The Digital Economy Empowers the Sustainable Development of China’s Agriculture-Related Industries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The biggest limitations of the submitted article include:

1) The introduction lacks the main aim of the paper and the research tasks. The authors as well should present the structure of the study and indicate what the article contributes to theory and practice.

2) In the "Literature review", the authors should refer to the research results of foreign researchers as well (the issue addressed is very current worldwide). There is also a lack of references to other articles that have appeared in "Sustainability".

3) The definition of "digital economy industries" should be included in the literature review section.

4) The fourth part should be entitled "Results and discussion". In the reviewer's opinion, discussion does not mean concluding on the research conducted and recommendations, as the authors did, but referring to previous research and entering into a possible polemic with it.

5) The summary lacks limitations of the research conducted and future research directions.

6) The paper lacks literature references (see lines 47, 67, 80, 98). 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Review Report

The manuscript “The Digital Economy Empowers the Sustainable Development of China's Agriculture Related Industries: Based on the Perspective of Industrial Relevance” is dealing with the integration trend of China's agriculture related industries and digital economy industries using China's noncompetitive input‒output data from 2002 to 2017.

Authors analyzed the coordination of the digital economy industry and the transformation of agriculture industry with the help of the grey correlation method. The MS is addressing an interesting aspect of linkage between various industries. Please find below some suggestions to improve and increase the readability of MS:

            Title:

1.     Title of the MS “The Digital Economy Empowers the Sustainable Development of China's Agriculture Related Industries: Based on the Perspective of Industrial Relevance” is quite long and may be shortened to make it attractive for the readers.

Abstract:

2.     Page #1, line # 7-8, sentence is started from word “And” which is not common word to start a sentence. Please rephrase the sentence and please use an appropriate word to start the sentence.

3.     Page #1, line # 7-8, APL model, what does it mean? Please avoid using abbreviations in the abstract or indicate its complete name at first use.

Introduction:

4.     Page #2, line # 73, “initially used mainly for” meaning s not clear, authors are requested please rephrase the sentence.

5.     Page #2, line # 81-82, “industry has entered a period of rapid development” should be replaced as “industry has entered into a period of rapid development”.

6.     Page #2, line # 84, “According to Niu” should be replaced as “According to Niu [8]……….” and also delete [8] written at the end of the sentence on line #86

7.     Page #2, line # 91, “environmentally friendly” should be replaced as “environment friendly”

8.     Page #2, line # 92-94, correct the citation as indicated earlier at point 6.

9.     Page #2, line # 95, the sentence “will move us from only smart farms only to the internet of smart farms” meanings are not clear so please rephrase it.

10.  Page #3, line # 98, correct the citation style as indicated earlier at point 6.

11.  Page #3, line # 102, correct the citation style as indicated earlier at point 6.

12.  Page #3, line # 105, correct the citation style as indicated earlier at point 6.

13.  Page #3, line # 105, “In view of this, this study measures the integration development of China's…….” may be placed as “In view of this, the current study measures the integration and development of China's….”

M&M

14.  Page #3, line # 127, please add the citation of National Bureau of statistics.

Discussion:

15.  Overall, the discussion part is lacking citation support and should be supported with citation.

16.   Moreover, the discussion is divided into conclusions and recommendation, but why? discuss the results with citation support while conclusions and recommendations may be separated if the authors feel it appropriate.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

1.   This paper presents analyses few important indicators of China including SDGs, agriculture, and digital economy, etc. Overall quality is good, however, multiple issues need to be fixed before publication process. My comments and suggestions are following:

2.   Abstract should be revised considering write up, conciseness, and clarity. Practical policy implications should be provided (at least one). It can be shortened by deleting some background information.

3.   Introduction section is too short, it does not convince about real problem statement and rationale. This may also because of a separate lite review section.

4.   Thus, I feel a separate lit rev section is unnecessary. Merge with introduction section. Do not provide a separate literature review section as it is not an economic study, merge it with the introduction, write story like and explain as a complete and thorough case.

5.   Many earlier studies in China have used input-output table for such studies, what and how is it different than the previously published studies?

6.   Why this period has been selected for study (methodology section)? What’s specific reason?

7.   How were data sorted? How were they made sure that data are clean and reasonable to use?

8.   Discussion section cannot be of conclusions. A separate and concrete discussion is needed. Please revise. Do not add conclusions and recommendations under this section.

9.   Policy implications section is way too large, reduce it to a paragraph and only bring out most significant and targeted polices.

10.  Look for redundancy of the references if any.

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have taken into account the comments made by me. I make no new.

Reviewer 3 Report

Acceptable.