Patents on Environmental Technologies and Environmental Sustainability in Spain

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

please see attachment

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Responses to the Comments

We are extremely thankful to respected Editors and reviewers for their interest in our work. The insightful comments of the reviewers improved our manuscript. They have brought up some good points, and we appreciate the opportunity to clarify our article. As indicated below, we have checked all the general, and specific comments provided by the reviewers and have made necessary changes accordingly to their indications.

The reviewer's suggestions and comments are in black, while our responses are in Red. All the necessary changes have been made in the updated manuscript and added sentences are painted yellow.

 

Reviewers' Comments to Author:

Reviewer: 1

The manuscript submitted for review addresses the exciting topic of the impact of intellectual property protection effectiveness on environmental technologies. The result studied is interesting from science and practice, and the conclusions can contribute to environmental protection. The structure of the manuscript and the literature selection are correct. However, I have a few comments. At the end of the Introduction section, please present the manuscript's structure (individual sections). This will improve the clarity of the paper.

Response: We have incorporated all suggestions into the updated version.

The theoretical section discusses environmentally technologies focusing mainly on technical aspects. Missing here is a section on human behavior, which, after all, ultimately affects the environment. Therefore, I suggest supplementing the manuscript with a passage where the authors highlight human behaviors that foster ecology and environmental protection. Such a link will enhance the quality of the theoretical part of the manuscript. I suggest using the most recent literature: https://doi.org/10.3390/en15051690 ; https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916517701796 ; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14061767 Please adapt the literature list to the MDPI guidelines. The current version does not comply with the guideline

Response:  According to the above valuable comment from the reviewer, we have also integrated the suggestion into the theoretical framework. We added  the human behavior side that influences environmental protection

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper deals with environmental sustainability and tries to reveal how several selected variables may influence it by using and ARDL approach. The authors should comply with some general requirements and maybe take into consideration some recommendations.

General requirements:

(1) Please change the in-text citation. Only the first one is made as requested by this journal (with square brackets), the others are with curly brackets { } which is not correct.

“The stable growth in greenhouse gas emissions is a consequence of human society, and this hurts food, lives, etc., ultimately hindering socio-economic activities and human lives [1].”

 

(2) Please signal the equations with parenthesis (1) and (2) and so on, not with square brackets as you will be using them for citations.

 

Recommendations

(1) Such type of a research paper, aiming to reveal relationships between variables of interest should definitely have a subsections in the methodology section, describing the research hypothesis. I am not referring to the hypothesis of the applied tests. For instance:

H1: GDP positively (or negatively as you consider) influences the environmental sustainability

H2: Energy consumption positively (or negatively as you consider) influences the….

H3: Trade openness positively (or negatively as you consider) influences environmental sustainability

H4 and so on.

Please take care as you are on a sensitive field. You are measuring environmental sustainability through carbon emissions as I understand. So, a good level of environmental sustainability is achieved with less carbon emissions. So, be careful when establishing the hypothesis.

After applying tests you will be able to find whether you reject or accept the hypotheses.

(2) Try to explain why choosing Spain for the analysis (and only Spain). A comparative analysis for Spain and some other similar countries as related to environmental sustainability would have given strength to this research.

(3) Try to explain why choosing CO₂  emissions as a proxy for environmental sustainability.

(4) Discussion part of the manuscript should focus on comparing the results of this research with results of previously published similar research. This part is completely missing in the manuscript and must be added in order to validate the results. I am do believe that some similar relationships between GDP (or trade openness) and environmental sustainability has been already researched in the literature for Spain.

Good luck with your future research

Author Response

Responses to the Comments

We are extremely thankful to respected Editors and reviewers for their interest in our work. The insightful comments of the reviewers improved our manuscript. They have brought up some good points, and we appreciate the opportunity to clarify our article. As indicated below, we have checked all the general, and specific comments provided by the reviewers and have made necessary changes accordingly to their indications.

The reviewer's suggestions and comments are in black, while our responses are in Red. All the necessary changes have been made in the updated manuscript and added sentences are painted yellow.

 

 

Review 2

This paper deals with environmental sustainability and tries to reveal how several selected variables may influence it by using and ARDL approach. The authors should comply with some general requirements and maybe take into consideration some recommendations.

General requirements:

(1) Please change the in-text citation. Only the first one is made as requested by this journal (with square brackets), the others are with curly brackets { } which is not correct.

“The stable growth in greenhouse gas emissions is a consequence of human society, and this hurts food, lives, etc., ultimately hindering socio-economic activities and human lives [1].”

 

Response: According to the above valuable comment from the reviewer. We have removed {}and replaced []

 

(2) Please signal the equations with parenthesis (1) and (2) and so on, not with square brackets as you will be using them for citations.

Response: According to the above valuable comment from the reviewer,we  have removed the square brackets and replaced with parenthesis.

Recommendations

(1) Such type of a research paper, aiming to reveal relationships between variables of interest should definitely have a subsections in the methodology section, describing the research hypothesis. I am not referring to the hypothesis of the applied tests. For instance:

H1: GDP positively (or negatively as you consider) influences the environmental sustainability

H2: Energy consumption positively (or negatively as you consider) influences the….

H3: Trade openness positively (or negatively as you consider) influences environmental sustainability

H4 and so on.

Please take care as you are on a sensitive field. You are measuring environmental sustainability through carbon emissions as I understand. So, a good level of environmental sustainability is achieved with less carbon emissions. So, be careful when establishing the hypothesis.

After applying tests you will be able to find whether you reject or accept the hypotheses.

Response: According to the above valuable comment from the reviewer, we have incorporated hypothesis into our study.

(2) Try to explain why choosing Spain for the analysis (and only Spain). A comparative analysis for Spain and some other similar countries as related to environmental sustainability would have given strength to this research.

 

Response: Thank you very much for raising the valid point.We have integrated the reason why we chose Spain for analysis.

(3) Try to explain why choosing CO₂  emissions as a proxy for environmental sustainability.

Response: According to the above valuable comment from the reviewer, we have incorporated the reason for carbon emissions as a proxy for environmental sustainability in our introduction.

(4) Discussion part of the manuscript should focus on comparing the results of this research with results of previously published similar research. This part is completely missing in the manuscript and must be added in order to validate the results. I am do believe that some similar relationships between GDP (or trade openness) and environmental sustainability has been already researched in the literature for Spain.

Response: According to the above valuable comment from the reviewer, we have incorporated the above comments.

 

Good luck with your future research

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I appreciate taking into account the recommendations, as I checked the paper and saw the improvements.

The paper can be published in the special issue.

With kind thoughts!