Barriers, Challenges, and Requirements for ICT Usage among Sub-Assistant Agricultural Officers in Bangladesh: Toward Sustainability in Agriculture

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks a lot for this contribution. It is valuable - giving a lot of insights.

Would not it be more appropriate to use no abbreviations in the title?
What is meant with informants? Is it the appropriate term?

Line 265. What is the title and where starts the next paragraph?
Figure 2: Title before the diagram.
Table 3 has a dot at the end of the title - the other tables not.

 

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

1. The abstract and the introduction are very well expressed in the main question of the research. 2. As it is the first detailed study, the paper is very well founded to fill a gap in this field of research. This paper provides important original contributions to the literature. 3. It is the first detailed study - as mentioned above. 4. The research methodology is good, maybe some points on its limitation can be made. These limitations shall be considered in the further research outlined. 5. An improvement would be to better summarize the results. Based on my experience, in the conclusion there are no citations (that shall be considered in the discussion part). Please check this with the Journal. 6. References provide a fair summary of the major points in the relevant literature. 7. Please check on the guidelines of the Journal, spotted Line 265. What is the title and where starts the next paragraph? Figure 2: Title before the diagram. Table 3 has a dot at the end of the title - the other tables not

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The abstract and the introduction are very well expressed. The content of the article is very well founded, with relevance for the chosen field of study. However, the conclusions are NOT at all related to the content of the research. I ask the authors to summarize the results of the research and express ways to follow in the future. Also, from my point of view, no citations or references should appear in the conclusions section. THE CONCLUSIONS SHOULD REFLECT THE RESULTS OBTAINED from the research carried out. I recommend to review the conclusions.

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

The article is devoted to the analysis of the use of information and computer technologies by junior agricultural workers in Bangladesh. The article is of interest (albeit local, for a single country). The article has the following shortcomings that must be addressed for its publication. First, it needs to be shortened, 29 pages is too much for the reader, information and graphics are of the same type, do not allow duplication. Leave about 15-16 pages. Lots of generalities and few specifics. What information technologies are used, what tasks are solved? Please add the circuits that I will write about below.

 

1) Describe at the beginning of the article (in the introduction) - who are the assistant agricultural workers (SAAO). Did you introduce this concept? Or it was invented before you, then you need a link. Describe the functional responsibilities of these specialists. Because it is not clear to the reader. I realized that this is a student or young specialist with an IT education who advises a farmer or a representative of an agricultural holding on IT. This is true?  

2) In the literature review, add an overview of information technologies, software, hardware (sensors, controllers, robotic platforms, etc.) that are used to solve various problems in agriculture in Bangladesh and other countries.  

3) Lines 180-187 present the purpose and objectives of the work. It is better to present tasks (I-V) as a list. Formulate the goal in this form - improvement, increase in efficiency, decrease in costs, increase in quality, etc.  

4) Materials and methods. The methodology should be improved by adding mind maps/graphs and additional explanations.  

5) Nothing is said about the nature of the information that agricultural workers need. These are directories, crop cultivation technologies, agricultural news in Bangladesh, world agricultural news, catalogs of new agricultural equipment, fertilizers, feed, repair base, addresses of suppliers and consumers, maps, weather forecasts, etc. Please , structure this information, present it in the form of a diagram and describe it, you can also present a diagram -% of the use of the type of information.  

6) What tasks are solved in agriculture with the use of ICT? Crop forecasting, crop programming, robotic harvesting, other robotic operations (cutting, spraying, weeding, etc.), calculation of the optimal number of agricultural equipment, calculation of the optimal feed composition, soil temperature and moisture monitoring, forecasts, management of technological parameters on agricultural objects, etc. Nothing is said about this.  

7) Provide a diagram of information technologies, software, hardware that are used to solve the problem of applying ICT in agriculture in Bangladesh.  

8) There are not enough maps, only one map is shown, showing 4 regions and sub-regions. It would be nice to illustrate your results on maps (diagrams overlaid on a map). You can also show barriers on the maps - mobile coverage of the regions under consideration, language barriers, development of IT areas in agriculture in each of the regions that are being studied (where point farming is developed, where robots are introduced, where nothing is developed from IT, etc. .)  

9) Table 3 is also better presented in the form of a diagram, it will be clearer.  

10) Describe the model (lines 243-256) in more detail, number the formulas, imagine its implementation - what do we get in the end, what is it for？

11) It is advisable to present the results of statistical processing in graphical form, possibly from the programs in which you processed (STATISTICA, EXCEL, R, etc.), and indicate in which program the processing was performed.

12) Please reduce the discussion section to 1 page. There is no need to do a continuation of the literature review. Write what the results of your research gave you and what are its prospects, what are the directions for further research. And again - what areas of ICT are promising for use in agriculture in Bangladesh

 

13) Link the findings with the goals and objectives. What specifically improves your research over previous ones?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments are in the file.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

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