Sustainability in Small and Medium Enterprises, Sustainable Development in the Slovak Republic, and Sustainability and Quality Management in Small and Medium Enterprises
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1- It is suggested to revised the manuscript title "Sustainability in small and medium enterprises, Quality management in small and medium enterprises, Current market economy, its trends and changes".
2. Page 21-24 (Unnecessary). Please remove formatting instruction pages.
3. There are various past studies that have already scrutinized this particular phenomenon to a great extent and there just does not seem to be a sufficiently high threshold to justify this particular study. How is this study any different and how does this study add to this existing pool of studies in this domain?
4. Although this paper dealt with interesting phenomena, it did not provide adequate theoretical background and support for the development of its hypotheses. This is the critical limitation of this paper.
5. Although the authors have attempted to explain the contributions and implications of the paper, I think that the overall quality of the explanations is low. Please provide more elaborated explanations to demonstrate its theoretical and practical contributions.
I do not really feel that there is a strong contribution to your study, not theoretically nor for practitioners.
Author Response
I redid the article; I made big changes to it. I edited the title, content, and structure of the article. I added new texts related to sustainability and sustainable development, added research, and researched activities in the field of sustainability and sustainable development in Europe and Slovakia. I tried to fulfill all your comments, your requirements.
Reviewer 2 Report
I had a very difficult time following this paper. It tried to do a lot of different things. But without focus or making connections between the various concepts, it failed to do anything well-enough to be considered for publication.
There is a lot of assertion and advise. But rather than focusing on one topic, backing it up detailed literature review and research, there is just a cursory description of the situation and the recitation of standard points related to each – in many cases without attribution (or attributing them to the authors).
In many cases, what is discussed makes sense because it is standard-accepted practice or basic common business sense. Thus, its contribution to an already robust discussion is limited.
Instead of trying to do multiple things, my recommendation would be to focus on one concept. Be expansive in your discussion, provide examples, perhaps related it more to Slovakia or small-to-medium-sized businesses (which you provide numbers of and then also talk about the impact on larger enterprises), or even do some direct research/data gathering.
Right now, by trying to do everything in one paper, the result is something that superficial, sometimes incoherent and is not publishable.
Author Response
I redid the article; I made big changes to it. I edited the title, content, and structure of the article. I added new texts related to sustainability and sustainable development, added research, and researched activities in the field of sustainability and sustainable development in Europe and Slovakia. I tried to fulfill all your comments, your requirements.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
My main suggestions are as follows:
Please highlight the aim of your research in the introduction section.
Please also add in the introduction the research question and the research hypothesis, which will be later validated or invalidated.
At the end of the paper, a part of the template remained, please remove that part.
Please develop the results and discussion section with more data and empirical research , also develop and expand the research methods
At the end of the paper state the research limitation, conflicts of Interest .
Author Response
I redid the article; I made big changes to it. I edited the title, content, and structure of the article. I added new texts related to sustainability and sustainable development, added research, and researched activities in the field of sustainability and sustainable development in Europe and Slovakia. I tried to fulfill all your comments, your requirements.
Reviewer 4 Report
Sustainability in small and medium enterprises, Quality management in small and medium enterprises, Current market economy, its trends, and changes
The title does not make any sense to me and very long. Title requires complete change. I do not get any insight from the title and relate to the paper.
The work is very basic in nature and does not have any inferential aspects that can be generalized from the research. The biggest question is that the The work has only description and how to rationalize the description.
Research approach is weak and need complete redign.
Author Response
I redid the article; I made big changes to it. I edited the title, content, and structure of the article. I added new texts related to sustainability and sustainable development, added research, and researched activities in the field of sustainability and sustainable development in Europe and Slovakia. I tried to fulfill all your comments, your requirements.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The changes make this almost an entirely new paper rather than a revision of the previous paper. It is about 50 percent longer and has been reorganized and reordered. While that sounds like a critique, it is meant as a complement as it overcomes the shortcomings of the previous submission.
The paper still needs some work, however. Some of the new paragraphs (such as those beginning at Line 636 and Line 731) are hard-to-follow solid blocks of text. They need to be made into smaller paragraphs to enhance understanding. Likewise, line spaces would make it easier to follow the vector equation discussion (beginning at Line 691).
More importantly, the conclusion remains unchanged from the original version. And they still read ere written to place at the beginning of the paper (beginning “In this article, we will also focus …” – which is an odd construction at the end of a paper.). These should be expanded to highlight and interpret your important findings. And including some brief summarization of those findings – given the length of the paper – would be appropriate when noting the meaning of those findings.
Author Response
I made the relevant text adjustments in the article, as well as adjustments according to the template you commented on.
I also adjusted the text formatting according to the template.
I also greatly expanded the conclusion of the article, enlarged the conclusion with important research findings, and we interpreted the meaning of these findings.
Reviewer 3 Report
Suggestions:
Please respect the journal template. The footer is too small.
The introduction section is too short.
Table 4 should be replaced with a more visually appealing element.
I think that pages 7 and 8 contain too many paragraphs with bullets or numerators (markers), I think the article should be more cursive.
I think the paper could be structured much more appropriately.
Author Response
I made the relevant text adjustments in the article, as well as adjustments according to the template you commented on.
I also adjusted the text formatting according to the template.
I expanded the introduction of the article, the introduction of our article is more extensive, and the main topics and areas of the article are now described, specified, and specified more in the introduction.
The biggest change I made in the revision was the extensive addition of analysis and evaluation of research on the topic of sustainability in the Slovak Republic and Slovak companies to the article. This significantly lengthened the article and changed its structure of the article very significantly, which I consider appropriate from the point of view of the goals of the article.
Reviewer 4 Report
Title is not clear and adequate ...it is not clear presentation.
The topic is interesting but not very original since it has been covered extensively in the literature. Moreover, the analysis inspires little confidence. As well, I am concerned about the contribution, given the overlap with previous literature. As such, I do not find the paper publishable in its current form.
Author Response
I changed the title of the article, and supplemented the title of the article, the title now better describes the content, goals, and focus of the article.
I expanded the introduction of the article, the introduction of our article is more extensive, and the main topics and areas of the article are now described, specified, and specified more in the introduction.
The biggest change I made in the revision was the extensive addition of analysis and evaluation of research on the topic of sustainability in the Slovak Republic and Slovak companies to the article. This significantly lengthened the article and changed its structure of the article very significantly, which I consider appropriate from the point of view of the goals of the article.
I also greatly expanded the conclusion of the article, enlarged the conclusion with important research findings, and we interpreted the meaning of these findings.
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
You should be commended for the work you have done to improve this paper. I like the update abstract, introduction, and conclusions. That sets the stage and explains the findings – which were the main issues that I raised with the previous version of this paper.
About the only thing I saw was inconsistencies in capitalization of terms in Table 4: Overview of the development of Sustainable development indicators in EU countries in the period 2004-2015. I did not see any stated rational why sometimes it is “Growth” and other times it is “growth” – the same applies to “Decline” and “decline.” If there is no rationale, they should all be written in the same style (probably lower case as the majority are done that way). If there is a rationale, it needs to be fully explained so that it stands out. (See the resPro, Confid, and Birdx columns in the table on pages 16-17).
Other than that issue, I feel the paper is ready for publication.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments. Table 4 - By our mistake we left uppercase letters in table 4, everywhere in this table should be lowercase letters.
Reviewer 3 Report
I consider that the suggestions for changes have largely been achieved. Please check again the compliance with the journal template.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments.
I made several corrections related to the formal editing of the article, with references and formatting of the article according to the template.
Reviewer 4 Report
The title is too big and it can be restructured like;
Role of Sustainability, Quality, for sustainable development: A Study of Small and Medium Enterprises in Slovak Republic
Present form, it is not readable..
Many paragraphs are without citations..cite new and recent publications. Sustainability can be achieved with the help of technology.
You might find the following references useful
DOI: 10.4018/IJESMA.289633 https://doi.org/10.1007/s42943-021-00033-9
https://doi.org/10.1108/JEIM-10-2021-0442
: https://doi.org/10.2478/bsrj-2021-0003
Author Response
Thank you for your comments.
I have already changed and edited the title of the article twice. I now consider it appropriate; I would also change it according to your suggestion, but I considered that the other reviewers for the title of the article have no objections.
I also made several corrections related to the formal editing of the article, with references and formatting of the article according to the template
