The Development of Sharia Insurance and Its Future Sustainability in Risk Management: A Systematic Literature Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

As a study based on a review of the literature, the literature itself for the article contains a rather modest number of 67 items, despite the fact that the authors of the article themselves own more than 10 percent of the literature sources.

The conclusions should be refined, because they actually repeat the text of the article and the abstract to a large extent and do not clarify the work done or the results.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,
We thank you in advance for your comments and suggestions for our paper. We have made adjustments and improvements to the paper based on your suggestions and directions. Here we attach the response we did based on your suggestion.
Hopefully our paper can meet the criteria of this review process.
thank you
Regards.

Comment 1: As a study based on a review of the literature, the literature itself for the article contains a rather modest number of 67 items, despite the fact that the authors of the article themselves own more than 10 percent of the literature sources.

Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for the comments and suggestions, and we have made improvements according to the input provided by adding the number of citations used (please check lines 916-983).

Comment 2: The conclusions should be refined, because they actually repeat the text of the article and are abstract to a large extent and do not clarify the work done or the results.

Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for the comments and suggestions, here are the responses that we have corrected according to your directions in the conclusion section (please check lines 711-755).

Reviewer 2 Report

The comments are listed in the pdf. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,
We thank you in advance for your comments and suggestions for our paper. We have made adjustments and improvements to the paper based on your suggestions and directions. Here we attach the response we did based on your suggestion.
Hopefully our paper can meet the criteria of this review process.

thank you

Regards.

Comment 1: P3, section 2.1: the search strategy was described but not well defined. Please provide more details for the search strategy.

Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for the comments and suggestions, here are the responses that we have corrected according to your directions. (please check lines 172-183)

Comment 2: P4: The top of the figure was truncated.

Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for the comments and suggestions, here are the responses that we have corrected according to your directions. We've fixed cropped images. (Please check line 171)

Comment 3: P8: the percentage for UAE is not displayed well. Also, are these all the nations that used Sharia insurance?

Dear Reviewers,
Thanks for the comments and suggestions, we have corrected the percentage for the UAE, as well as added an explanation regarding countries that have implemented Islamic insurance (Please check lines 320, 333-341).

Comment 4: General comment: Please be more specific on the differences between
the Sharia insurance and the other types of insurance.

Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for the comments and suggestions, we have made improvements by adding a discussion discussing the differences between Islamic insurance and other (conventional) insurance (Please check lines 694-709.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper offers a systematic review of Sharia insurance products concentrating on relevant journal articles from the past decade. The selected research topic is interesting and actual which is demonstrated by the constantly growing corpus of this research field. However, the paper requires major revision to be considered for publication in Sustainability.

I have the following recommendations to improve the quality of the paper.

1. Abstract is too long and does not meet the requirements of the journal. Authors should check the Instructions for authors: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions

2. Introduction section should be restructured and/or supplemented with the followings:

 - one paragraph that positions the paper in the academic literature

 - one paragraph that details the added values of the paper to academic literature

  - one paragraph that summarizes the results of the paper. This should be the ultimate paragraph before introducing the rest of the paper

 - one paragraph that presents the structure of the paper

3. The systematic review intends to follow the PRISMA standards, which is illustrated on a flowchart. I have to remark that the two keywords are too little to find an underpinned research focus, and further selection would have been necessary to process the 774 sources on the ranked list. Hence, their analytical possibilities are limited. Word cloud can be drawn, yearly and country breakdown can be provided, but it is simply impossible to prepare a real meta analysis on such high set of sources. Therefore, I recommend a more focused analysis of significantly less items, concentrating on most influential publications, but provide a more in-depth data analysis. It enables to identify research trends, research gaps, citation clusters and it would contribute to provide well-underpinned future research directions. PRISMA standards are much more than the collection of literature sources. Results of synthesis should be achieved and in-depth discussed.

4. The previous problem cannot be resolved by a pure presentation of legacy operational models. The whole subsection 3.3 is a technical description of Sharia insurance business models. The five-pages long section does not contain references, its style is not accustomed in scientific journals. It seems as it was simply copied from an external source. I recommend creating a well-founded relationship between results of systematic literature review and a reduced evaluation of operational models. The problem is similar with subsection 4.2 in the Discussion section.

5. It must be elaborated and explained how this topic fits into the aims and scope of Sustainability. Authors should check: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/about

6. Conclusions should be improved to include policy implications. Since it is an applied subject, it would be good to incorporate managerial insights as well.

 

 

Although the manuscript is understandable, it should be linguistically better written in English, for which native English proofreading is necessary.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,
We thank you in advance for your comments and suggestions for our paper. We have made adjustments and improvements to the paper based on your suggestions and directions. Here we attach the response we did based on your suggestion.
Hopefully our paper can meet the criteria of this review process.

thank you

Regards.

Comment 1: Abstract is too long and does not meet the requirements of the journal. Authors should check the Instructions for authors: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions

Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for the comments and suggestions, we have made improvements to the abstract according to the suggestions given (please check lines 19-34)

Comment 2: Introduction section should be restructured and/or supplemented with the following:
  - one paragraph that positions the paper in the academic literature
  - one paragraph that details the added value of the paper to academic literature
   - one paragraph that summarizes the results of the paper. This should be the ultimate paragraph before introducing the rest of the paper
  - one paragraph that presents the structure of the paper.

Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for the comments and suggestions, we have made improvements to the introductory section according to the suggestions given (please check lines 119-150)

Comment 3: The systematic review intends to follow the PRISMA standards, which is illustrated on a flowchart. I have to remark that the two keywords are too little to find an underpinned research focus, and further selection would have been necessary to process the 774 sources on the ranked list. Hence, their analytical possibilities are limited. Word clouds can be drawn, yearly and country breakdowns can be provided, but it is simply impossible to prepare a real meta analysis on such a high set of sources. Therefore, I recommend a more focused analysis of significantly less items, concentrating on the most influential publications, but providing a more in-depth data analysis. It enables to identify research trends, research gaps, citation clusters and it would contribute to providing well-underpinned future research directions. PRISMA standards are much more than the collection of literature sources. Results of synthesis should be achieved and discussed in-depth.

Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for the comments and suggestions, we have added an explanation regarding the suggestions given (please check lines 172-183)

Comment 4: The previous problem cannot be resolved by a pure presentation of legacy operational models. The whole subsection 3.3 is a technical description of Sharia insurance business models. The five-page long section does not contain references, its style is not accustomed to in scientific journals. It seems as it was simply copied from an external source. I recommend creating a well-founded relationship between the results of a systematic literature review and a reduced evaluation of operational models. The problem is similar to subsection 4.2 in the Discussion section.

Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for the comments and suggestions, we have made improvements by adding an explanation of the relationships from the images of the five existing models. In addition, citations have been added that support explanations of existing models (please check lines 374-400, 427-447, 467-485, 506-518, and 539-548)

Comment 5: It must be elaborated and explained how this topic fits into the aims and scope of Sustainability. Authors should check: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/about.

Dear Reviewers,
Thanks for the comments and suggestions, we have added the scope of "Sustainability" from the research conducted in the abstract, introduction and conclusion sub-sections.

Comment 6: Conclusions should be improved to include policy implications. Since it is an applied subject, it would be good to incorporate managerial insights as well.

  Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for the comments and suggestions, we have made improvements to the conclusion section (please check lines 710-755).

Reviewer 4 Report

The article presented for review is interesting. The structure of the paper is bright and transparent. The authors correctly formulated the research problem. There are also no doubts about the research methods used. Research results and discussion properly conducted, in my opinion.

In the paper, it is worth explaining why the time range from 2010-2022 was adopted. It is also worth expanding the conclusion section.

In my opinion, it is worth paying attention to the possibility of developing sharia insurance in non-Islamic countries, e.g. in America or Europe. Can sharia insurance compete with traditional insurance in these parts of the world?

An interesting paper, worth publishing.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,
We thank you in advance for your comments and suggestions for our paper. We have made adjustments and improvements to the paper based on your suggestions and directions. Here we attach the response we did based on your suggestion.
Hopefully our paper can meet the criteria of this review process.

thank you

Regards.

Comment 1: In the paper, it is worth explaining why the time range from 2010-2022 was adopted. It is also worth expanding the conclusion section.

Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for the comments and suggestions, we have done according to the input provided (please check lines 153-157).

Comment 2: In my opinion, it is worth paying attention to the possibility of developing sharia insurance in non-Islamic countries, e.g. in America or Europe. Can sharia insurance compete with traditional insurance in these parts of the world?

Dear Reviewers,
Thank you for the comments and suggestions, we have added explanations according to the suggestions given in the introduction and conclusion sections (please check lines 119-132 and 725-732).

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors addressed most of my concerns from the 1st review. I recommend accepting this manuscript after little modifications for English editing. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,
We thank you in advance for your comments and suggestions for our paper. We have made checks and improvements for English editing. We hope that the improvements in the English editing of our papers will meet the criteria for this review process.

thank you
Regards.

Reviewer 3 Report

Authors have made significant progress to improve the quality of their paper. The revised introduction incorporates added values, positioning in literature and introducing the structure. The revised abstract meets the requirements of the journal. The applied keywords in systematic search are now well underpinned. Relationships between the presented business models and results of systematic literature review have been adequately elaborated. Discussion and conclusions have been improved in line with my recommendations.

Since all my remarks were covered and replied to, from my side, the revised manuscript meets the requirements of the journal. I recommend its publication as soon as possible.

Minor copyediting will be required for this paper before publication.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,
We thank you in advance for your comments and suggestions for our paper. We also thank you for your recommendations, for our paper to be published.

thank you
Regards.