Adoption of Big Data Analytics and Its Impact on Organizational Performance in Higher Education Mediated by Knowledge Management
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article is authoritative and soundly presented. It takes an interesting issue and establishes the conditions for organisations under which AI and big data analytics can make their best contributions.
I have no recommendations for changes, except for one possible addition. On page 2 the authors sketch lightly potential uses for BDA. It is unclear from the paper whether the different HEIs explored take the same approach to BDA or have adopted it for the same ends. There is reference in the conclusion to how some departments rather than entire HEIs have used BDA. Could we therefore have some more about the uses to which BDA are put?
Author Response
The authors would like to thank the area editor and the reviewers for their precious time and invaluable comments. We have carefully addressed all the comments.
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper explores several factors related to knowledge management, which may have impact on organizational performance, using data from 265 members of universities in Latin America. Unfortunately, the scope of the paper is not clear. Authors should write clearly the goal of their work (WHAT question), as well as why this work is important (WHY question). The abstract should be improved accordingly. However, the methodology is accepted. In section 5, the results should be linked with the goal of the work (WHAT question), and their significance should be emphasized (WHY question).
Author Response
The authors would like to thank the area editor and the reviewers for their precious time and invaluable comments. We have carefully addressed all the comments.
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Pros:
- The topic is interesting and up-to-date.
- The paper reports the situation from an area (Latin America) which was so far underreported in this topic.
- The authors gathered data from a diverse survey group consisting of respondents from many Latin American countries.
- The chosen approach (TOE-based) is properly chosen, and processing of survey results seems to be done according to the standards.
Cons:
The authors do not explain how the survey participants were selected.
Moreover, as the study is about the management of HEIs, the inclusion of non-management personnel in the survey is dubious.
The authors could defend their selection of survey participants by showing there was no significant correlation between the respondents' position and their survey answers.
If there was, this calls for a deeper explanation.
The authors do not provide the actual questionnaire they used. They mention the work [103] as the source of "the original" which hardly makes any sense as the research reported in that work uses different constructs, and there is no questionnaire included there either.
The paper contains a number of statements which are misleading, wrongly referenced or simply untrue.
Already in the abstract we read that "Higher education institutions are challenged to improve the quality of teaching, consulting, and research production that they offer, to compete in a market that has become increasingly competitive since the start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and its variants, which has driven the use of virtual education environments". No source is given to prove that the market for HEIs "has become increasingly competitive since the start of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic" (it does not seem to be true for many countries) and the authors do not explain what they mean by the "variants" of "SARS-CoV-2 pandemic".
In the Introduction we read that "BDA can enable academic and learning analytics to improve the quality of education or optimize the curriculum (...) [15,16,17]", but in reality, none of this sources proves the positive impact of BDA on the quality of education or reports any improvements of the curriculum ([15] is about the role of BDAC merely in enabling of DDDM, [16] found out "that application of risk and security and predictive analytics to higher education fields is still in its infancy", so the potential benefits of BDA are not proven in this work, and [17] proves only the positive impact of using the concept mapping technique on the learning outcomes).
According to the authors, "the bulk of scientific literature related to BDA and KM processes has been conducted in advanced countries [15,30,41]" but in reality, [15] is about the situation in Malaysia, which is a developing country (at least according to the UN and Malaysian government sources), [30] is about the situation in India, which is also a developing country, and [41] is about Pakistan which is once again a developing country.
Some statements are unclear, e.g.:
"BDA implementation is currently taking place in some study faculties and not at the HEI-wide level, generating research laboratories that have not required direct top management support or a large investment in resources."
- what does it mean "generating research laboratories" ?
Also, there is no mention of this phenomenon (implementation of BDA at the level of faculty and not at the level of HEI as a whole) earlier in the paper.
Missing word:
"twenty respondents different HEIs"
Author Response
The authors would like to thank the area editor and the reviewers for their precious time and invaluable comments. We have carefully addressed all the comments.
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper can be published. The authors improved the abstract to clearly show the purpose of the research and its significance. In addition, they added a new paragraph at the conclusion to emphase their contribution to the field.
Author Response
The authors would like to thank the area editor and the reviewers for their precious time and invaluable comments.
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for the corrections.
Point 1: Supporting your choice of respondents with literature is right, but the sentence you added needs modification as its syntactically incorrect and completely unclear:
337 "It was taken into consideration both practitioners involved in and managers of big data analytics initiatives in HEIs according to that indicated by Chaurasia et al. [16], since it allows to obtain better results on the factors that may influence the adoption of BDA."
First of all, either the sentence is missing a verb (e.g., "It was taken into consideration [to include] both..."), or it should be changed to active voice (e.g., "We took into consideration both...").
Secondly, what is actually Chaurasia et al. suggesting? Please make it clear and separate it to another sentence, as now you are mixing two thoughts.
Point 2: Thank you for explanation. I still do not think the passage is now clear and I'd suggest making it clear for the reader by adding:
to verify its consistency [103] in comparison with the original
->
to verify its consistency with the original (following the procedure described in [103])
Point 3: Thank you for removing dubious statement from the abstract beginning, but the choice of wording in the new phrase is bad.
What is the "market" you are writing about? And how can a market (i.e., a place to buy or sell) "increase the use of digital environments" ?
I'd agree that higher education institutions could do that but not the market.
And one full stop is enough.
Point 4: You seem to not understand the problem here.
If you specify a reference for a statement, the reference should confirm that the statement is true.
This is not the case of your references.
The statements you quoted in your reply are taken from introductions to [16] and [17] (I could not locate the quote in [15] but I suppose it is in similar context) and they are supported with external references there.
To put it in simple terms, if Mr. X said that Mr. Y proven Z you cannot credit Mr. X with proving Z.
Please change the references to proper ones.
Points 5, 6, 7: Thank you for the correction.
Author Response
The authors would like to thank the area editor and the reviewers for their precious time and invaluable comments. We have carefully addressed all the comments.
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
