Industry Linkage and Spatial Co-Evolution Characteristics of Industrial Clusters Based on Natural Semantics—Taking the Electronic Information Industry Cluster in the Pearl River Delta as an Example
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The submitted manuscript deals with Industry linkage and Spatial co-evolution characteristics of industrial clusters based on natural semantics. The employed methodology is really innovative and reliable. The focus on the Chinese provinces makes sence. The main problem in the study is the length of the abstract. It has to be shortened by 35%. It is also required that in the introductory part, the author refers to the seminal works on linkages. These are in the first line the works of Alfred Hirschmann. At least mention his Strategy of Economic Development cursorily. You can also use the following source
The Strategy of Economic Development, Albert O. Hirschman. (Yale Studies in Economics: 10.) New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958. Pp. xiii, 217. $4.50 - Goodman - 1959 - American Journal of Agricultural Economics - Wiley Online Library
Next, refer to the following recent works on linkages and economic development
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-019-00221-7
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13563-019-00202-6
- There are three formulas in the manuscript. All of them have to be numbered. Figure 4 is not readable.
Author Response
Reviewer #1:
- General comments:
The submitted manuscript deals with Industry linkage and Spatial co-evolution characteristics of industrial clusters based on natural semantics. The employed methodology is really innovative and reliable. The focus on the Chinese provinces makes sence.
Our response：
Thank the experts for giving me valuable advice.
Comment 1
- Abstract: The main problem in the study is the length of the abstract. It has to be shortened by 35%.
Our response：
We have revised the length of the summary and reduced the presentation of the outcome of the conclusions, which has been reduced by about 35%.
Comment 2
- Introduction: It is also required that in the introductory part, the author refers to the seminal works on linkages. These are in the first line the works of Alfred Hirschmann. At least mention his Strategy of Economic Development cursorily.
Our response：
In the preface, we add Hirschmann 's economic development strategy and emphasize the importance of linkages to industrial development.
Comment 3
- Methodology and research design: There are three formulas in the manuscript. All of them have to be numbered.
Our response：
Thanks to the expert ' s reminder, we have added three formula numbers.
Comment 4
- Result：Figure 4 is not readable.
.
Our response：
For Figure 4, we try to modify the position of the traction line and the industry name so that it can have better readability.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper relates to an interesting research topic and contains some useful data analysis. However, there are a number of aspects of the paper that could be improved. These include the:
a) Literature review. This aspect of the paper is currently underdeveloped. This relates to both the depth in which the cited literature has been discusses, examined and critiqued as well as how the current study contributes to this.
b) Data analysis. Although the paper includes several interesting graphs and tables, these could have been presented and discussed more clearly.
c) Academic English. There is significant scope to enhance the standard of writing throughout the paper. This even includes the reference list since there are some typos (for example in the first word of the journal title on the final reference) and an inconsistent recording of journal titles (such as in the use of lower case rather than upper case letters in many cases and the abbreviation of others).
Author Response
Reviewer #2:
- General comments:
This paper relates to an interesting research topic and contains some useful data analysis. However, there are a number of aspects of the paper that could be improved.
Our response：
Thank the experts for giving me valuable advice.
Comment 1
- Literature review. This aspect of the paper is currently underdeveloped. This relates to both the depth in which the cited literature has been discusses, examined and critiqued as well as how the current study contributes to this.
Our response：
Increasing the experience of IO table identification in industry linkage literature, the advantages and disadvantages of network analysis; the literature review has been revised, and the current literature has been summarized from the research object, research perspective and research methods.
Comment 2
- Data analysis. Although the paper includes several interesting graphs and tables, these could have been presented and discussed more clearly.
Our response：
The calculation of industrial cluster network centrality is added to express the position of C39 in the network center. Increased spatial co-evolution diagram and quantity change table, it can better observe the number of co-agglomeration between industries change.
Comment 3
- Academic English. There is significant scope to enhance the standard of writing throughout the paper. This even includes the reference list since there are some typos (for example in the first word of the journal title on the final reference) and an inconsistent recording of journal titles (such as in the use of lower case rather than upper case letters in many cases and the abbreviation of others).
Our response：
We apologize for the bad language in our manuscript. We have spent a lot of time in the manuscript work. The deletion of sentences and chapters obviously leads to poor readability. We have worked on the language and corrected the grammar and sentence fluency. We sincerely hope that the language expression and fluency have been improved.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors present an interesting topic examining the linkages of industries and spatial agglomeration of these industries to inspect occurrence of clustering based on data from 1984 to 2019. Specifically, the Electronic Information Industry within the Peral River Dealt is used to examine these potential clusters within the industry over the time span. The authors provide a good literature review on existing studies related to industrial clusters and categorizes them based on their characteristics. Additionally, the authors identify the need to explore industrial linkages in addition to the spatial perspective as the gap in the literature that the study is trying to fulfill. However, there is an additional need to strengthen up the argument that the authors are trying to present with regards to expressing the industrial linkages and examining the connections within the cluster. There is a lack of clear connection expressed in the manuscript that clearly highlight the linkages and lacks the academic rigor and presentation backing the claims made in the arguments made by the authors in the results, discussion and conclusion chapters. Additionally, there are multiple instances where the sentence structure does not flow, and is unclear which hinders the overall readability as well as the point that the authors are trying to make.
The topic examined by the authors is a good topic and definitely needs to be explored more. However, for it to be published the manuscript would need considerable work through improvement in academic rigor, the presentation (in terms of charts graphs maps) as well as the through assessment of the language and style to improve the readability.
Comments:
All sections:
Check capitalization after semicolon. There shouldn’t be a capitalization after a semicolon
Check for separation between the last word and parentheses, including in citations. It should have a space after the word for example Abcdefg (Figure 2) instead of Abcdefg(Figure 2)
Page 2 Paragraph 1 : Line starting with “In the past three decades, mainly concentrated in manufacturing ..” please consider rewording it.
Page 2 Paragraph 1: Line starting with “For example, China’s ..” please revisit the apostrophes and the % signs. China’s instead of China ‘ s and 40% instead of 40 %.
Citation needed for “and 71 % of Germany 's manufacturing industry tends to geographical concentration”
Page 2 Paragraph 2: Line starting with “Many early ..”, the word many is mention but only one literature is cited. Please give examples through citation on industrial cluster and co-location.
Line starting with “But the industrial cluster .. “ is a crucial point in this study, please expand this section so that the readers will get a better understanding of the current literature behind linkages behind industrial linkages and clusters.
Page 2 Paragraph 2: Line following Point 2 “ (2) what is the type of industry ..” please reword or separate it out as it contains 3 questions.
Page 3 Paragraph 1: Lines following Point 1 “(1) those emphasizes .. “ Please rework the grammar. Eg. “those that emphasize ..” instead of “ those emphasizes ..” and so on.
Additionally Point 3, keep the flow consistent, eg. with the addition of who, this statement does not read consistently with previous statements. Also, “Those who .. “ indicate multiple sources, please add more than one citation to back it up.
Page 3 Paragraph 2: Line starting with “The research methods include EG index, MS index …”, EG and MS are not defined earlier please provide the full form of the abbreviation.
Page 3 Paragraph 2: Line starting with “This kind of research .. “please reword it. The sentence is very convoluted.
Page 3 Paragraph 3: Line starting with “However, the most .. “ please reword the entire paragraph. I understand what you are saying but the language can be improved for a better flow.
Also, please explain in brief the type of experience needed to conduct Principle component and Cluster analysis>
Additionally, the sentence “Network analysis avoids this problem to some extent, but it has a problem.” Does not make much sense and needs explanation. Please consider combining it with the next sentence that provides the explanation.
Page 3 Paragraph 4: Line starting with “Based on the input-output table ..”. It is a very long winded sentence and the explanation gets lost while reading it please reword so its clearer and brings out what you are trying to express.
And similarly with the next sentence starting with “To study the evolution..”, please reword.
Page 5 Results Section:
Line starting with “In computer, .. “ the word in computer does not makes sense please reword so that your views are communicated well.
Page 9: Check capitalization in c301 / c392
While in the first paragraph within Results 4.1 the authors do an excellent job dividing the industry clusters within four quadrants, the following paragraph lacks the academic rigor and presentation backing the claims made in the statements. For example the authors argue “From the changes in industrial linkages, it can be seen that the linkage network of the electronic information industry cluster in the Pearl River Delta is deepening, and the cluster network linkage is centered on C39 (Figure 1)” but, the figures does not provide enough evidence or does it paint a clear picture indicating how the network linkages are centered around C39 industries. Similarly, in last line of page 6 the authors indicate deepening connections manufacturing in clusters, but does not sufficiently provide evidence indicating or expressing such deepening connections.
Similarly in Results 4.2 the authors indicate “the number of collaborative aggregation industries increases from 12.12% to 35.34%” but there is no clear evidence provided to back this claim along with other inferences made in this section. Additionally, the authors do not mention or test if these results were statistically significant.
Overall, the results section needs Major work with more explanation and clearly explained basis to back the claims made by the authors. Additional data, charts or figures expressing these changes would be needed.
Page
Page 10: Concussion and Discussion:
Please change it to Discussion and Conclusion in that order.
In consideration to changes in the results section, changes would also need to be made in the section.
The discussion provided along with policy implications is a good start but additional discussion with regards to the findings would need to be added.
The findings should specifically address the research questions what was initially asked in Page 2.
Author Response
Reviewer #3:
- General comments:
The topic examined by the authors is a good topic and definitely needs to be explored more. However, for it to be published the manuscript would need considerable work through improvement in academic rigor, the presentation (in terms of charts graphs maps) as well as the through assessment of the language and style to improve the readability.
Our response：
Thank the experts for giving me valuable advice. We'll revise on expert opinion.
Comment 1
- All sections:
Check capitalization after semicolon. There shouldn’t be a capitalization after a semicolon
Check for separation between the last word and parentheses, including in citations. It should have a space after the word for example Abcdefg (Figure 2) instead of Abcdefg(Figure 2).
Our response：
Thanks to the expert's reminder, we have checked the proposed format error.
Comment 2
- Introduction: Line starting with “In the past three decades, mainly concentrated in manufacturing.” please consider rewording it.
Our response：
The language organization has been reorganized and changed to: the research object of spatial evolution is mainly focused on…
Comment 3
- Introduction: Line starting with “For example, China’s ..” please revisit the apostrophes and the % signs. China’s instead of China ‘ s and 40% instead of 40 %.Citation needed for “and 71 % of Germany 's manufacturing industry tends to geographical concentration”.
Our response：
Thanks, we have modified the text such format error.
Comment 4
- Introduction: Line starting with “Many early ..”, the word many is mention but only one literature is cited. Please give examples through citation on industrial cluster and co-location.
Line starting with “But the industrial cluster .. “ is a crucial point in this study, please expand this section so that the readers will get a better understanding of the current literature behind linkages behind industrial linkages and clusters.
Our response：
We agree with this recommendation and have revised it. Supplement the references of early research(Henderson, 1997; He et al., 2007; Turkina et al., 2016).
Increased literature on industrial linkages, focusing on cross-regional industrial linkages in industrial clusters.
Comment 5
- Introduction: Page 2 Paragraph 2: Line following Point 2 “ (2) what is the type of industry ..” please reword or separate it out as it contains 3 questions.
Our response：
We agree with this suggestion and have modified the sentence to emphasize the meaning: understanding the evolution types of industrial clusters.
Comment 6
-Literature review: Lines following Point 1 “(1) those emphasizes .. “ Please rework the grammar. Eg. “those that emphasize ..” instead of “ those emphasizes ..” and so on.
Additionally Point 3, keep the flow consistent, eg. with the addition of who, this statement does not read consistently with previous statements. Also, “Those who .. “ indicate multiple sources, please add more than one citation to back it up.
Our response：
Thanks to the expert's advice on the statement, we have modified it to those emphasizes that…
Added corresponding literature to support(Rosenfeld, 1997; Swann et al., 1998).
Comment 7
-Literature review: Page 3 Paragraph 2: Line starting with “The research methods include EG index, MS index …”, EG and MS are not defined earlier please provide the full form of the abbreviation.
Our response：
Thanks for the advice. These two indexes are mainly proposed by several experts and then abbreviated by name: The research methods include EG index and MS index proposed by Ellison & Glaeser (1997), Maurel & Sedillot (1999).
Comment 8
-Literature review: Page 3 Paragraph 2: Line starting with “This kind of research .. “please reword it. The sentence is very convoluted.
Our response：
We agree with this suggestion, the statement has been rewritten: However, for the research object of spatial proximity, it often focuses on the spatial distribution of a single industry, without considering the spatial proximity relationship within or outside the industry.
Comment 9
-Literature review: Page 3 Paragraph 3: Line starting with “However, the most .. “ please reword the entire paragraph. I understand what you are saying but the language can be improved for a better flow.
Also, please explain in brief the type of experience needed to conduct Principle component and Cluster analysis.
Additionally, the sentence “Network analysis avoids this problem to some extent, but it has a problem.” Does not make much sense and needs explanation. Please consider combining it with the next sentence that provides the explanation.
Our response：
We have rewritten this sentence and briefly described the types of experience required for principal component and cluster analysis.
Rewrite the sentence: This approach has an obvious flaw: only mutually exclusive clusters can be obtained, that is, an industry can only belong to one cluster. However, an industry may belong to multiple clusters.
The types of experience required for principal component and cluster analysis: Industries with a load value of more than 0.40 in each principal component are generally classified into corresponding clusters.
The problem of network analysis: it does not consider the actual spatial boundaries of industrial clusters.
Comment 10
-Literature review: Page 3 Paragraph 4: Line starting with “Based on the input-output table ..”. It is a very long winded sentence and the explanation gets lost while reading it please reword so its clearer and brings out what you are trying to express.
And similarly with the next sentence starting with “To study the evolution..”, please reword.
Our response：
Thanks, we have rewritten the language.
Rewrite the sentence: on research methods, judging the industrial association changes of industrial clusters based on the IO table is limited by the time update (once every 5 years).
Rewrite the sentence: The research object of spatial agglomeration on the evolution of industrial clusters is mainly based on a single industry, which makes it difficult to accurately measure the degree of co-agglomeration between industries.
Comment 11
-Result: Page 5 Results Section:Line starting with “In computer, .. “ the word in computer does not makes sense please reword so that your views are communicated well.
Our response：
Thanks, we have rewritten the language.
Rewrite the sentence: In C39, the average semantic similarity between four years is 0.58, so 0.58 is used as the division standard of cluster industry.
Comment 12
-Result: Page 9: Check capitalization in c301 / c392.
Our response：
Thank experts for the article statement format errors, we have been modified, modified to C301/C392.
Comment 13
-Result: but, the figures does not provide enough evidence or does it paint a clear picture indicating how the network linkages are centered around C39 industries.
In last line of page 6 the authors indicate deepening connections manufacturing in clusters, but does not sufficiently provide evidence indicating or expressing such deepening connections.
Our response：
Thanks, we have increased the calculation of network centrality to prove the centrality of C39 in the network. The results show that C39 has the highest centrality in the network within 4 years.
Thanks to the expert opinion, the last sentence of the expression has been revised, the author would like to express the number of links between industries within the cluster is increasing, the cluster network links continue to strengthen.
Comment 14
-Result: the number of collaborative aggregation industries increases from 12.12% to 35.34%” but there is no clear evidence provided to back this claim along with other inferences made in this section.
Additionally, the authors do not mention or test if these results were statistically significant.
Our response：
Thanks, all selected data on the data are at a significant local GCLQ 0.05 level. At the same time, increase the number of significant industrial co-gathered change table, can be more intuitive to see changes in the proportion of synergy.
Comment 15
-Conclusion and Discussion: Please change it to Discussion and Conclusion in that order. In consideration to changes in the results section, changes would also need to be made in the section.
The discussion provided along with policy implications is a good start but additional discussion with regards to the findings would need to be added.
Our response：
Thanks to the advice, we have adjusted the order of discussion and conclusion.
The discussion of relevant conclusions is added in the discussion section: in the identification of industrial clusters in this paper, the identification results are highly consistent with the IO table. From the perspective of industrial linkage and spatial agglomeration, there are some differences in spatial agglomeration and industrial linkage between manufacturing and producer services related to electronic information. The manufacturing industry has a stronger degree of agglomeration, and a small part of the service industry has a higher degree of linkage. Most of them do not have strong spatial proximity, which supports the conclusion that the service industry is more spatially dispersed than the manufacturing industry in previous studies.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper has been substantially improved and can be published now.
Author Response
Reviewer #1:
- General comments:
The paper has been substantially improved and can be published now.
Our response：
Thank the experts for their suggestions on the references and related contents of the paper, so that the quality of the manuscript has been significantly improved.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
I think that revised version of the paper is stronger following the changes that have been made. However, there are still some remaining presentational issues including inconsistencies in the reference list such as inappropriate use of lower case letters in some titles (of journals and books).
Author Response
Reviewer #2:
- General comments:
I think that revised version of the paper is stronger following the changes that have been made.
Our response：
Thank the experts for their suggestions on the references, data analysis and content writing of the paper, which has significantly improved the quality of the paper.
Comments 1: However, there are still some remaining presentational issues including inconsistencies in the reference list such as inappropriate use of lower case letters in some titles (of journals and books).
Our response：
The references have been checked according to the opinions of experts, and the citation format and spelling problems have been checked.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for revising the manuscript.The issues that were previously highlighted have been adequately addressed and, the writing and flow has also been significantly improved.
Furthermore, the addition of tables as a part of the manuscript, along with the addition of figures and changes to the figures made in the results section has made the overall flow and understanding of the paper and the subsequent analysis clearer.
Author Response
Reviewer #3:
- General comments:
The issues that were previously highlighted have been adequately addressed and, the writing and flow has also been significantly improved.
Furthermore, the addition of tables as a part of the manuscript, along with the addition of figures and changes to the figures made in the results section has made the overall flow and understanding of the paper and the subsequent analysis clearer.
Our response：
Thank the experts for their comments on the article, the writing gives many specific guidance, so that the quality of writing has greatly improved. The opinions of experts in the subsequent content results, discussions and conclusion analysis also make the quality of the manuscript significantly improved and have better readability.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
