Vectors of Sustainable Development and Global Knowledge in the Metallic Materials Industry in Romania
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript entitled “Vectors of sustainable development and global knowledge in the metallic materials industry in Romania (sustainability-1794144)” is focused on a bibliographic compilation on the evolution of the metallurgical industry.
In my opinion, since it s a bibliography review article, they should include more citations. In the current presentationm for the length of the manuscript, consider presentation as a letter. Another alternative is to modify the manuscript as a Review Article.
Author Response
Dear reviewer
Thank you for your time to review our article and for the comments you made.
We have corrected and improved the paper according to all the comments received.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors´ main purpose in this article is to identify the key issues in the evolution of the development of the metal materials industry.
Please see my biggest concerns:
1. Introduction:
There is no clear closing paragraph presenting the main objectives and the paper structure.
2. Theoretical Basis:
This section does not provide details on how the bibliographic research was carried out. What were the keywords? How many articles were selected? What were the criteria for inclusion/exclusion? This is a serious issue, as there is no sureness the literature was properly mapped.
The low number of references reinforces that the authors need to mature their research.
3. Results of Bibliometric Analysis:
- The authors say “This makes it mandatory to use and operationalize certain tools, such as the global knowledge and the ecological paradigm.” It seems they are just presenting some tools, without emphasising what the bibliometric analysis revealed. By the way, I would expect some tables and figures illustrating the findings of the BA. Also, the second item should be the title of section 3.2. And it sounds strange the authors then present sections 3.3 and 3.4 without mentioning them at the end of this paragraph;
- Sections “3.3. The new materials” and “3.4. Scientific branches of global knowledge in the metal materials engineering” have just one citation! It is inadequate considering these are a summary of the findings of the literature review.
4. Discussion:
- This section is promising but again there is almost no connection with the extant literature. It is difficult for the reader to separate what was extracted from the previous studies and what is a contribution from the authors.
Minor revisions: please see the attached file.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer
Thank you for your time to review our paper and for your suggestions. We took these into account and corrected the manuscript. We hope it's okay.
Best regards!
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have clarified the approaches required for Sustainable Industries 4.0 and suggested the importance of developing sustainable materials, e.g. recyclable nuclear materials. The manuscript is well-written and insightful, and is especially important for the industries and academics at this moment.
Author Response
Dear reviewer
Thank you for your time to review our article and for the comments you made.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have considered some of the suggestions made and have been included in the manuscript.
Author Response
Dear reviewer
thank you for your agreement to review our manuscript.
Best regards,
Sohaciu Mirela
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors: I appreciate your efforts in improving the paper. Although it is better now, please provide specific answers to my concerns if a new version is submitted:
1. Introduction:
a) There is no clear closing paragraph presenting the main objectives and the paper structure. This was not satisfied in your new version.
b) Also: please reflect on your current introduction. There are some elements of “review” and even “results” (Figure 1 and discussion). Be sure you contextualize the relevance and present the main objectives and the paper structure.
2. Theoretical Basis:
This section has improved on how the bibliographic research was carried out. However, it still lacks to answer the following questions and issues:
c) How many articles were selected?
d) What were the criteria for inclusion/exclusion? This is a serious issue, as there is no sureness the literature was properly mapped.
e) Aligned with “d”, I suggest the authors provide a figure or text after the (new) Table 1 presenting the initial number of articles found and filters until the final bibliographic portfolio was achieved. This is important to justify the low number of references in this article (23 for a review article?!).
3. Results of Bibliometric Analysis:
I believe the authors need to explore the Bibliometric Analysis in a separate section. To do that I propose:
f) Rename “3. Results of Bibliometric Analysis” as “3. Results”;
g) Create a subsection “3.1 Bibliometric Analysis”. In this section, you must provide what a BA is for. I picked up a highly cited example to orientate the authors. Please, see Fahimnia et al (2015) (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2015.01.003 );
h) Understanding the current sections 3.1 to 3.4 is a content analysis (CA) at the end of the new subsection 3.1, please state the CA is presented in subsections 3.2 to 3.5 (renumbered);
i) Section 3.1 (it will be 3.2): it has just 3 references. Please, adopt some strategy (like “snowball” and provide at least 7* extra references;
j) Section 3.2 (it will be 3.3): also, it has just 3 references. Please, adopt some strategy (like “snowball” and provide at least 7* extra references;
k) Section 3.3 (it will be 3.4): it has just one reference! Please, adopt some strategy (like “snowball” and provide at least 9* extra references. Also, revise the extra period in line 266 (“..”);
l) Section 3.4 (it will be 3.5): it has just 3 references. Please, adopt some strategy (like “snowball” and provide at least 7* extra references.
*it is an estimate. There is no sense in a section with 1 up to 3 refs. I should expect more in a review article.
4. Discussion:
m) You should cite mainly the authors you cited in section 3. Of course, some new references are welcome since they are important to reinforce some points of the discussion.
Dear authors: I expect detailed answers for items “a” to “m”.
Author Response
Dear reviewer
thank you for your patience in reviewing our manuscript. We hope that we have answered all your observations.
Best regards,
Sohaciu Mirela
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
Overall:
I appreciate the authors’ efforts in improving this paper. It is my third review of this paper and my suggestions were partially satisfied, in some parts poorly improved. I will not accept a new revision. I understand the authors should reflect on all my comments and improve the paper as much as possible if the paper goes for publishing (especially i, ii, and iii).
Below please see some examples that illustrate my overall comment:
i) I believe just 23 references for a review paper it is still incipient. Maybe the authors could consider mentioning that some of their conclusions are still preliminary and that further studies should be carried out;
ii) New section 3.1 (Bibliometric Analysis) does not present elements of a BA. In this paper’s final version, the authors must present some BA statistics;
iii) Please do final proofreading, especially in the new insertions. See for example line 138 “analyze” (analysis? ) and line 217 “domanins”. I am not confident about the English grammar and style. I suggest the authors send the paper to a native speaker or to a proofreading service.
Author Response
Dear reviewer
we have updated the manuscript.
We have added some papers relevant to the conduct of this study.
We detailed section 3.1.
Also, we did the final proofreading for the English.
We thank you very much for your support.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
