University-Industry Cooperation: A Peer-Reviewed Bibliometric Analysis
, Amélia Carvalho 3, Carlos Machado dos Santos 4, Margarida Rodrigues 2, Galvão Meirinhos 5 and Rui Silva 4,6,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)
- The authors write “analyse” and “analyse” in different moments. Uniformize the expression;
- The authors write “Table” and “Figure” in capital letters (firs letter) and in lower caps letter. Uniformize it, please;
- Page 1: “According to Martínez-Noya and Narula (2018)…”. The authors write the author names and year, instead of the paper number. Verify it;
- Page 3: Idem for Franco et al. (2015);
- Page 5: Idem for Krücken… (2007), Alves et al. (2015) and Zhou et al. (2016);
- Section 2: The way that section 2 is organized, it sounds a bit repetitive. Try to reorganize in a different way, to avoid the same ideas repetition (e.g. “technology transfer” appears in 5 ot 6 different parts of section 2);
- Page 6:
o The authors write the author names and year (Xiao and Watson, 2019), instead of the paper number. Moreover, immediately after, the authors write [46], but this paper is not the n.º 46. I suppose Xiao et al. is not on the list of references. Verify it;
o “[50] and”, instead of “[50]and”;
- Page 7:
o “[55], [56]” have a different kind of letter;
o The authors write the author names and year (Liberati et al, 2009), and the paper n.º. Verify, please;
o I suppose that Figure 1 is not completed. Please, verify it. What I see is this:
- Page 8:
o The authors write the author names (Tranfield et al.) and the n.º. Verify, please;
- Page 9 (line 249):
o “Table 2”, instead of “Table 1”;
o Correct the Table number (line 252);
o The authors need to renumber all the Tables;
- Page 11:
o The authors said that in 2015, the number of publications is 33 (line 263). But in line 277, they say that the articles published in 2015 is 271. The authors must clarify what is the different between publications (33) and articles (271);
- Page 12:
o Table 3 (and not Table 2): I suggest the authors to consider only 2 decimals, instead of 3 (the same for the following Tables;
o I suggest also to consider cumulate %;
o The text of the 1st sentence is not aligned after the Table;
o Text from line 307 to 311 has a point size of the font different;
- Page 13:
o Table 4 (and not Table 3);
o Line 313:
o In the first place 313: “we have Lukasik E. and Skubluewska-Paszkowska with 6 publications (about 5%)”. The number 6 is for each other and the 5% is for the 2 (cumulative %). Please, write in a clearer way, being consistent;
- Page 14:
o Review the text: “shown in figure 3. So, in Figure 3…” and “authors who have circled in their row, this means that…”;
- Page 15:
o The “Figure below…”. Identify the number of the figure;
- Page 16:
o Introduce Figure 5 (in the text) before the respective Figure;
o I suppose the authors can improve the comments about Figure 5 (more completed);
- Section 5 and 6: I suggest that section 6 be included in section 5 (conclusion, limitations and future research)
- References:
- See the way you present the following references: [46], [63], [67].
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for contributing to the improvement of our article. Your help has been fundamental in making this research better and with more quality.
Best Regards
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
The article is controversial and replicates patterns.
The authors claim that university-industry cooperation is increasingly being studied, and of course it is a general trend that all kinds of research on every area is increasing. It's an inevitable consequence of ever-increasing scholarship that all topics are being studied more often and more frequently at a strongly incremental rate.
The study presented by the authors deals with the published literature with the distribution of publications of the most productive authors, the best manuscripts by citations, total citations by country, countries of the corresponding author, the network of the corresponding author, the most relevant keywords and finally the most relevant keyword network.
Completely missing from the article is a defense of the position of why such a method was chosen by the authors.
The authors conducted a literature review and mapping as part of their adopted methodology, selecting some random and random publications in the research area from Web of Science databases.
The authors try to convince that the literature mapping provided an overview of what was studied in the "University-Industry Cooperation" application.
Perhaps - but the justification and proof is too sparse.
An additional difficulty is that the publications are from a geographically narrow area. Admittedly, we know from the authors' work that the most research in this area has been conducted in China, in first place, the US in second place, and Spain in third place. But at the same time, the literature list shows an overrepresentation from another geographic area. It is hard to believe that western Russia, eastern Germany and northern Hungary are the world hegemon in the field of "University-Industry Cooperation," and the publications dominating the authors' work seem to indicate such a geographical area of the world's best publications selected for the study. This may be the case, but it would be necessary for the authors to carry out proof of such a claim.
The authors' current findings are in line with the literature review, cooperation between universities and industry can facilitate knowledge transfer and stimulate the production of new knowledge, innovative process and technology.
The article, which is more of an ideological mantra than a scientific study, repeats the popular slogan: "We cannot separate university from industry, nor industry from university."
Utter nonsense. Universities are autonomous from industry. Universities are supposed to conduct basic scientific research, most of which will find application in industry two or three decades after it is done.
Industry has no way to wait for that.
That's why any merging of universities with industry leads to changing the university into a peripheral industry school with minimal knowledge.
That's what trade schools, vocational schools, or primitive apprenticeships at the lowest level are for. That's what training companies are for, not universities.
These are two separate worlds.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for contributing to the improvement of our article. Your help has been fundamental in making this research better and with more quality.
Best Regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
Thank you for the opportunity to read the paper. It is an interesting toping and I consider it fits to the journal. The article reports on a very interesting study that may reach large audiences. The article is very well organized, in conceptual and methodological terms, and presents very relevant results.
Within the limits of the possibilities, the following mapping can be done:
- Mapping of journal co-citations
- Mapping of institutions’ co-citations
Table 1 is passed by twice: Table 1 - List of items and search criteria and Table 1: Final database inormation (information!!!!)
The bibliography is up to date, but I also recommend the following source:
Radu, V., Radu, F., Tabirca, A.I., Saplacan, S.I. and Lile, R., 2021. Bibliometric Analysis of Fuzzy Logic Research in International Scientific Databases. International Journal of Computers, Communications & Control, 16(1).
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for contributing to the improvement of our article. Your help has been fundamental in making this research better and with more quality.
Best Regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
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This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article suggests a current and attractive topic for academia. The effort made is evident, but it requires very profound adjustments, both in the theory presented and the methodology. I hope you find the following observations useful:
Abstract: You must sell the idea of your article; it is too simple and does not catch the reader's attention.
Keywords: You should revise them. They do not correctly expose the content of the study.
Form: They are not related to the journal's standards. The configuration of the content, form and content should be corrected. As well as the use of references. Use mendeley or Zotero.
Introduction
1) In general terms, you should revise the introduction. It presents irrelevant information that deviates from the main topic, "University-Industry Cooperation". It shows few references and a lot of unsubstantiated text, which is incompatible for a prestigious journal. The reading seems like an academic essay with some concepts without references and not a scientific article.
2) You should state the general objective you present in your study.
3) You should indicate the importance of the study you present to the academy. What is the contribution to the academy; I want to be a bit clearer. What is so interesting about this topic that other readers (around the world) would want to read it? and even cite it?
4) You should indicate the importance of this study to the academy. For example, what is the contribution to the academy; has a similar study been carried out?
5) It is necessary to state how the article is going to be divided (number of sections) and what each of them comprises.
Methodology
6) The usual methodology when a bibliometric study is present, requires a systematic protocol that allows the study to be reproducible and reliable. This is essential to make your study sound. You must identify what your inclusion and exclusion arguments were so that this study is systematic and repeatable. The process should be transparent, which is mandatory for bibliometric studies, and if possible, include a diagram explaining the process.
7) It is necessary to explain with references why it is important to carry out a bibliometric study. In other words, what does this type of study provide me with when the classic thing is to carry out a literature review. In addition, you should explain what bibliometrics is.
8) Why do you use Web of Science if there are other important databases such as Scopus, Dimensions, among others. Again, use arguments and references to defend your idea.
9) You should indicate the date when the records were downloaded from the database.
10) Preferably state the search equation so that the study is reproducible and transparent. This is mandatory in bibliometric studies.
11) Lines 202 - 203 is a valid procedure but needs to be better written for the reader's understanding and supported by references. I have attached some examples that may be useful. Pico-Saltos et al. 2021. 10.3390/su13094625; Caputo et al. 2018. 10.1108/IJCMA-02-2018-0027
12) Figure 1, is erroneous. The figure in the methodology should be about the steps performed to obtain reliable information. See numeral 6.
13) You should explain the usefulness of Excel and Bibliometrix. What are they? What are they for? And what type of analysis is required? What other studies have used them?
Results
The analyses are weak and do not reflect the analysis that a bibliometric study combined with a literature review should present. If you offer a literature review, you should extract important information not only from the txt file obtained in a general way but also from the content of the documents. Review similar examples such as Herrera-Franco et al. 2022. 10.3390/geosciences12040169; Rialti et al. 2019. 10.1108/MD-07-2018-0821. Beyond repeating the information in the figures and tables, it should provide useful information for the reader. I set out in detail what is indicated:
14) Table 1, should be revised. It indicates that the time spam is 1970 - 2020, but the first article is 1983 (lines 216 - 218), and figure 2 indicates the opposite.
15) The analysis (lines 231 - 236) does not show a clear contribution to academia; it is designed as a scholarly report. In this time, what topics have been developed? Are there any outstanding papers? Was there an abrupt change in scientific production due to some phenomenon?
16) Lines 245 - 259. In relation to the countries, what issues do CHINA and USA share? Why have these issues been discussed between developed countries? With which other countries does CHINA share publications? Etc. Authors should be creative in providing valuable information to the reader rather than repeating the information in the table.
17) The analysis of the authors is questionable. Perhaps a comparison between production and citation could help. Now who they are, table 3 should be informative, including affiliation, country affiliation, local publications, global publications and h-index.
18) If you present table 3, figure 3 is irrelevant.
19) The authors of Figures 3 and 4 disagree. There is an obvious error.
20) In figure 4, you should explain how to read the figure. At first glance, there seems to be an error. Portugal has a significant contribution, but in table 2 it is sixth with few contributions.
21) In Figure 8, there are apparent errors because the data was not cleaned. For example, it reads "c. (corresponding author)" in the centre.
22) Revise the analysis of figures 8 - 10.
Discussion and conclusions
23) The discussion section lives up to its name because it discusses the results found. Here you should cross-check the figures and tables presented as generalisations of your study against the theory to determine whether there are aspects that can be used to affirm existing theory or to present new findings. Unfortunately, you present a lot of information that is not found in the analyses presented.
24) Conclusions should be brief and highlight important findings, limitations or future lines of research. References should not be displayed unless it is an extraordinary case.
Author Response
The authors thank the reviewer for the comments. Please see the attachment for the reply.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for the overview of the past and recent trend in UI-C. Your article is very descriptiv and it seems that you conducted the analysis just because you were able to do so and not out of the urgent need to provide a review on the topic. I am not sure whether it is of relevance to know the most productive authors and how they are interlinked. What else did these author publish? You could use their publications that you did not match to enlargen your dataset. It seems that you cover University-Industry Cooperation in a very strict sense. However, terms such as "collaboration" or "academic sector" would yield further relevant matches. Please argue why you did not include the term "collaboration" in your search.
I would have expected that you created the review according to the PRISMA statement. Please have a look on it: http://www.prisma-statement.org/
The following sentence is erroneous:
It is noteworthy the productivity of Peru that manages to surpass Japan in the 248 ten countries that published the most in the period under study.
Plononia. -> Do you mean Poland?
The caption of Figure 4 is poor. Pleas provide more information.
Innovation, Kmowledge, Performance; -> Knowledge
Lukasik or Lukassik? What is the correct spelling?
With the purpose to presenting an overview -> to present an overview
"are published in high quality journals in the area and tend to be highly cited." ->
This conclusion is not supported by your data analysis. You could think of providing a citation analysis of the 256 papers or showing at least the top journals.
Author Response
The authors thank the reviewer for the comments. Please see the attachment for the reply.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The effort is evident but requires some adjustments to the manuscript to consider moving to the next phase.
The main problem is that the manuscript offers a literature review, but the results do not demonstrate this. In addition, the literature on the subject is sparse. The analyses, in general, remain poor despite the recommendations made.
I hope you find the following observations useful:
Introduction
1) You should state the overall objective you present in your study.
2) You should indicate the relevance of the study you are presenting to the academy. What is the contribution to the academy; I want to be a bit clearer. What is so interesting about it those other readers (around the world) would want to read it? and even cite it?
3) You should indicate the importance of the study you present to the academy. For example, what is the contribution to the academy; has a similar study been carried out?
4) It is necessary to state how the article will be divided (number of sections) and what each comprises.
Materials and Methods
5) Check the spelling of Figure 1.
6) Lines 228 - 230. Requires a reference to validate that type of filter used.
7) References from lines 234 - 235 are wrong.
8) Table 1. In "Query Link", the search should be displayed, not the link. Not all readers have access to this database.
9) In table 1, what do you mean by "seriation by research category". If they applied it, then there must be fewer papers. Where is this to be found?
10) Lines 245 - 248. It is not interesting to expose the document's title; the exciting thing would be to reveal what it is about.
11) Figure 2 is poor. Edit and give better treatment to the data.
12) It is necessary to explain with references why it is important to carry out a bibliometric study. In other words, what does this type of study provide me with when the classic thing is to carry out a literature review. In addition, you should explain what bibliometrics is.
13) Why do you use Web of Science if there are other important databases such as Scopus, Dimensions, among others. Again, use arguments and references to defend your idea.
14) Preferably state the search equation so that the study is reproducible and transparent. This is mandatory in bibliometric studies.
Results
Beyond repeating the information in the figures and tables, it should provide useful information for the reader. In other words, the results of the literature review provided in the document should be seen in depth. However, it is not a review as it is exposed because they have only considered about six documents in the analysis of the subject.
Some information is set out below:
15) In the analyses (lines 260 - 265) it does not show a clear contribution to academia; it is designed as a scholarly report. What topics have been developed during this time? Are there any outstanding papers? Was there an abrupt change in scientific production due to some phenomenon?
16) Lines 272- 296. It is a good intention to explain the relationship between China and the United States. The idea is that they expose what the main issues between the different countries (at least the main ones) are. The analysis is incomplete. Do not repeat the data in the table. Now you can be guided by figure 9, where you can see the major relationships. Here comes the question, is this figure too much? Or complement your analysis in country contribution but in the respective section.
17) The analysis of figure 3 is poor. What can you say about these authors? Anything relevant?
18) Review the analysis of figures 5 - 9.
Discussion
19) The discussion section lives up to its name, because here you discuss the results you have found. Here you should cross-reference the figures and tables presented as generalisations of your study with the theory to determine whether aspects can be used to affirm the existing theory or present new findings. Unfortunately, a lot of information is not found in the analyses presented. Particularly those figures that are criticised.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer, thanks for your great job and enforces to give me ideas and good advice to improve the paper.
We made several changes to the paper in several sections. Your calls for attention were very important to improve the article.
See please, the changes in red colour + highlighted in yellow
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for the marjor revision of your manuscript. It is much improved although there are now more grammar and spelling mistakes.
I am still not satisfied with the figure captions and the descriptive character of the study. Isn't is possible to provide more information on the content of the abstracts dealing with IUC and how it may have changed over time?
Web of Science is owned by Clarivate Analytics and not Thomson Reuters.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer, thanks for your great job and enforces to give me ideas and good advice to improve the paper.
We made several changes to the paper in several sections. Your calls for attention were very important to improve the article.
See please, the changes in red colour + highlighted in yellow
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript suggests a current and attractive topic for academia. The effort is evident, but unfortunately, it has serious errors throughout the manuscript that compromise the integrity of the manuscript and the reputation of the reviewers and this journal.
These problems are outlined below for authors to remember when editing the manuscript.
1) Maintains errors in references. Authors should carefully check the references used. You cannot place references that do not justify what is proposed in the manuscript. This conduct is unethical and repudiated in the academic world. Here are some examples:
- Line 182. "These phases were corroborated by Xiao and Watson (2019) [46]"... but it appears in the references "X. Dai, J. Wu, L. Yan, Q. Zhang, F. Ruan, and D. Wang, "Industrial Structure..."
- Lines 181-182. "In addition, the methodological procedures defined by [45] were also followed, namely: planning, development, and presentation of results". But the names in Tranfield's document are entirely different.
- Lines 190-191. "Therefore, bibliometric analysis adopts a mixed methodology to provide qualitative and quantitative assessment of a given area of interest". The reference mentions that bibliometrics "evaluate trends", "played a fundamental role", but does not mention what the authors wrote.
- Line 196. "the use of this database is justified by its exponential recognition as a database with only peer-reviewed articles [54]": The reference in question never justified the use of the Web of Science.
- Line 214. "This method has been used by other researchers [58]-[61]". The sentence refers to the prism method. Reference [59] Aria & Cuccurullo do not use PRISMA but instead use the procedure proposed by Zupic & Cater. Reference [61] does not use PRISMA.
- Among others.
Other problems:
1) Abundant grammatical and spelling errors. A native English speaker should proofread the manuscript. Also, it has many sentences in passive voice, while in scientific articles, it should be in active voice.
2) Abstract: It is abundant. It would help if you summarized it according to the recommended limit suggested by the journal. Remove "using the keyword "University-Industry Cooperation".
3) Keywords: Delete "Systematic Literature Review". The study is not an SLR.
4) Line76. (2) Which are the most cited references?. Are you referring to journal articles? Because there is no analysis of references in the manuscript. These questions should be listed as RQ1, etc.
(5) Line79. "Therefore, the contribution of this study..." should be a separate paragraph.
6) Review other articles and better articulate lines 85-86.
7) Lines 188 - 189. Repeat the same sentences and references. "the steps followed are clear [49]", "obtained are clear [49]". The authors mention transparency, replicability and synthesizing the results, but not "Clear". Not force references.
8) The size of the figures is disproportionate. There are tiny or prominent figures. No uniform.
9) The labelling of tables and figures does not comply with the journal's standards.
