A Study on How to Improve the Accountability of National Defense Financial Information for Government Sustainability

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you very much for sending your paper to the journal. Based on the following criteria, at this stage, the paper needs a lot of improvement from my viewpoint:

1- The whole paper is poorly written, especially in the abstract section as well the theoretical issues.

2-The research problem is not well-defined.

3- The research methodology is not conducted accurately and this part needs to use very strong tests to obtain real results

4-The conclusion is rough and does not reflect the results

5-What are the limitations of the study? is not clear

 

Author Response

 

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Congratulation on selecting this topic. I found it an interesting topic.

Please see my comments below.

Research objectives

The researchers indicated that "it is also necessary to examine whether the information complied in the financial reports under current system is suitable for the competition on the operating results, takes the form of deducting revenue from the net cost of financial operations, unlike a comprehensive income statement of a private enterprise." (page 2, line 50). This assertion implies the objective of the research. However, I recommend authors be very specific and indicate their research objectives and questions on page one of the introduction section to ease the reading of the article.

GAP in the field

The authors indicated that this article differs from previous studies in two ways. I recommend describing how it expands the research scope of government accounting (line 68, page 2).

Methodology

It seems that the authors aim to use descriptive statistics as their methodology. I recommend the authors add a section regarding data collection and methods and show why they used such research.

Conclusions

Also, I recommend authors include a conclusion section and reorganize the writing to have the study's contributions, implications, and limitations.

References

This area of accounting research has limited empirical studies. It merits trying to find more studies to strengthen the article. Therefore, I recommend authors verify and include similar investigations in different countries.

Additional comments

I recommend including in the text why the authors inserted Table 1 and referencing this table to their writings. Also, Table 2 seems misleading for general cost and import; the data is unavailable. Therefore, I do not recognize the importance of including such a table. Perhaps, authors can describe the data instead of inserting this table into the text. I recommend authors verify the purpose of inserting other tables.

 

Author Response

 

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for inviting me to review this manuscript. The topic selection of the paper is significant, and lots of work has been paid in reuslt section. The following suggestions are provided for enhancing the quality of the paper.

1. The reference of this paper should be added in the right position.

2.Introduction: The importance of the research is not well demonstrated.The innovation point of this paper should be added.

3.Conclusion section is missing now, please add this section.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

I think this is a well written and interesting article, which demonstrate that the Ministry of National Defense's accountability will be improved and the purpose of introducing double-entry bookkeeping can be achieved by evaluating the efficiency of resource management units in the Ministry of National Defense using actual cost index. However, the thesis still needs improvement in the following several aspects. 

1. The abstract is not well written. The abstract should explain the research method and process of the paper

2.  Section 2.2.2 of the literature review is too tedious, so there is no need to write a paragraph for each paper

3. In section 4.4.1 of the article，Some structures are disorderly

 

 

 

 

4.The data of 2015 and 2016 are selected in this paper. Why the data of these two years are selected?

5. “An index was proposed to calculate a new actual cost index by dividing cost items into five categories according to a level of controllability.” What is the basis for these classifications, and is there any literature for reference?

6. The reference format and table format in the paper are not standard and need to be modified.

7.  Empirical analysis is too simple with too few references.

 

 

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear author,

Thank you for sending your revised paper; the paper is improved; however, still far from to get acceptance due to the following reasons:

1- The theoretical issues do not support the research objectives

2-It is recommended to conduct proofreading

3-Still it is not clear the originality of the paper

4-It is recommended to conduct additional analyses

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Please add more references and the number of references is too small.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

 

Point 1: Please add more references and the number of references is too small.

 

Response 1: As you requested, we added one more reference.

 

Reviewer 4 Report

Please add some references

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 4 Comments

 

Point 1: Please add more references and the number of references is too small.

 

Response 1: As you requested, we added one more reference.

 

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear author,

 Thank you for sending your revised paper; the paper is substantially improved.