Coupling and Coordination between Digital Economy and Urban–Rural Integration in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. This article sorts out the concept and development significance of digital economy and urban-rural integration in detail, which has certain reference value, but there are few references to relevant literature on the coordinated development path, driving mechanism, and development contradictions of the digital economy and urban-rural integration. The manuscript only uses "digital economy facilitates the urban-rural economic development by promoting the enhancement of production level and improvement of resource allocation efficiency." to clearly refer to the role of the digital economy in promoting urban and rural economic development. So, what should be the interactive relationship between the digital economy and urban-rural integration? Relevant research and the interaction between the two need to be further expanded.

 

2. There is a description error in the text explanation below Equation (15), please check carefully.

 

3. Regarding the overall frequency of occurrence of the obstacle factors in the urban-rural integration, Figure 5 should be cited instead of Figure 3.

 

4. On the basis of the conclusions obtained, the corresponding policy recommendations can be more specific.

Author Response

Dear reviewer :

Thank you very much for providing us with the opportunity to revise our manuscript. We are grateful to your insightful and helpful comments and suggestions on our paper. We have tried to do our best to revise the manuscript according to your suggestions. The changes have been used “track changes” within the manuscript, and highlighted using red color in this response letter.

The major revision of the manuscript including the improvement of the introduction part, data sources, and empirical results, conclusion and discussion sections. To make the manuscript clear enough for review, we did not highlight the corrections of the grammar error. We hope now the revised version has satisfactorily addressed all of your concerns, we also look forward any further suggestions and comments you may have. Thank you very much for your supervision of the reviewing process of our manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript investigates coupling and coordination between digital economy and urban-rural integration in China. This manuscript provides an interesting viewpoint, however, there are many short-backs should be improved.

 

1. The contents presented in the first section are too general to focus the real problems. The authors fail to clearly identify the relationship between digital economy and urban-rural integration. Authors should reasonably raise the research question with the support of practice and academical evidence. For example, authors should provide evidence of how the digital economy affects the development of urban-rural integration and how the effects are reflected.

2. The contents in the second section fails to clearly illustrate how the index system formulated. There are lacking academical evidence of how the indexes are selected. Particularly, it is quite confused me how the weights provided.

3. The credibility of the data is not tested, so the result analyses might seem unreasonable.

4. The organization of the manuscript should be improved. For example, the second section could be divided into index system formulation, data source and evaluation methods.

5. 4.1 should supplement contents of managerial insight and future research directions.

6. The Figure 1 in line 182 should be Table 1.

7. There is Chinese in Table 6.

8. Authors should cite more literature the-state-of-the-art.

Author Response

Dear reviewer :

Thank you very much for providing us with the opportunity to revise our manuscript. We are grateful to your insightful and helpful comments and suggestions on our paper. We have tried to do our best to revise the manuscript according to your suggestions. The changes have been used “track changes” within the manuscript, and highlighted using red color in this response letter.

The major revision of the manuscript including the improvement of the introduction part, data sources, and empirical results, conclusion and discussion sections. To make the manuscript clear enough for review, we did not highlight the corrections of the grammar error. We hope now the revised version has satisfactorily addressed all of your concerns, we also look forward any further suggestions and comments you may have. Thank you very much for your supervision of the reviewing process of our manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

1. The abstract has too much background material. The abstract should include information about the sample, the study period and the significance of the study, highlight the main findings of the paper, and explain the innovative points of the paper.

2. Separate the introduction and literature review into separate chapters, and then state the main contributions of the paper in the introduction and compare the main differences between this study and previous scholars in the literature review, and state the gaps filled by this paper.

3. the adaptability of the method needs to be highlighted, why the method is applicable and the need for comparative analysis with other methods.

4. A discussion section needs to be added to the results section to explain the differences between the results obtained in this paper and those of previous scholars and to explain why, and the comparison should not be limited to domestic. If there is no discussion section then the significance of this study is small. Delete the discussion section in the conclusion section.

5. The conclusion section has too much content and should summarize the conclusion of the paper.

6. The shortcomings and prospects of this paper should be added and subtracted from the conclusion.

7. There are  too many domestic references. The proportion of foreign authors should be increased to reflect the international nature of the topic.

8. The language of the paper needs to be revised to a moderate extent.

 

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer :

Thank you very much for providing us with the opportunity to revise our manuscript. We are grateful to your insightful and helpful comments and suggestions on our paper. We have tried to do our best to revise the manuscript according to your suggestions. The changes have been used “track changes” within the manuscript, and highlighted using red color in this response letter.

The major revision of the manuscript including the improvement of the introduction part, data sources, and empirical results, conclusion and discussion sections. To make the manuscript clear enough for review, we did not highlight the corrections of the grammar error. We hope now the revised version has satisfactorily addressed all of your concerns, we also look forward any further suggestions and comments you may have. Thank you very much for your supervision of the reviewing process of our manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read your paper. The paper “Coupling and Coordination between Digital Economy and Urban-rural Integration in China” is interesting for journal readers. But following changes should be done before the consideration to improve the quality of the paper:

Abstract: I suggest authors to rewrite the abstract to make it more constructive. Abstract should have at least one sentence per each: context and background, motivation, hypothesis, methods, results, conclusions. What new conclusions have the authors obtained? Need to reorganize the abstract.

The paper’s introduction section is not well organized therefore not well written at all. Too much reference has been cited in the introduction section which makes the reading uninteresting.

 I noticed that the article does not have the purpose. Where are research questions? The novelty of this paper is not described in detail. This should be put in the introduction section properly. 

Check the text and the references: [2], [5] (not Toe) in Line 54, [24], [25], [39], [40], [41].

Line 182, 187 – Check  Picture 1 or Table 1?

Line 277 – add what is the mean U in equation 6.

Line 292 - Add what is the mean V in equation 6.

The result and discussion section are very much disorganized. The authors should clearly state which studies are in line with their findings and which contradicts.

Provide managerial, theoretical and research implications.

Add the conclusion section in line with the research questions.

Include limitations and future research directions.

Authors need to check references style throughout the manuscript.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer’s Comments

 

Dear reviewer:

Thank you very much for providing us with the opportunity to revise our manuscript. We are grateful to your insightful and helpful comments and suggestions on our paper. We have tried to do our best to revise the manuscript according to your suggestions. The changes have been used “track changes” within the manuscript, and highlighted using red color in this response letter.

The major revision of the manuscript including the improvement of the introduction part, data sources, and empirical results, conclusion and discussion sections. To make the manuscript clear enough for review, we did not highlight the corrections of the grammar error. We hope now the revised version has satisfactorily addressed all of your concerns, we also look forward any further suggestions and comments you may have. Thank you very much for your supervision of the reviewing process of our manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

• I am very happy to see the quality of this article is greatly improved.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
How are you doing?

Thank you very much for your valuable comments and affirmative remarks.

In fact, your constructive work has not only greatly improved the quality of this paper, but will also have a profound impact on my academic career. I will be more rigorous and serious in my future work. And I will apply your guidance on thesis writing to my future writing.

Thank you again for your guidance and recognition.

Best wishes,

Jiacheng Man

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks authors to their great effort and the manuscript has been improved greatly. I think this revised manuscript should be further modified.

1) The word of hypotheses in line 70 may be unproperly used. In this part, authors should analyze the research gaps and raise research problems. Further, authors have not tested the hypotheses in this work. therefore, I think authors should rewrite this part further.

2) Fig. 1 should  be further checked.

Author Response

Dear reviewer:

Thank you very much for your recognition of our work. We appreciate your valuable and constructive comments. We highly value your comments and revise them carefully. These corrections have been made in the manuscript using "track changes" and are highlighted in red in this response letter. Again, we have not emphasized further changes to grammatical errors and formatting in order to make the manuscript clearer. We hope that the revised version has now satisfactorily addressed your concerns. We still look forward to any further suggestions and comments you may have. Thank you again for your monitoring of our manuscript review process.

Please see the document attached to this response for specific details.

Best wishes,

Jiacheng Man

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

accept

Author Response

Dear Reviewers,
How are you doing?
Thank you very much for your valuable comments and affirmative remarks.

In fact, your constructive work has not only greatly improved the quality of this paper, but will also have a profound impact on my academic career. I will be more rigorous and serious in my future work. And I will apply your guidance on thesis writing to my future writing.

Thank you again for your guidance and recognition.

Best wishes,

Jiacheng Man