of papers.

5. Section 3 Substantive Analysis – Again, it is unknown why this section is classified or organised in the current form. Are they a result from the literature review or would there be any support for this classification?

As stated in lines 273-275, In this section, we present a substantive analysis of reviewed papers. We summarize the subjects in the area of shared logistics were already researched and to what extent. The paragraph outlines the existing knowledge.

We added a section with substantive analysis, as it provides a deeper understanding of the topics that authors writing about shared logistics analyzed. We wanted to go beyond summarizing the literature and to critically evaluate the findings and conclusions of the studies. This can provide a deeper understanding of the topic and can help identify gaps in the literature that need to be addressed. The grouping is our work, there are no quotations in this part. A section with substantive analysis allows the reader to compare and contrast the findings of different studies, which can help identify similarities and differences across the literature. This can facilitate the synthesis of the literature and can help identify patterns or trends in the research. We intended to show that we critically evaluated the literature, rather than just presenting a summary of the studies. This can enhance the credibility of the literature review. Also, we believe this section allows a reader to formulate new research questions.

Respectfully

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 5 Report

I am writing to you to submit my review for the manuscript titled “SHARED LOGISTICS - LITERATURE REVIEW”. My comments towards the paper are as follows:

      1.     Please modify the manuscript title.

2.        At the end of the introduction, in presenting the paper goals, try to answer the questions:
* How is the current research important (Relevance)? 
* How is it novel and contributes to the state of the art?

3.       What is your conclusion for theory and method development? Please, reflect in the conclusion, which is missing.

4.      You need to convince the reader why this research is important and what is its contribution.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your valuable reviews.

I am writing to you to submit my review for the manuscript titled “SHARED LOGISTICS - LITERATURE REVIEW”. My comments towards the paper are as follows:

1. Please modify the manuscript title.

We’ve modified the title

2. At the end of the introduction, in presenting the paper goals, try to answer the questions:
   * How is the current research important (Relevance)? 
   * How is it novel and contributes to the state of the art?

We’ve elaborated on those issues at the end as well as in the introduction.

3. What is your conclusion for theory and method development? Please, reflect in the conclusion, which is missing.

We’ve elaborated on further research as well.

4. You need to convince the reader why this research is important and what is its contribution.

We’ve improved the paper and elaborated on issues like – contribution to the knowledge, significance and value of research, so we believe it now would be more interesting for a reader. Thank you for all the comments!

Respectfully

Authors

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thanks for the reply and congratulations on the revision. Minor suggestion- please reduce the number of keywords.

Author Response

Thank you so much for your valuable comments which made the manuscript more scientifically useful. 

The number of keywords has been reduced. 

Reviewer 3 Report

This new version can now be used for future research. In science is very important that we provide to others the means for them to replicate our research. Otherwise, it is not science.

The revision that has been made, piuts this paper in a format that can now be accepted.

Author Response

Thank you so much for your valuable, insightful comments, which help improve the paper and make it scientifically useful!

Reviewer 4 Report

The reviewer cannot find a proper file with the responses to comments provided in the previous round of review.

The revised version also appears do not have any revised text highlighting the revised text or responses to the reviewers' comments.

It is unsure if the proper file is uploaded or not.

Therefore, the reviewer cannot make a judgement on whether to accept this revised version or not.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Thank you so much for your time and valuable review. We’ve rewritten and improved the paper.

General Comments:

This paper attempts to compile a review of literature related to the board topic of Shared Logistics, with an ultimate aim to answer a number of questions around this scope. The review has reviewed a significant volume of literature which provide a good basis for the findings generated. It is recommended that the manuscript be considered to publish after carefully addressing the following suggestions that might help to further enhance the manuscript.

1. Purpose of Review – Usually a literature review is to be done with an aim to identify some knowledge gaps for some follow-up research to be conducted by the authors concerned. The manuscript currently specified a list of questions to be answered by the review, which appears to be making sense, but appeared to be lacking a clear objective for identifying knowledge gaps for follow-up research.

We elaborated on the importance of our work.  

2. Shared Logistics – As mentioned in the manuscript, definition of the term “shared logistics” can be very different for different studies. It is suggested that the authors could consider better define this term first with support of appropriate literature with an aim to see if there is any relatively common understanding can be generalised. It might help identifying the direction for the review and how the reviewed literature is related to this common understanding.

 We elaborated on the section and added more about the generalization in limitations.

3. The authors should further justify the selection of 2017-2021 as the period for the review, which deem to be updated but relatively short, as it appears that literature are available in earlier years.

 Lines 118-128 explain the methodology more in details now.

4. Modelling vs Conceptual (Table 1, Figure 3, Table 2) – The authors attempted to classify the literature according to “type”, that is whether they are a modelling or conceptual studies, but then also included categories like book, case study, report, review, thesis etc. These classifications appeared to be quite confusing as to what “types” are referring. More elaborations are required to clarify them.

 We elaborated on why we believe it is important to distinguish the types of papers.

5. Section 3 Substantive Analysis – Again, it is unknown why this section is classified or organised in the current form. Are they a result from the literature review or would there be any support for this classification?

As stated in lines 273-275, In this section, we present a substantive analysis of reviewed papers. We summarize the subjects in the area of shared logistics were already researched and to what extent. The paragraph outlines the existing knowledge.

We added a section with substantive analysis, as it provides a deeper understanding of the topics that authors writing about shared logistics analyzed. We wanted to go beyond summarizing the literature and to critically evaluate the findings and conclusions of the studies. This can provide a deeper understanding of the topic and can help identify gaps in the literature that need to be addressed. The grouping is our work, there are no quotations in this part. A section with substantive analysis allows the reader to compare and contrast the findings of different studies, which can help identify similarities and differences across the literature. This can facilitate the synthesis of the literature and can help identify patterns or trends in the research. We intended to show that we critically evaluated the literature, rather than just presenting a summary of the studies. This can enhance the credibility of the literature review. Also, we believe this section allows a reader to formulate new research questions.

Respectfully

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 4 Report

The revised version has demonstrated a clear improvement over the previous versions. The review only has one more query about the revised manuscript.

Regarding the types of work classifications adopted in the manuscript, the authors have further explained the importance of distinguishing the “types” of work. The reviewer well understands the importance of classifying types of work. However, the currently adopted classification appears to be unclear and there would be definitely overlapping. Things like book, report, and theses are talking about the “form” of the publication in terms of a paper, a book, a report, a thesis, or else. On the other hand, a case study, a conceptual paper, modelling and a review, are related to the nature of the study conducted. It is clear that there would be substantial overlaps between the “form” of publication and the “nature” of the study conducted. Therefore, the session is very confusing and definitely requires proper re-organisation and elaboration to clarify between “type” or work, “nature” of study and “form” of publication.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The revised version has demonstrated a clear improvement over the previous versions. The review only has one more query about the revised manuscript.

Thank you for your valuable feedback on our manuscript. We appreciate the time and effort you have taken to review our work.

 Regarding the types of work classifications adopted in the manuscript, the authors have further explained the importance of distinguishing the “types” of work. The reviewer well understands the importance of classifying types of work. However, the currently adopted classification appears to be unclear and there would be definitely overlapping. Things like book, report, and theses are talking about the “form” of the publication in terms of a paper, a book, a report, a thesis, or else. On the other hand, a case study, a conceptual paper, modelling and a review, are related to the nature of the study conducted. It is clear that there would be substantial overlaps between the “form” of publication and the “nature” of the study conducted. Therefore, the session is very confusing and definitely requires proper re-organisation and elaboration to clarify between “type” or work, “nature” of study and “form” of publication.

After careful consideration, we have decided to remove the section on classifying types of work from our paper. Your observations have helped us to identify areas of confusion in our paper and we agree that the classification system used was not clear. We have re-evaluated the section and have determined that it would be more beneficial to remove it, rather than trying to revise it. Thank you again for your help and guidance.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 4

Reviewer 4 Report

No further comments.

Author Response

thank you!