Technical Trends and Competitive Situation in Respect of Metahuman—From Product Modules and Technical Topics to Patent Data
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I enjoyed reading this paper. Following two suggestions may help author(s) improve this paper.
1. Extensive editing of the English language is required. There are actually many interesting points in your paper, but poor English flooded them.
2. The section of Discussion and Conclusions should be largely improved by discussing the implications of your findings for extant literature rather than just summarizing your findings.
Best of luck!
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
We sincerely thank the reviewer 1 for all the thoughtful and insightful feedbacks. Here, we provide requested explanations and describe the focused edits we have made to address your concerns and suggestions.
Point 1: Extensive editing of the English language is required. There are actually many interesting points in your paper, but poor English flooded them.
Response 1: Thank you very much for your suggestion, and we are very sorry that the poor English has brought you a bad experience in reading. We have gone through an extensive editing process to correct the grammatical and language issues present in the original manuscript. We have also adopted a professional English editing services provided by MDPI
https://www.mdpi.com/authors/english.
Point 2: The section of Discussion and Conclusions should be largely improved by discussing the implications of your findings for extant literature rather than just summarizing your findings.
Response 2: Thank you for your thoughtful comment. We have largely expanded the Discussion section by adding the following details: (1) theoretical contributions and practical implications of this research, especially the implications for sustainable development in terms of economic and social dimensions.; (2) discussions on how our findings relate to previous studies. For example, how the findings of previous studies support our findings, how our findings fill the research gaps and contribute to this knowledge domain, and how our work differs from other similar studies. Also, we have added the discussions on the biases and limitations of this work and described how we might address the current limitations and pursue a future work.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper has some contributions in the application areas and R&D enterprises and the government could benefit from it. However, there are some urgent problems in this manuscript, as follows;
1. Need more references to support arguments, especially in the introduction section.
2. Research questions are not well defined. Consider rewriting them and answering them appropriately.
3. It will be better if one paragraph has at least 4 lines.
4. The discussion section is not properly validated with standalone results.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
We sincerely thank the reviewer 2 for all the thoughtful and insightful feedbacks. Here, we provide requested explanations and describe the focused edits we have made to address your concerns and suggestions.
Point 1: Need more references to support arguments, especially in the introduction section.
Response 1: Thank you for your constructive suggestions. We have revisited our previous Introduction section and rewritten it. For the Introduction section, we have added more background literature to provide evidences that technology is the core element driving the development of metahuman. The revised manuscript with the newly added literature can now better explain the importance of this work and why it fits in the target journal. Moreover, we have added literature review on metahuman technology to justify the motivation of our analysis. We also added more literature to support our research scope, usage of patent data and research methods.
Point 2: Research questions are not well defined. Consider rewriting them and answering them appropriately.
Response 2: Thank you for your suggestions. We have clearly elaborated the research questions in the Introduction section in this new manuscript. We have also added an overview to how these research questions would be answered correspondingly by the research followed.
Point 3: It will be better if one paragraph has at least 4 lines.
Response 3: Thank you for your suggestions on writing. We have gone through an extensive editing process to improve the readability of this manuscript.
Point 4: The discussion section is not properly validated with standalone results.
Response 4: Thank you for your thoughtful comment. We have largely expanded the Discussion section by adding the following details: (1) theoretical contributions and practical implications of this research, especially the implications for sustainable development in terms of economic and social dimensions.; (2) discussions on how our findings relate to previous studies. For example, how the findings of previous studies support our findings, how our findings fill the research gaps and contribute to this knowledge domain, and how our work differs from other similar studies. Also, we have added the discussions on the biases and limitations of this work and described how we might address the current limitations and pursue a future work.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
English proof reading is strongly recommended (see for example: lines 233-235; 235-237; 311-313; 330; 378-385).
It is unclear what the number of patents after filtering actually is: 41 882 or 42 556 (line 179, line 399 and line 527) or 42 256 (216)?
How can be linked the topic of the article to the purpose of the journal (Sustainability – ‘environmental, cultural, economic, and social sustainability of human beings’)? At the Conclusion part the authors mention the contribution of this research to enterprise sustainability, but a more detailed explanation is recommended.
When using patent database for empirical cross-country analyses, the potential biases of it should also be highlighted (see for example: OECD - Haščič, Silva, Johnston, 2015).
The importance of this analysis should be mentioned in the Introduction part as well, not just at the Conclusion chapter.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
We sincerely thank the reviewer 3 for all the thoughtful and insightful feedbacks. Here, we provide requested explanations and describe the focused edits we have made to address your concerns and suggestions.
Point 1: English proof reading is strongly recommended (see for example: lines 233-235; 235-237; 311-313; 330; 378-385).
Response 1: Thank you very much for your suggestion, and we are very sorry that the poor English has brought you a bad experience in reading. We have meticulously revised the manuscript by adopting the English editing services provided by MDPI https://www.mdpi.com/authors/english. We have gone through an extensive editing process to correct the grammatical and language issues present in the original manuscript.
Point 2: It is unclear what the number of patents after filtering actually is: 41 882 or 42 556 (line 179, line 399 and line 527) or 42 256 (216)?
Response 2: Thanks for pointing out these mistakes. The authors have checked the data and corrected these issues.
Point 3: How can be linked the topic of the article to the purpose of the journal (Sustainability – ‘environmental, cultural, economic, and social sustainability of human beings’)? At the Conclusion part the authors mention the contribution of this research to enterprise sustainability, but a more detailed explanation is recommended.
Response 3: Thank you very much for your valuable suggestions and for making us rethought the link between the article’s topic and the journal’s purpose is an urgent issue. We have elaborated how our work fits in the target journal mainly in terms of economic and social sustainability in the Introduction and Conclusion sections. From the economic sustainability viewpoint, the analysis of metahuman technology is very important for R&D enterprises to formulate suitable strategies for technology iteration and technological innovation in metahuman. The benign development of enterprises can drive economic growth, create tax revenue and serve the society. It is also essential for policymakers to put forward strategic guidelines to support the sustainable development of metahuman, thus promoting socially responsible research. In addition, from the social sustainability viewpoint, metahuman has been entrusted with the mission of highly simulating human beings when they are used in medical experiments or perform difficult tasks in environments that are not conducive to human survival. Such metahuman is of great medical and scientific value, and can contribute to the sustainable development of human beings from the social attribute level.
Point 4: When using patent database for empirical cross-country analyses, the potential biases of it should also be highlighted (see for example: OECD - Haščič, Silva, Johnston, 2015).
Response 4: Thank you for your thoughtful comment.. We have reviewed the relevant literature, including the report from the OECD, in which explained some characteristics of PATSTAT database may lead to potential bias in data. We take this issue very seriously and supplemented comments in the Discussion section. Search results of this research are taken from the Derwent Innovations Index(DII) patent database, which is a powerful tool for searching the worldwide invention patent information. The unique of this database is to take a series of measures when including patent data from various countries, for the purpose of improving the comprehensiveness and accuracy of patent searches. Cross-country analysis using the DII database,, provide references for retrieving patents from DII database for comparative analysis of countries in this study, and guarantee the technical analysis and research results provided should be of use to the greatest extent.
Point 5: The importance of this analysis should be mentioned in the Introduction part as well, not just at the Conclusion chapter.
Response 5: Thank you for your useful suggestions. We have added the important of this analysis in the Introduction section. Additionally, we have added more background literature to provide evidences that technology is the core element driving the development of metahuman. The revised manuscript with the newly added literature can now better explain the importance of this work on sustainable development and why it fits in the target journal. Moreover, we have added literature review on metahuman technology to justify the motivation of our analysis as well as the literature to support our research scope, usage of patent data and research methods.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
There are some minor misspellings (e.g. line(s) 507, 513-514, 528, 546-547, 597(comma)).
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
We sincerely thank the reviewer 3 for all the thoughtful and insightful feedbacks. Here, we provide requested explanations and describe the focused edits we have made to address your concerns and suggestions.
Point 1: There are some minor misspellings (e.g. line(s) 507, 513-514, 528, 546-547, 597(comma)).
Response 1: Thanks for pointing out these typos. The authors have corrected the spelling mistakes you mentioned and went through the proofreading again for this manuscript. Thanks again for your helpful feedback!
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
