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A Bibliometric Analysis of World Issues—Social, Political, Economic, and Environmental Dimensions

World 2022, 3(3), 619-638; https://doi.org/10.3390/world3030034

by Wai-Ming To

Reviewer 1: Anonymous

Reviewer 2:

Patricia Quesado

Reviewer 3: Anonymous

Reviewer 4:

Néstor Montalván-Burbano

Reviewer 5:

Ricardo Costa Climent

World 2022, 3(3), 619-638; https://doi.org/10.3390/world3030034

Submission received: 1 July 2022 / Revised: 15 August 2022 / Accepted: 17 August 2022 / Published: 18 August 2022

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review this manuscript. The analyze is detailed and highlighted the main concepts that was studied by the academics during the last 20 years starting from the world/global keyword.

I recommend to mention the limitations of the study.

Author Response

1^st Comment: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review this manuscript. The analyze is detailed and highlighted the main concepts that was studied by the academics during the last 20 years starting from the world/global keyword.

My response: Thanks so much for your comment.

2^nd Comment: I recommend to mention the limitations of the study.

My response: As suggested by you, I added the following paragraph to highlight the limitations of the study in the section of Conclusion:

“ Like any cross-sectional analysis using secondary data, the study has some limitations. First, the bibliometric data were extracted and downloaded from Scopus on 22 June 2022. As there are over 3.2 million academic publications indexed by Scopus every year i.e. >8,700 publications/day in recent years [56] while the world/global issues will continue to attract researchers from a wide range of disciplines, it is expected that new trends and new hot topics will emerge in the near future. Researchers can carry out a new round of bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review in future. Second, micro-level bibliometric data may include some errors such as inconsistencies in authors’ last names and initials, authors’ affiliations, books’ editions and years, and inconsistencies due to changes to journal names [63]. Yet, the data were checked and no obvious error was found. Third, a bibliometric analysis using a different database will produce different results. Future research can be carried a similar bibliometric analysis using Web of Science to re-evaluate trends and hot topics of the world/global issues primarily based on journal articles.”

A new reference [Ref. 63] was added:

Heberger, A.E.; Christie, C.A.; Alkin, M.C. A bibliometric analysis of the academic influences of and on evaluation theorists’ published works. Am. J. Eval. 2010, 31(1), 24-44.

Dear Reviewer 1: Thanks so much for your valuable comments. I sincerely hope that I have addressed them properly in this round of revision.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear author, after reading your work I have the following recommendations that maybe could help you to improve this work:

The paper covers an interesting and relevant topic, and more research should be done on this topic in the literature. The paper contains new and significant information adequate to justify publication. As such, the paper could have a place in World editorial line.

The title is specific and relevant.

The abstract it is well written, and we can understand the question addressed in a broad context, the purpose of the study, the main method, and the main findings.

The keywords are specific to the article.

Is clear the reading of the text (textual coherence and cohesion).

The introduction is considered as one of the main parts of the studies in which it tries to give details of the studies carried out as well as to justify the relevance of the subject and the novelty it represents for the research. Thus, the introduction section must explain in a convincing manner the relevance of the paper, especially regarding its academic and practical implications. The introduction should include the theme, the motivation for the choice of the problem, the objectives, the research question, the methodology to be followed and the work structure. Thus, a contextual discussion of the work must be done, justifying the theoretical, social and practical importance of the research problem. I advise the author to be clear about the motivation of the study.

The paper cites an appropriate range of literature sources, as so I recommend the author to include a section with literature review concerning social, political, economic, and environmental dimensions (emerging topics) with recent publications in these topics.

In the methodology section it is important explain for select those methods.

Several studies have used Microsoft Excel v.2204 and VOSviewer software to conduct a bibliometric study on different research topics. Here are some references that have used this methodology:

Margarida Rodrigues, L. (2018). Mapping of the literature on social responsibility in the mining industry: A systematic literature review, Journal of Cleaner Production, 181, 88-101.
- Lulewicz-Sas, (2017). Corporate Social Responsibility in the Light of Management Science – Bibliometric Analysis, Procedia Engineering, 182, 412-417.
Arrigo, E., Di Vaio, A., Hassan, R., & Palladino, R. (2022). Followership behavior and corporate social responsibility disclosure: Analysis and implications for sustainability research, Journal of Cleaner Production, 360, 132-151.
- Wong, A., Köseoglu, M., Kim, S. (2021). The intellectual structure of corporate social responsibility research in tourism and hospitality: A citation/co-citation analysis, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 49, 270-284.

The conclusions adequately tie together the other elements of the paper, however in the conclusion the author should mention the limitations of the study (which are many). For example, the methodology adopted have very limitations. The author also should develop suggestions for future research.

I hope that my comments and suggestions can help to improve the paper.

Thank you for the opportunity to read your article.

I wish all the best to the author!

Author Response

1^st Comment: Dear author, after reading your work I have the following recommendations that maybe could help you to improve this work: The paper covers an interesting and relevant topic, and more research should be done on this topic in the literature. The paper contains new and significant information adequate to justify publication. As such, the paper could have a place in World editorial line. The title is specific and relevant. The abstract it is well written, and we can understand the question addressed in a broad context, the purpose of the study, the main method, and the main findings. The keywords are specific to the article.

My response: Thanks so much for your comment.

2^nd Comment: Is clear the reading of the text (textual coherence and cohesion)? The introduction is considered as one of the main parts of the studies in which it tries to give details of the studies carried out as well as to justify the relevance of the subject and the novelty it represents for the research. Thus, the introduction section must explain in a convincing manner the relevance of the paper, especially regarding its academic and practical implications. The introduction should include the theme, the motivation for the choice of the problem, the objectives, the research question, the methodology to be followed and the work structure. Thus, a contextual discussion of the work must be done, justifying the theoretical, social and practical importance of the research problem. I advise the author to be clear about the motivation of the study.

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, I rewrote part of the Introduction to highlight the motivation of the study more clearly as:

“…research focus would change as a function of time and the topics widely studied in the past may no longer be hot topics in recent years. Therefore, it is important to use a systematic approach to review peer-reviewed literature on world (or global) issues. Doing so will help us identify the trend of research on world (or global) issues, hot topics in the past, and emerging topics in recent years. A literature search using “bibliometric analysis” and (“world issues” or “global issues”) within “Article title, Abstract, Keywords” in Scopus on 22 June 2022 identified only 13 articles [16-28]; 11 articles focusing on a particular topic of environmental research such as climate change, land, renewable energy, food waste, ocean acidification, etc., 1 article about social and health issue and 1 article about economic and business research. As a bibliometric analysis of world issues using a multidimensional approach is still lacking, it is crucial to conduct a timely bibliometric analysis to understand the past, present, and future research of world (or global) issues in a more encompassing perspective. More specifically, this study aims at answering the following research questions: (1) What is the trend of world (or global) issues-related research? (2) Who are the most prolific authors? (3) Which are the most productive institutions and countries? (4) Which funding bodies are the most supportive ones for and which subject areas are associated with this type of multidisciplinary research? (5) Which articles are the most influential ones based on the number of citations? (6) What are hot topics and emerging topics of world (or global) issues using cluster analyses. Thus, the study identified the relevant literature on world (or global) issues by utilizing world (or global), social, political, economic, environmental, and issues in their keywords from an academic database – Scopus [29,30]. It focused on journal, review, and conference articles as well as books and book chapters. The data were analyzed by Scopus bibliometric tools and a popular bibliometric visualization tool – VOSviewer for generating clusters of keywords [31,32]. The findings of the study showed that the number of publications on world (or global) issues has increased over the past five decades, particularly after 2001. They revealed that world (or global) issues should be multidisciplinary in nature as the identified articles were categorized into a wide range of subject areas including “Social Sciences”, “Environmental Science”, “Business, Management and Accounting”, “Earth and Planetary Sciences”, etc. Additionally, co-occurrence of keywords revealed two major streams of researches: namely “sustainable development and climate change”, and “environmental protection, economics, and politics”.

The rest of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents a literature review. It is followed by Materials and Methods, Results, and Discussion in Sections 3-5. Section 6 concludes the paper.”

Because of this change, 13 new references [Refs. 16-28] were added to the manuscript.

3^rd Comment: The paper cites an appropriate range of literature sources, as so I recommend the author to include a section with literature review concerning social, political, economic, and environmental dimensions (emerging topics) with recent publications in these topics.

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, I included a new section – Literature Review on World (or Global) Issues and Bibliometric Analysis in the revised manuscript.

“2. Literature Review on World (or Global) Issues and Bibliometric Analysis

Globalization does not only facilitate the exchange of capital and goods, it also accelerates the communication and understanding between people, knowledge, skills, and cultures. Globalization took place very rapidly at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. It was primarily driven by large corporations looking for suppliers and new markets [8] and the modernization of many Asian economies (especially after the opening up policy adopted by China since 1978 [33]). As different parts of the world get connected physically and/or virtually, Kaufmann et al. [7] proposed to use ‘motility’ – referring to the overall potential capacity of goods, people or information to be mobile both socially and geospatially – to characterize mobility as a capital. They suggested that access, competence, and appropriation are key features of motility [7]. Yet, globalization has also eroded social and environmental systems [8,9] and can put enormous pressure on host countries’ political and economic structures [8,9]. Specifically, Korten [8] in his book indicated that most of the current world (or global) issues (or problems) do not come from business or the market per se, but rather a corrupted global economic system mostly dictated by the world’s largest corporations. As world (or global) issues become multifaceted and cross-disciplinary, researchers started applying to a multi-dimensional and/or holistic approach to study them [10-15]. For example, Brechin et al. [11] in 1991 proposed that population, environment, and development planning/policy should not be studied in isolation as all of them are interrelated. Costello et al. [10] and Nightingale et al. [15] indicated that the task of trans-forming human behaviors and economies has become more urgent than ever because climate change has adversely affected our social-economic-environmental systems and human health in an accelerating rate. Udo et al. [12], Pereira [13], and Zhang [14] argued that social, economic, environmental, and/or political dimensions have to be considered to evaluate the world’s and regional sustainability.

A bibliometric analysis refers to the application of quantitative techniques (statistical analysis, citation and co-citation analyses, etc.) on bibliometric data [34]. Although bibliometric methodologies are not new, the proliferation of bibliometric analyses and studies is rather recent due to the advancement and availability of academic indexing databases such as Web of Science, Scopus and Dimensions, and bibliometric software such as VOSviewer, Gephi and Leximancer [34]. Donthu et al. [34] compared bibliometric analysis with meta-analysis and systematic literature review. They highlighted that bibliometric analysis aims to summarize large quantities of bibliometric data and to reveal some underlying structures and emerging trends of a research topic/field. A bibliometric analysis is particularly useful when the scope is broad (such as world/global issues) and the dataset is too large for manual review (likely in the present study that the identified articles can be over 1000). Among academic indexing databases, Web of Science and Scopus are the two most popular multidisciplinary databases for bibliometric analysis [29,30]. Although Web of Science has stringent criteria for journal inclusion and is the most authoritative bibliometric source for quality publications, its core collection does not cover enough new and less-established open access journals in emergent disciplines and conference proceedings. Currently, Web of Science’s core collection covers 21100 journals in 254 disciplines, with about 74.8 million total records [34]. On the other hand, Elsevier launched Scopus in 2004. Initially, Scopus covered around 14000 journals from 4000 publishers, with about 27 million abstract and citation records. Scopus has expended its coverage over the past two decades. As at January 2020, Scopus covered over 23000 journals, 852 book series, and papers from over 120000 international conferences. It has over 77.8 mil-lion records [35]. In fact, bibliometric analyses have been carried out in the fields of environmental science [16-20,22-27] and social responsibility [37-40]. Many of these bibliometric analyses used Scopus as the source of data and VOSviewer as a key visualization tool.”

4^th Comment: In the methodology section it is important to explain for select those methods. Several studies have used Microsoft Excel v.2204 and VOSviewer software to conduct a bibliometric study on different research topics. Here are some references that have used this methodology:

- Margarida Rodrigues, L. (2018). Mapping of the literature on social responsibility in the mining industry: A systematic literature review, Journal of Cleaner Production, 181, 88-101.

- Lulewicz-Sas, (2017). Corporate Social Responsibility in the Light of Management Science – Bibliometric Analysis, Procedia Engineering, 182, 412-417.

- Arrigo, E., Di Vaio, A., Hassan, R., & Palladino, R. (2022). Followership behavior and corporate social responsibility disclosure: Analysis and implications for sustainability research, Journal of Cleaner Production, 360, 132-151.

- Wong, A., Köseoglu, M., Kim, S. (2021). The intellectual structure of corporate social responsibility research in tourism and hospitality: A citation/co-citation analysis, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 49, 270-284.

My response: Thanks for your comment. In the revised manuscript, a literature review including the definition of bibliometric analysis was given in Section 2 – Literature Review …. as:

“ A bibliometric analysis refers to the application of quantitative techniques (statistical analysis, citation and co-citation analyses, etc.) on bibliometric data [34]. Although bibliometric methodologies are not new, the proliferation of bibliometric analyses and studies is rather recent due to the advancement and availability of academic indexing databases such as Web of Science, Scopus and Dimensions, and bibliometric software such as VOSviewer, Gephi and Leximancer [34]. Donthu et al. [34] compared bibliometric analysis with meta-analysis and systematic literature review. They highlighted that bibliometric analysis aims to summarize large quantities of bibliometric data and to reveal some underlying structures and emerging trends of a research topic/field. A bibliometric analysis is particularly useful when the scope is broad (such as world/global issues) and the dataset is too large for manual review (likely in the present study that the identified articles can be over 1000). …”

Additionally, I clarified the procedure more thoroughly and highlighted the version of VOSviewer and the specific analyses were adopted in the study as

“…This search resulted in 1233 documents. Among them, 1201 were journal articles (644), book chapters (202), books (148), conference papers (106), and review articles (101). Editorials (24), notes (4), short surveys (2), abstract report (1), and erratum (1) were excluded. Bibliometric information of the 1201 selected documents were exported and downloaded as a csv file on 22 June 2022. The selected documents were checked for duplicates and erroneous items. No duplicate and error was identified….

The csv file was imported to VOSviewer (version 1.6.11). After that, co-authorship analysis, citation analysis, co-citation analysis, and co-occurrence of keywords analysis were conducted to reveal associations between key researchers, what sources researchers normally cited, and key topics of world (or global) issues, similar to other bibliometric studies in the field of environmental science [16-18,20,22,24,26] and social responsibility [37-40]. The default minimum number of co-occurrences in VOSviewer was 5. For the full set of identified documents, the minimum number of co-occurrences was set to 20 and all keywords including author keywords and index keywords were used in keyword co-occurrence analysis. Additionally, co-occurrence of keywords analysis was conducted for the identified publications during the periods 1980-1989, 1990-1999, 2000-2009, 2010-2019, and 2020-2022 (up to 22 June 2022) in which the minimum number of co-occurrences was set to 10 in each one of the first four cases while it was set to 5 for the case covering 2020-2022 (up to 22 June 2022). Figure 1 …”

Because of these changes, the following 4 references {Refs. 37-40} were added as suggested by you:

Lulewicz-Sas, A. Corporate social responsibility in the light of management science–bibliometric analysis. Procedia Eng. 2017, 182, 412-417.
Rodrigues, M.; Mendes, L. Mapping of the literature on social responsibility in the mining industry: A systematic literature review. J. Clean. Prod. 2018, 181, 88-101.
Wong, A.K.F.; Köseoglu, M.A.; Kim, S.S. The intellectual structure of corporate social responsibility research in tourism and hospitality: A citation/co-citation analysis. J. Hosp. Tour. Manag. 2021, 49, 270-284.
Arrigo, E.; Di Vaio, A.; Hassan, R.; Palladino, R. Followership behavior and corporate social responsibility disclosure: Analysis and implications for sustainability research. J. Clean. Prod. 2022, 360, 132151.

5^th Comment: The conclusions adequately tie together the other elements of the paper, however in the conclusion the author should mention the limitations of the study (which are many). For example, the methodology adopted have very limitations. The author also should develop suggestions for future research.

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, I added the following sentences to highlight the limitations of the study:

A new reference [Ref. 63] was added:

Heberger, A. E., Christie, C. A., & Alkin, M. C. (2010). A bibliometric analysis of the academic influences of and on evaluation theorists’ published works. American Journal of Evaluation, 31(1), 24-44.

6^th Comment: I hope that my comments and suggestions can help to improve the paper. Thank you for the opportunity to read your article. I wish all the best to the author!

My response: Thanks so much for your valuable and constructive comments. I sincerely hope that I have properly addressed them in this round of revision.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper addresses quite an interesting and timely topic (“A Bibliometric Analysis of World Issues – Social, Political, Economic, and Environmental Dimensions”) – especially in light of the global (dynamic and complex) challenges of nowadays. It is of particular interest to researches (in global issues – phenomena and processes) and policy makers (at different levels and intervention areas), but also to practitioners/managers (aiming to dynamically fit their organization to the environment). While investigating “trend and emerging topics of world (or global) issues using a bibliometric approach”, the paper identifies “two major streams of research” and several emerging topics.

The Introduction briefly places the study in a broad context and highlights why it is important. Recommendations (according to Instructions for Authors, on the Journal website): to clearly define the purpose of the work and its significance (maybe against some hypotheses/propositions); to briefly review the current state of the research field; to highlight the main conclusions of the paper.

The Materials and Methods section justifies the choice for the SCOPUS database and provides details on the query, the number and type of resulted documents, and the export of the bibliometric information. Then, it mentions the features for bibliometric study SCOPUS offers, the types of conducted analyses, timespans, and illustrates the process of the study. Recommendations: (a) in general, considering the nature of the study: to follow more closely the methodology of the bibliometric analysis (see, for instance, Donthu, N., Kumar, S., Mukherjee, D., Pandey, N., & Lim, W. M. (2021). How to conduct a bibliometric analysis: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research, 133, 285-296.); (b) in particular: beside the topic, to define the aims and scope of the bibliometric study; to provide more details on the design of the study (e.g., the techniques for bibliometric analysis used – in relation to the research’s aims and scope; explaining the query made: why ”issues” and not ”issue*” or challenge* / conflict* / problem* / gap* - terms that have been mentioned in Introduction; the types of bibliometric information exported from SCOPUS and the reasons for selecting them; the data cleaning process); to introduce the software used (including its version).

The Results section provides a concise and structured description of the results. Recommendations: to introduce a dedicated section (3.1.) for the results built on SCOPUS Analyze search results tool; to specify (and justify) the unit of analysis (all keywords, author keywords, or indexed keywords) chosen for the Co-occurrence of keywords analysis and the minimum cluster size set for each one of the analyses performed.

The Discussion section interprets the results. If considering that no hypotheses and/or aims were previously set, the interpretation rather details the results. The Recommendations for future research do not come from some limitations of the study (as they are not identified), while the Conclusions section resumes some of the results. Recommendation: to develop the Discussion (and Conclusions) section(s), by providing more insights on the paper’s contributions (against existing literature and proposed aim) and potential impact.

Author Response

1^st Comment: The paper addresses quite an interesting and timely topic (“A Bibliometric Analysis of World Issues – Social, Political, Economic, and Environmental Dimensions”) – especially in light of the global (dynamic and complex) challenges of nowadays. It is of particular interest to researches (in global issues – phenomena and processes) and policy makers (at different levels and intervention areas), but also to practitioners/managers (aiming to dynamically fit their organization to the environment). While investigating “trend and emerging topics of world (or global) issues using a bibliometric approach”, the paper identifies “two major streams of research” and several emerging topics.

My response: Thanks so much for your comment.

2^nd Comment: The Introduction briefly places the study in a broad context and highlights why it is important. Recommendations (according to Instructions for Authors, on the Journal website): to clearly define the purpose of the work and its significance (maybe against some hypotheses/propositions); to briefly review the current state of the research field; to highlight the main conclusions of the paper.

My response: Thanks very much for your suggestion. In the revised manuscript, the second paragraph of Introduction was rewritten to highlight the motivation of the study, its significance, and main conclusions as:

3^rd Comment: The Materials and Methods section justifies the choice for the SCOPUS database and provides details on the query, the number and type of resulted documents, and the export of the bibliometric information. Then, it mentions the features for bibliometric study SCOPUS offers, the types of conducted analyses, timespans, and illustrates the process of the study. Recommendations: (a) in general, considering the nature of the study: to follow more closely the methodology of the bibliometric analysis (see, for instance, Donthu, N., Kumar, S., Mukherjee, D., Pandey, N., & Lim, W. M. (2021). How to conduct a bibliometric analysis: An overview and guidelines. Journal of Business Research, 133, 285-296.); (b) in particular: beside the topic, to define the aims and scope of the bibliometric study; to provide more details on the design of the study (e.g., the techniques for bibliometric analysis used – in relation to the research’s aims and scope; explaining the query made: why ”issues” and not ”issue*” or challenge* / conflict* / problem* / gap* - terms that have been mentioned in Introduction; the types of bibliometric information exported from SCOPUS and the reasons for selecting them; the data cleaning process); to introduce the software used (including its version).

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. In the revised manuscript, I added a new section of Literature Review and highlighted what Donthu et al. (2021) has recommended as:

“… A bibliometric analysis refers to the application of quantitative techniques (statistical analysis, citation and co-citation analyses, etc.) on bibliometric data [34]. Although bibliometric methodologies are not new, the proliferation of bibliometric analyses and studies is rather recent due to the advancement and availability of academic indexing databases such as Web of Science, Scopus and Dimensions, and bibliometric software such as VOSviewer, Gephi and Leximancer [34]. Donthu et al. [34] compared bibliometric analysis with meta-analysis and systematic literature review. They highlighted that bibliometric analysis aims to summarize large quantities of bibliometric data and to reveal some underlying structures and emerging trends of a research topic/field. A bibliometric analysis is particularly useful when the scope is broad (such as world/global issues) and the dataset is too large for manual review (likely in the present study that the identified articles can be over 1000). Among academic indexing databases, Web of Science and Scopus are the two most popular multidisciplinary databases for bibliometric analysis…”

In Materials and Methods, I added some more details as suggested by you:

The following reference [Ref. 34] was added:

Donthu, N.; Kumar, S.; Mukherjee, D.; Pandey, N.; Lim, W.M. How to conduct a bibliometric analysis: An overview and guidelines. J. Bus. Res. 2021, 133, 285-296.

4^th Comment: The Results section provides a concise and structured description of the results. Recommendations: to introduce a dedicated section (3.1.) for the results built on SCOPUS Analyze search results tool; to specify (and justify) the unit of analysis (all keywords, author keywords, or indexed keywords) chosen for the Co-occurrence of keywords analysis and the minimum cluster size set for each one of the analyses performed.

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, the revised manuscript has a new section “4.1 Data analysis using Scopus tools. I also highlighted “Co-occurrence of keywords analysis (i.e. all keywords) was carried out using VOSviewer…” in the manuscript. For clusters/clustering, I set the number of occurrences (as shown in Figures 5, 6, and 7) and included all clusters identified by VOSviewer (as shown in those figures).

5^th Comment: The Discussion section interprets the results. If considering that no hypotheses and/or aims were previously set, the interpretation rather details the results. The Recommendations for future research do not come from some limitations of the study (as they are not identified), while the Conclusions section resumes some of the results. Recommendation: to develop the Discussion (and Conclusions) section(s), by providing more insights on the paper’s contributions (against existing literature and proposed aim) and potential impact.

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. I understand that limitations of the study were missing. In the revised manuscript, I added a new paragraph (about the limitations) in Conclusions and thus some more implications/suggestions for future research can be given as:

“ Like any cross-sectional analysis using secondary data, the study has some limitations. First, the bibliometric data were extracted and downloaded from Scopus on 22 June 2022. As there are over 3.2 million academic publications indexed by Scopus every year i.e. >8,700 publications/day in recent years [56] while the world/global issues will continue to attract researchers from a wide range of disciplines, it is expected that new trends and new hot topics will emerge in the near future. Researchers can carry out a new round of bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review in future. Second, micro-level bibliometric data may include some errors such as inconsistencies in authors’ last names and initials, authors’ affiliations, books’ editions and years, and inconsistencies due to changes to journal names [63]. Yet, the data were checked and no obvious error was found. Third, a bibliometric analysis using a different database will produce different results. Future research can be carried a similar bibliometric analysis using Web of Science, Dimensions, etc. to re-evaluate trends and hot topics of the world/global issues primarily based on journal articles.

Dear Reviewer 3: Thanks so much for your valuable comments. I sincerely hope that I have addressed them properly in this round of revision.

Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript proposes an exciting topic for the academic world. The effort made is evident, but it requires very profound adjustments, both in theory presented, as well as in the methodology and the results.

The main problem has to do with the search and its terms. The terms "Social", "Political", "Economic", and "Environmental" are very general. These represent huge dimensions because they cut across several academic disciplines. Studying them together makes it very complex. When forcing a combination of this type and its generality, errors are observed in the results obtained (see table 6) or when generating the search in Scopus and reading the titles or abstracts of the first results. They do not present the analysis offered in the title.

In bibliometrics, it is advisable to address specific terms and groups specific to the study area and no more than three groups combined. I recommend you to venture into this subject with something much more precise and that the results are aligned with the theory presented.

Additionally, it can be indicated:

1) In general terms, you should revise your introduction. It provides little information for intense and broad topics such as "Social", "Political", "Economic" and "Environmental" or "World Issues". Moreover, it shows few references and a lot of text, which is incompatible with a prestigious journal.

2) You must state the general aim you present in your study. Use the word "aim".

3) You must indicate the importance of the study you present to the academy. What is the contribution to the academy; I want to be a bit clearer. What is so interesting about this topic that other readers (around the world) would like to read it? and even cite it?

4) The usual materials and methods when presenting a bibliometric study requires a systematic protocol that allows the study to be reproducible and therefore reliable. This is essential to make your study sound. You must identify what your inclusion and exclusion arguments were to make this study systematic and repeatable. The process should be transparent, mandatory for bibliometric studies, and if possible, include a diagram explaining the process.

5) It is necessary to explain with references why it is essential to carry out a bibliometric study. In other words, what does this type of study provide me with when the classic thing is to carry out a literature review. In addition, you should explain what bibliometrics is.

6) Why do you use Scopus if there are other important databases such as Web of Science, Dimensions, among others. Again, use arguments and references to defend your idea.

7) You must indicate when the records were downloaded from the database.

8) The methodology does not include data cleaning. Can you indicate this?

9) You use VOSviewer but do not indicate this in the methodology section. Why do you use this software? Defend your argument, and in what other significant studies has this software been used? Clearly, you also use Excel. Explain its usefulness.

10) The analyses are weak and do not reflect the research that a bibliometric study should present. The manuscript is a series of repetitions of information presented in the tables and figures that give the impression of a school report and not a scientific article. In addition, the methodological structure shown is poor, unclear and not reproducible, so it does not meet the basic characteristics of a bibliometric study.

11) The discussion section lives up to its name because it discusses the results found. Here you should cross-reference the figures and tables presented as generalisations of your study that should be compared with the theory to determine whether there are aspects that can be used to affirm the existing theory or to present new findings. Unfortunately, you present information that is not found in the analyses or is completely irrelevant.

12) Conclusions should be brief and highlight essential findings, limitations or future lines of research.

Author Response

1^st Comment: The manuscript proposes an exciting topic for the academic world. The effort made is evident, but it requires very profound adjustments, both in theory presented, as well as in the methodology and the results.

My response: Thanks so much for your comment. The manuscript has been rewritten as suggested by you.

2^nd Comment: The main problem has to do with the search and its terms. The terms "Social", "Political", "Economic", and "Environmental" are very general. These represent huge dimensions because they cut across several academic disciplines. Studying them together makes it very complex. When forcing a combination of this type and its generality, errors are observed in the results obtained (see table 6) or when generating the search in Scopus and reading the titles or abstracts of the first results. They do not present the analysis offered in the title.

My response: Yes, you are right. The terms “social”, “political”, “economic”, and “environmental” are very general and cut across several academic disciplines (as shown in Tables 4-6). Yet, this bibliometric analysis offers valuable insights by checking co-occurrence of keywords (Figure 5) as a whole or how co-occurrence of keywords changes as a function of decade (Figure 6(a)-(d)).

3^rd Comment: In bibliometric, it is advisable to address specific terms and groups specific to the study area and no more than three groups combined. I recommend you to venture into this subject with something much more precise and that the results are aligned with the theory presented.

My response: Thanks for your comment. In the revised manuscript, I explained why a bibliometric analysis (but not meta-analysis or systematic literature review i.e. another two types of bibliometric studies) is useful for a broad research topic such as world (or global) issues as:

“… Donthu et al. [34] compared bibliometric analysis with meta-analysis and systematic literature review. They highlighted that bibliometric analysis aims to summarize large quantities of bibliometric data and to reveal some underlying structures and emerging trends of a research topic/field. A bibliometric analysis is particularly useful when the scope is broad (such as world/global issues) and the dataset is too large for manual review (likely in the present study that the identified articles can be over 1000)…”

The new reference [Ref. 34] is:

Donthu, N.; Kumar, S.; Mukherjee, D.; Pandey, N.; Lim, W.M. How to conduct a bibliometric analysis: An overview and guidelines. J. Bus. Res. 2021, 133, 285-296.

4^th Comment: In general terms, you should revise your introduction. It provides little information for intense and broad topics such as "Social", "Political", "Economic" and "Environmental" or "World Issues". Moreover, it shows few references and a lot of text, which is incompatible with a prestigious journal.

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, I rewrote significantly the second paragraph of Introduction and added a new section 2 – Literature Review…

5^th Comment: You must state the general aim you present in your study. Use the word "aim".

My response: As suggested by you, I rewrote some sentences in the second paragraph of Introduction as:

“…More specifically, this study aims at answering the following research questions: (1) What is the trend of world (or global) issues-related research? (2) Who are the most prolific authors? (3) Which are the most productive institutions and countries? (4) Which funding bodies are the most supportive ones for and which subject areas are associated with this type of multidisciplinary research? (5) Which articles are the most influential ones based on the number of citations? (6) What are hot topics and emerging topics of world (or glob-al) issues using cluster analyses. Thus, the study identified the relevant literature on world (or global) issues by utilizing world (or global), social, political, economic, environmental, and issues in their keywords from an academic database – Scopus [29,30]. It focused on journal, review, and conference articles as well as books and book chapters. The data were analyzed by Scopus bibliometric tools and a popular bibliometric visualization tool – VOSviewer for generating clusters of keywords [31,32]. The findings of the study…”

6^th Comment: You must indicate the importance of the study you present to the academy. What is the contribution to the academy; I want to be a bit clearer. What is so interesting about this topic that other readers (around the world) would like to read it? and even cite it?

My response: As suggested by you, I clarified that in the second paragraph of Introduction as:

7^th Comment: The usual materials and methods when presenting a bibliometric study requires a systematic protocol that allows the study to be reproducible and therefore reliable. This is essential to make your study sound. You must identify what your inclusion and exclusion arguments were to make this study systematic and repeatable. The process should be transparent, mandatory for bibliometric studies, and if possible, include a diagram explaining the process.

My response: Thanks so much for your comment. I basically followed the procedure outline by Donthu et al. [34]. In the revised manuscript, I clarified that:

“…this study used it as the source of bibliometric data. More specifically, documents were searched in Scopus using [(“world” OR “global”) AND “social” AND “political” AND “economic” AND “environmental” AND “issues”] within [Article title, Abstract, Key-words] on 22 June 2022. In Scopus term, the search was expressed as [((TI-TLE-ABS-KEY(social) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY(political) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY(economic) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (environmental) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY(issues))) AND (TI-TLE-ABS-KEY(world) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY(global))]. This search resulted in 1233 documents. Among them, 1201 were journal articles (644), book chapters (202), books (148), conference papers (106), and review articles (101). Editorials (24), notes (4), short surveys (2), abstract report (1), and erratum (1) were excluded. Bibliometric information of the 1201 selected documents were exported and downloaded as a csv file on 22 June 2022. The selected documents were checked for duplicates and erroneous items. No duplicate and error was identified….”

Additionally, a new Figure 1 shows all the stages used more clearly.

8^th Comment: It is necessary to explain with references why it is essential to carry out a bibliometric study. In other words, what does this type of study provide me with when the classic thing is to carry out a literature review. In addition, you should explain what bibliometrics is.

My response: Thanks so much for your comment. In the revised manuscript, the second paragraph of Literature Review… stated that:

9^th Comment: Why do you use Scopus if there are other important databases such as Web of Science, Dimensions, among others. Again, use arguments and references to defend your idea.

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. In the revised manuscript, the second paragraph of Literature Review stated that:

“…Among academic indexing databases, Web of Science and Scopus are the two most popular multidisciplinary databases for bibliometric analysis [29,30]. Although Web of Science has stringent criteria for journal inclusion and is the most authoritative bibliometric source for quality publications, its core collection does not cover enough new and less-established open access journals in emergent disciplines and conference proceedings. Currently, Web of Science’s core collection covers 21100 journals in 254 disciplines, with about 74.8 million total records [35]. On the other hand, Elsevier launched Scopus in 2004. Initially, Scopus covered around 14000 journals from 4000 publishers, with about 27 mil-lion abstract and citation records. Scopus has expended its coverage over the past two decades. As at January 2020, Scopus covered over 23000 journals, 852 book series, and papers from over 120000 international conferences. It has over 77.8 million records [36]. In fact, bibliometric analyses have been carried out in the fields of environmental science [16-20,22-27] and social responsibility [37-40]. Many of these bibliometric analyses used Scopus as the source of data and VOSviewer as a key visualization tool.”

As suggested by you, many new references such as [22-27] and [37-40] were added.

10^th Comment: You must indicate when the records were downloaded from the database.

My response: Thanks for your comment. In the first paragraph of Materials and Methods, I indicated more clearly when the data were collected and downloaded as:

“…Bibliometric information of the 1201 selected documents were exported and downloaded as a csv file on 22 June 2022….

11^th Comment: The methodology does not include data cleaning. Can you indicate this?

My response: Yes, I checked the data. In the first paragraph of Materials and Methods, I indicated more clearly as:

12^th Comment: You use VOSviewer but do not indicate this in the methodology section. Why do you use this software? Defend your argument, and in what other significant studies has this software been used? Clearly, you also use Excel. Explain its usefulness.

My response: Thanks for your comment. I clarified it more clearly in the third paragraph of Materials and Methods as:

“ The csv file was imported to VOSviewer (version 1.6.11). After that, co-authorship analysis, citation analysis, co-citation analysis, and co-occurrence of keywords analysis were conducted to reveal associations between key researchers, what sources researchers normally cited, and key topics of world (or global) issues, similar to other bibliometric studies in the field of environmental science [16-18,20,22,24,26] and social responsibility [37-40]. The default minimum number of co-occurrences in VOSviewer was 5. For the full set of identified documents, the minimum number of co-occurrences was set to 20 and all keywords including author keywords and index keywords were used in keyword co-occurrence analysis. Additionally, co-occurrence of keywords analysis was conducted for the identified publications during the periods 1980-1989, 1990-1999, 2000-2009, 2010-2019, and 2020-2022 (up to 22 June 2022) in which the minimum number of co-occurrences was set to 10 in each one of the first four cases while it was set to 5 for the case covering 2020-2022 (up to 22 June 2022). Figure 1 ….”

13^th Comment: The analyses are weak and do not reflect the research that a bibliometric study should present. The manuscript is a series of repetitions of information presented in the tables and figures that give the impression of a school report and not a scientific article. In addition, the methodological structure shown is poor, unclear and not reproducible, so it does not meet the basic characteristics of a bibliometric study.

My response: Thanks for your comment. Some changes were made in Results.

14^th Comment: The discussion section lives up to its name because it discusses the results found. Here you should cross-reference the figures and tables presented as generalisations of your study that should be compared with the theory to determine whether there are aspects that can be used to affirm the existing theory or to present new findings. Unfortunately, you present information that is not found in the analyses or is completely irrelevant.

My comment: Thanks for your comment. I checked my discussion more thoroughly. Some changes were made.

15^th Comment: Conclusions should be brief and highlight essential findings, limitations or future lines of research.

My response: As suggested by you, I added the following paragraph to highlight the limitations of the study (and some future lines of research) in the section of Conclusion:

A new reference [Ref. 63] was added:

Heberger, A.E.; Christie, C.A.; Alkin, M.C. A bibliometric analysis of the academic influences of and on evaluation theorists’ published works. Am. J. Eval. 2010, 31(1), 24-44.

Dear Reviewer 4: Thanks so much for your valuable comments. I sincerely hope that I have addressed them properly in this round of revision.

Reviewer 5 Report

This is an interesting paper and I enjoyed reading it. However, there are essential weaknesses that need to be addressed.

1) The introductory/opening section should communicate a little clearer the literature gaps, as well as the study's aims & objectives in order to facilitate the flow of the study.

2) Overall, there are good arguments and well-researched points made in this paper, but I feel that author needs to take ´Theoretical development and research hypothesis. The paper is interesting, but there is a lack of development in the theoretical argument and its link with the hypotheses.

It is important to read and cite (where appropriate) current literature, providing a substantial number of citations to support your work. It is also important to read (and, if relevant, cite) papers that have already been published in de journal world

This will help to show the consistency of your research with the debate taking place in the journal.

The author(s) need to invest more effort in developing the linkage between recent theory and hypotheses.

Additional references to recent & relevant empirical studies could increase the quality of the research paper and provide a much clearer message to the reader - these may help you build your discussion which needs to be extended. Add the following to your reference list:

Skare, M., & Soriano, D. R. (2021). How globalization is changing digital technology adoption: An international perspective. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 6(4), 222-233.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jik.2021.04.001

Tica, J., Globan, T., & Arčabić, V. (2021). Managing the impact of globalization and technology on inequality. Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 1-26.

https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2021.1952466

Chopra, M., Singh, S. K., Gupta, A., Aggarwal, K., Gupta, B. B., & Colace, F. (2022). Analysis & prognosis of sustainable development goals using big data-based approach during COVID-19 pandemic. Sustainable Technology and Entrepreneurship, 1(2), 100012.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stae.2022.100012

Costa-Climent, R., Haftor, D., & Eriksson, J. (2021). How machine learning

activates data network effects in business models: Theory advancement

through an industrial case of promoting ecological sustainability. Journal of

Business Research.

https://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S0148-2963(21)00254-X

Some of the statements you make are entirely obvious and should be supported in the text by these specific references.

3) The question could be asked of whether this study is representative of other sectors in your country or in the world. Please explain this potential applicability to a general context.

4) The statistical treatment is acceptable.

5) At the end of the ´Conclusion´ section, the author should include clear statements as to where research should now go – what are the issues requiring further research and investigation? The author has to suggest challenges and possible new directions for future work. Perhaps: if the results obtained are only studied in the short term, which is then an important bias in analysing the influence further than three years in time and in their influence in the future.

6) Carefully check the references, so as to make sure they are all complete and follow the Guidelines to Authors.

7) Finally, when you submit the corrected version, please do check thoroughly, in order to avoid grammar, syntax or structure/presentation flaws. Make sure you retain a formal/academic-specific style of presenting your work throughout the text - (if necessary) please seek for professional English proofreading services or ask a native English-speaking colleague of yours in order to refine and improve the English in your paper.

8) The paper needs to be revised by an English native speaker. Some expressions need to be revised and given a fresh approach by an experienced native proof-reader.

Thank you for the opportunity to read the paper.

Author Response

General comment: This is an interesting paper and I enjoyed reading it. However, there are essential weaknesses that need to be addressed.

My response: Thanks very much for your time and effort to review the manuscript. I studied your comments thoroughly and revised the manuscript accordingly. I sincerely hope that I have addressed your concerns appropriately in this revision.

1^st Comment: The introductory/opening section should communicate a little clearer the literature gaps, as well as the study's aims & objectives in order to facilitate the flow of the study.

My response: Thanks so much for your comment. I revised the second paragraph slightly to highlight the specific approach I used “…using bibliometric techniques” and the study’s aims more clearly as:

2^nd Comment: Overall, there are good arguments and well-researched points made in this paper, but I feel that author needs to take ´Theoretical development and research hypothesis. The paper is interesting, but there is a lack of development in the theoretical argument and its link with the hypotheses. It is important to read and cite (where appropriate) current literature, providing a substantial number of citations to support your work. It is also important to read (and, if relevant, cite) papers that have already been published in de journal world This will help to show the consistency of your research with the debate taking place in the journal. The author(s) need to invest more effort in developing the linkage between recent theory and hypotheses. Additional references to recent & relevant empirical studies could increase the quality of the research paper and provide a much clearer message to the reader - these may help you build your discussion which needs to be extended. Add the following to your reference list:

Skare, M., & Soriano, D. R. (2021). How globalization is changing digital technology adoption: An international perspective. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 6(4), 222-233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jik.2021.04.001
Tica, J., Globan, T., & Arčabić, V. (2021). Managing the impact of globalization and technology on inequality. Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2021.1952466
Chopra, M., Singh, S. K., Gupta, A., Aggarwal, K., Gupta, B. B., & Colace, F. (2022). Analysis & prognosis of sustainable development goals using big data-based approach during COVID-19 pandemic. Sustainable Technology and Entrepreneurship, 1(2), 100012.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stae.2022.100012
Costa-Climent, R., Haftor, D., & Eriksson, J. (2021). How machine learning activates data network effects in business models: Theory advancement through an industrial case of promoting ecological sustainability. Journal of Business Research. https://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S0148-2963(21)00254-X

Some of the statements you make are entirely obvious and should be supported in the text by these specific references.

My response: Thanks very much for your comments. I read through the four articles suggested by you. I found them to be very informative and useful. In the revised manuscript, they were cited and added as [Refs. 9,10,68,69]:

Skare, M.; Soriano, D.R. How globalization is changing digital technology adoption: An international perspective. J. Innov. Knowl. 2021, 6(4), 222-233.
Tica, J.; Globan, T.; Arčabić, V. Managing the impact of globalization and technology on inequality. Econ. Res.-Ekon. Istraž. 2022, 35(1), 1035-1060.
Chopra, M.; Singh, S.K.; Gupta, A.; Aggarwal, K.; Gupta, B.B.; Colace, F. Analysis & prognosis of sustainable development goals using big data-based approach during COVID-19 pandemic. Sustain. Technol. Entrep. 2022, 1(2), 100012.
Costa-Climent, R.; Haftor, D.; Eriksson, J. How machine learning activates data network effects in business models: Theory advancement through an industrial case of promoting ecological sustainability. J. Bus. Res. 2021, 131, 196-205.

Additionally, I also found two recent articles published in World to be extremely useful and relevant to my work. As suggested by you, I added them to my references as [Refs. 66,67]:

Blum, B.; Neumärker, B.K.J. Lessons from globalization and the COVID-19 pandemic for economic, environmental and social Policy. World 2021, 2(2), 308-333.
Kish, K.; Zywert, K.; Hensher, M.; Davy, B.J.; Quilley, S. Socioecological system transformation: Lessons from COVID-19. World 2021, 2(1), 15-31.

3^rd Comment: The question could be asked of whether this study is representative of other sectors in your country or in the world. Please explain this potential applicability to a general context.

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. The study’s findings are representative and they summarized what researchers have investigated about world (or global) issues in the few decades (as the strengths of a bibliometric analysis are to summarize the past researches and to identify the trend and emerging topics). In the revised manuscript, I highlighted this point and recommend what future research can be carried out as (in Section 5.1):

“… Although the study provides a general overview of world (or global) issues-related research in the past few decades, future research can use the same set (or slightly different sets) of search terms to repeat the study because search results on world (or global) issues would change at a different time, …”

4^th Comment: The statistical treatment is acceptable.

My response: Thanks so much for your comment.

5^th Comment: At the end of the ´Conclusion´ section, the author should include clear statements as to where research should now go – what are the issues requiring further research and investigation? The author has to suggest challenges and possible new directions for future work. Perhaps: if the results obtained are only studied in the short term, which is then an important bias in analysing the influence further than three years in time and in their influence in the future.

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. In the revised manuscript, I extended the section of Conclusions as:

“…In sum, the study contributes to the current body of knowledge by unveiling the trend, emerging topics, and multidisciplinary nature of world (or global) issues. Furthermore, it is suggested that world (or global) issues should be addressed by multidisciplinary and/or cross-disciplinary approaches, implying that researchers should expand their focus beyond traditional academic boundaries and work with fellow researchers from a diverse range of disciplines. It is particularly true that social, political, economic, and environ-mental interests from different stakeholders/groups cannot be easily reconciled.

Like any cross-sectional analysis using secondary data, the study has some limitations. First, the bibliometric data were extracted and downloaded from Scopus on 22 June 2022. As there are over 3.2 million academic publications indexed by Scopus every year i.e. >8,700 publications/day in recent years [59] while the world/global issues will continue to attract researchers from a wide range of disciplines, it is expected that new trends and new hot topics will emerge in the near future. Researchers can carry out a new round of bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review in future. Second, …. Third, a bibliometric analysis using a different database will produce different results. Future research can be carried a similar bibliometric analysis using Web of Science, Dimensions, etc. to re-evaluate trends and hot topics of the world/global issues primarily based on journal articles.”

6^th Comment: Carefully check the references, so as to make sure they are all complete and follow the Guidelines to Authors.

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. I checked all references carefully. They are all complete and formatted according to authors’ guidelines of “World” – the journal.

7^th Comment: Finally, when you submit the corrected version, please do check thoroughly, in order to avoid grammar, syntax or structure/presentation flaws. Make sure you retain a formal/academic-specific style of presenting your work throughout the text - (if necessary) please seek for professional English proofreading services or ask a native English-speaking colleague of yours in order to refine and improve the English in your paper.

My response: The revised manuscript has been checked thoroughly.

8^th Comment: The paper needs to be revised by an English native speaker. Some expressions need to be revised and given a fresh approach by an experienced native proof-reader.

My response: Thanks for your comment. The revised manuscript has been checked thoroughly (some errors were found and corrected).

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript has been substantially worked on and developed, compared to the original version.

Improvements have been made (against recommendations) – particularly as concern the Introduction and the Literature review sections – and details/clarifications were provided by the Author – mainly as regards the Materials & Methods and Conclusions sections.

However, some inconsistencies/overlooked issues remain, preventing the paper from reaching its full potential:

· ”a systematic approach to review peer-reviewed literature on world (or global) issues” is not limited to ”bibliometric analysis”, as the paper suggests [rows 45-49];

· given the scope of the paper [rows 132-133], the two research fields in [rows 125-126] (also used further on in the paper – rows [153-154]) only partially supports the provided assessment;

· most probably, not only “Bibliographical information” was exported from SCOPUS [row 140], but also Citation information, Abstract keywords, and Other information (“Include references” for sure) – to enable the analysis that was further made;

· as regards the bibliometric analysis, no information was provided on the following: the minimum cluster size (was it 1 – by default, or more?); if the data cleaning process involved a Thesaurus or not;

· the paper’s contributions (against existing literature and proposed aim) and potential impact could be emphasized more.

Author Response

1^st Comment: The manuscript has been substantially worked on and developed, compared to the original version. Improvements have been made (against recommendations) – particularly as concern the Introduction and the Literature review sections – and details/clarifications were provided by the Author – mainly as regards the Materials & Methods and Conclusions sections.

My response: Thanks so much for your comments.

2^nd Comment: However, some inconsistencies/overlooked issues remain, preventing the paper from reaching its full potential:

i. “a systematic approach to review peer-reviewed literature on world (or global) issues” is not limited to “bibliometric analysis”, as the paper suggests [rows 45-49];

ii. given the scope of the paper [rows 132-133], the two research fields in [rows 125-126] (also used further on in the paper – rows [153-154]) only partially supports the provided assessment;

iii. most probably, not only “Bibliographical information” was exported from SCOPUS [row 140], but also Citation information, Abstract keywords, and Other information (“Include references” for sure) – to enable the analysis that was further made;

iv. as regards the bibliometric analysis, no information was provided on the following: the minimum cluster size (was it 1 – by default, or more?); if the data cleaning process involved a Thesaurus or not;

v. the paper’s contributions (against existing literature and proposed aim) and potential impact could be emphasized more.

My responses: Thanks so much for your comments and suggestions.

For point (i), I rewrote the sentence as:

“…it is important to use a systematic approach to review peer-reviewed literature on world (or global) issues using bibliometric techniques. Doing so will help us identify the trend of research on world (or global) issues, hot topics in the past, and emerging topics in recent years. A literature search using…” [note: “…using bibliometric techniques” were added to the text in order to highlight the study’s focus.]

For point (ii), I should explain why the study was carried out more clearly at the end of Section 2 as:

“…. Nevertheless, there is scant literature using bibliometric analysis to understand the trend and emerging topics of world (or global) issues that will not only cut across the fields of environmental science and social responsibility, but also social sciences, economic and finance, earth and agricultural sciences, etc.”

For point (iii), thanks so much for your comment. As suggested by you, I clarified the data I downloaded from Scopus as:

“…Bibliographical information, citation information, abstract and keywords, funding details, and other information including references of the 1201 selected documents were exported and downloaded as a csv file…”

For point (iv), I clarified that

“…. For the full set of identified documents, the minimum number of co-occurrences was set to 20 and all keywords including author keywords and index keywords were used in keyword co-occurrence analysis. The minimum cluster size was set to 10. Additionally, co-occurrence of keywords analysis was conducted for the identified publications during the periods 1980-1989, 1990-1999, 2000-2009, 2010-2019, and 2020-2022 (up to 22 June 2022) in which the minimum number of co-occurrences was set to 10 in each one of the first four cases while it was set to 5 for the case covering 2020-2022 (up to 22 June 2022). Additionally, the minimum cluster size was set to 3 in these cases.…”

As I reported in Section 3, “…The selected documents were checked for duplicates and erroneous items….” (manually and took me more than two days to do so). I did not use a Thesaurus.

For point (v), I added the following sentences (as suggested by you) in Conclusions:

“…In sum, the study contributes to the current body of knowledge by unveiling the trend, emerging topics, and multidisciplinary nature of world (or global) issues. Furthermore, it is suggested that world (or global) issues should be addressed by multi-disciplinary and/or cross-disciplinary approaches, implying that researchers should expand their focus beyond traditional academic boundaries and work with fellow researchers from a diverse range of disciplines. It is particularly true that social, political, economic, and environmental interests from different stakeholders/groups cannot be easily reconciled and have to be tackled holistically/multi-dimensionally.”

Dear Reviewer 3: Thanks so much for helping me continuously improve the quality of manuscript.

Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript shows an exciting topic for the scientific world. However, it has a serious error in using keywords to perform the search that makes the manuscript questionable. I believe that the authors should follow the recommendations and not choose which one to do. I have attached some recommendations:

11. I consider this to be one of the most important. Although the authors state the search equation (lines 134 - 137), it cannot be reproduced. I have tried to perform several related searches and vary the parenthesis to activate the search in Scopus, which was not possible. In addition, there is an error in the equation that does not allow observation of the subject's records; therefore, the study is not transparent and cannot be repeated.

22. Another problem is the search and its terms. The terms "Social", "Political", "Economic", and "Environmental" are very general. These represent vast dimensions because they cut across several academic disciplines. Therefore, when obtaining a database, it is possible that content errors may appear, because when reviewing the title, keywords and abstract, these terms may appear. However, when reading the record, one realises they are unrelated to the proposed topic. In table 6, errors are observed in the results obtained. In other words, it does not comply with the title offered. Perhaps it would have been interesting to address one of the terms and focus it on a discipline or area of specialisation.

33. The analyses are weak and do not reflect the content that a bibliometric study should present. The manuscript is a series of repetitions of information presented in the tables and figures that give the impression of a school report and not a scientific article. In addition, the structure and methodology presented are poor, unclear and not reproducible. The manuscript does not meet the basic characteristics of a bibliometric study. I attach some examples of bibliometric studies that present detailed information on the analyses, which may be useful for you to improve the manuscript. 10.3390/ijerph19138156 or 10.3390/su10041158.

Author Response

1^st Comment: The manuscript shows an exciting topic for the scientific world. However, it has a serious error in using keywords to perform the search that makes the manuscript questionable. I believe that the authors should follow the recommendations and not choose which one to do. I have attached some recommendations.

My response: Thanks so much for your time and effort to review my manuscript. I studied your comments thoroughly and revised the manuscript accordingly. I sincerely hope that I have addressed all the comments properly in this round of revision.

2^nd Comment: I consider this to be one of the most important. Although the authors state the search equation (lines 134 - 137), it cannot be reproduced. I have tried to perform several related searches and vary the parenthesis to activate the search in Scopus, which was not possible. In addition, there is an error in the equation that does not allow observation of the subject's records; therefore, the study is not transparent and cannot be repeated.

My response: Please accept my deepest apology for not providing the correct search terms in my previous versions of manuscript. The city I stayed had an outbreak of Omicron variant of Covid-19 and the government imposed partial lockdown for a few weeks, prohibiting me to access computer files in my office at the University during the last two weeks of July. Fortunately, the outbreak was over and I opened the “saved searches” records of my University’s Scopus account, I found that I made some typing mistakes and the search should be “…[TITLE-ABS-KEY (social) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (political) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (economic) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (environmental) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (issues) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (“world” OR “global”)].”

I checked this search and it worked perfectly fine in Scopus.

3^rd Comment: Another problem is the search and its terms. The terms "Social", "Political", "Economic", and "Environmental" are very general. These represent vast dimensions because they cut across several academic disciplines. Therefore, when obtaining a database, it is possible that content errors may appear, because when reviewing the title, keywords and abstract, these terms may appear. However, when reading the record, one realises they are unrelated to the proposed topic. In table 6, errors are observed in the results obtained. In other words, it does not comply with the title offered. Perhaps it would have been interesting to address one of the terms and focus it on a discipline or area of specialisation.

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. I agreed that the terms “social”, “political”, “economic”, and “environmental” are general terms and they cover a wide range of academic disciplines. Nevertheless, these terms make “World” (the journal) to be very, very important as “World” stated in its webpage “World is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal on past, present, and future links between economic, political, social, and/or environmental issues,…” [at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/world]. Thus, I sincerely hope that my work can shed some important insights about the past and present of world (or global) issues-related research in the past few decades. Regarding the 10 highly-cited publications identified by this bibliometric study, I extended the description of them further in this round of revision as (Section 4.1):

“ Table 6 shows the top 10 most frequently cited publications. Costello et al.’s [12] article ranked first with 1488 citations. This review article discussed... The fourth highly cited publication was “Anthropological research on hazards and disasters” [50]. Oliver-Smith [50] conducted a thorough review about applied anthropological research on disasters due to natural and technological-induced changes in vulnerable regions i.e. the developing countries. The fifth highly cited publication was “Determinants of voluntary CSR disclosure: Empirical evidence from Germany” in which Gamerschlag et al. reported that CSR disclosures in German companies were affected by the size, shareholder structure, and relationship with stakeholders of the companies [51]. Additionally, profitability was positively associated with environmental disclosures [51].”

and the fourth paragraph in Discussion as:

“ The top three highly cited publications were Costello et al.’s [12] review article, Korten’s [8] book, and Escobar et al.’s [49] review article. They attracted 1488, 966, and 499 citations, respectively. Additionally, the fourth to sixth highly cited publications included review articles by Oliver-Smith [50] and Henchion et al. [52] and an empirical research article by Gamerschlag et al. [51]. The seventh highly cited publication was a book entitled “Sustainable development” by Baker [53] while the eighth and ninth highly cited publications were review articles by Zimmet [54] and Sueyoshi et al. [55]. Thus, review articles and books about world (or global) issues could attract more citations, particularly about health- and food-related issues [12,49,50,52,54], and energy and environment [49,55].”

4^th Comment: The analyses are weak and do not reflect the content that a bibliometric study should present. The manuscript is a series of repetitions of information presented in the tables and figures that give the impression of a school report and not a scientific article. In addition, the structure and methodology presented are poor, unclear and not reproducible. The manuscript does not meet the basic characteristics of a bibliometric study. I attach some examples of bibliometric studies that present detailed information on the analyses, which may be useful for you to improve the manuscript. 10.3390/ijerph19138156 or 10.3390/su10041158.

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, I downloaded the two articles and studied them thoroughly. I found that the first one was very relevant and I cited it in the revised manuscript. I also made changes in my articles after reading your suggested articles [highlighted in green].

The following article [Ref. 58] was added in this round of revision –

Morante-Carballo, F.; Montalván-Burbano, N.; Aguilar-Aguilar, M.; Carrión-Mero, P. A bibliometric analysis of the scientific research on artisanal and small-scale mining. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19, 8156.

Reviewer 5 Report

Thank you so much for your report.

I'm glad to see you follow my suggestions.

Good work and best of luck.

Author Response

General comments: Thank you so much for your report. I'm glad to see you follow my suggestions. Good work and best of luck.

My response: Thanks so much for helping me improve the manuscript.

Another comment: English language and style are fine/minor spell check required.

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, I checked the manuscript thoroughly again. During this round of proofreading, I found twenty minor typing and grammatical errors (including that five figures were wrongly labeled in the previous version of the manuscript). All errors were corrected in the updated manuscript.

Round 3

Reviewer 4 Report

This is an interesting manuscript that suggests a current and attractive topic for the academy. The effort made by presenting an interesting document that has undergone some modifications due to the evaluators' recommendations has allowed us to have a novel and rich document on a complex subject.

I appreciate the authors' patience when considering the vast majority of the recommendations made with quality and professionalism. The methodology and the data set as its analyzes are solid. The conclusions are relevant.

My sincere congratulations to the authors for this important contribution to academia. I consider the article to be publishable.

Only is necessary a correction in:

1) Figure 1, is too small. It should be enlarged.

2) Make sure you don't have cut boards. This looks bad.

3) Remove the borders of figures 3, 4, 5 and 7.

4) Enlarge figure 4 and 7. It is difficult to read the content.

Author Response

General comments: This is an interesting manuscript that suggests a current and attractive topic for the academy. The effort made by presenting an interesting document that has undergone some modifications due to the evaluators' recommendations has allowed us to have a novel and rich document on a complex subject. I appreciate the authors' patience when considering the vast majority of the recommendations made with quality and professionalism. The methodology and the data set as its analyzes are solid. The conclusions are relevant. My sincere congratulations to the authors for this important contribution to academia. I consider the article to be publishable.

My response: Thanks so much for your comments. Please accept my sincere thanks for helping me improve the manuscript.

Other comments: Only is necessary a correction in:

1) Figure 1, is too small. It should be enlarged.

2) Make sure you don't have cut boards. This looks bad.

3) Remove the borders of figures 3, 4, 5 and 7.

4) Enlarge figure 4 and 7. It is difficult to read the content.

My response: Thanks very much for your comment. As suggested by you, I made all necessary corrections in the updated version of the manuscript. The corrections included enlarging Figure 1, removing borders of Figures 3, 4, 5 and 7 (now Figures 4, 5, 6, and 7 because I made a mistake by labelling two figures as Figure 3 in the previous version of the manuscript), and enlarging Figures 4 and 7 (now Figures 5 and 8).

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