Intellectual Capital: A System Thinking Analysis in Revamping the Exchanging Information in University-Industry Research Collaboration

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is devoted to a very important topic for knowledge transfer between the science and the industry, from which both sides should benefit. The paper is written in a clear scientific language. The results a based on the authors own survey, so the methods of mathematical statistics are used. However there are some issues remaining unclear concerning this study.

1. The authors give no idea to the reader what was the content of the questionnaire, referred on line 211. What did each responders evaluated? Their own work, their group, university or the science in Malaysia in general? Which period were they asked to evaluate? A year, a month?
2. The authors say that the responders were 210 of 500 people and they same time they were claimed to be at high positions like professors or top-managers (lines 222-227). The reviewer doubts that 42% of company is the top management.
3. How was the dataset organized for processing with the software? It is quite understandable how to count up the number of conferences and seminars (EI_4), but how to estimate “Exchanging intellectual ideas…“ (EI_3) in a numerical way? Is it a score from 1 to 5 or something like that?
4. The paper lacks intermediate results like histograms of the analyzed variables.
5. Some practical facts are very interesting to the readers. E.g. describe some particular success story of transferring knowledge from a university to an industrial company. On line 217, instead of say “are known to be excellent in research and innovation” give facts: “a total year budget of R&D projects, involving this university is over $....”.
6. It was mentioned above that authors use appropriate scientific style in their paper. However that does not apply to the conclusion. It should be rewritten. Conclusion is for the summary of what is written in the paper, but for not self-advertising.
7. I do not know who made corrections in color in the manuscripts but the authors really should follow them.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Greetings

Thank you so much for your valuable comments, i have tried my best to address all the comments faithfully. Thanks again

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper gave a comprehensive review of the University-Industry Research Collaboration and the behind-the-scenes factors that drive its implementation and significant influence on sustainable economics. The paper was well organized, I recommend a minor acceptance. Don’t over-use abbreviations, which reduces the readability making the paper much hard to understand.  

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Greetings

Thank you so much for your valuable comments, i have tried my best to address all the comments faithfully. Thanks again

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Please find my observations below.

The manuscript needs professional English proofreading in order to improve message delivery and eliminate language shortcomings.

Lines 89-92: When presenting the structure of the paper, use either the present tense or the past tense for consistency reasons, not both in the same paragraph.

Page 3: You have a one-page paragraph, please divide it in smaller units.

Format all captions of figure in the same manner, either all words with the first letter in uppercase or not.

Include the questionnaire in the appendix for replicability concerns. Moreover, this way readers will better understand your study.

Please divide section 4 so that you have a fifth section with discussion and conclusions.

Table 4: The data in your table are overlapping, please fix this aspect.

Please indicate the affiliation for each of the authors, following the model of the journal, using the superscript option. After the name of the third author, there is an “and”, please delete it.

Title: Please write “capital” with the first letter in uppercase, as are the other ones.

Abstract: “…of exchanging of information” should be rephrased as “…of exchanging information”.

Keywords: Write all keywords with the first letter in uppercase, for consistency reasons.

In the main body, please cite sources as requested by the journal. You should number all sources as they appear in the text and indicate numbers in the text.

Format the reference list according to the journal requirements.

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Greetings

Thank you so much for your valuable comments, i have tried my best to address all the comments faithfully. Thanks again

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, 

Please format references according to journal requirements. You can find details here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions#references

Please also check the special issues of the journal to see the formatting of published articles.