The Sustainability Matrix: A Tool for Integrating and Assessing Sustainability in the Bachelor and Master Theses of Engineering Degrees

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is very well structure and the scientific discourse is very clear. The research approach offers a clear understanding of the authors' experiences in investigating and measuring engineering projects dedicated to sustainable development issues (to develop sustainable products and services or systems). It is not clear if authors have been involved in designing projects' approaches (propose topics and assure coaching for the development) or they were only collecting and interpreting the results of other teaching staff? It is not clear how many students (bachelor and master students) were impacted by the project-based approach in the field of sustainable development.

For operationalizing the proposed Sustainability Matrix (transfer it into the educational practices), there have been no explanations about how the questions were chosen (defining the content of Table 2 and 3). It is not clear how the related questions were designed. I suggest that the text from line 439 to line 513 to be included in an appendix to the paper.

The chapter 3.4 content is only to inform about the problem ... but there are no facts, data presented during some years of studies and observations (dynamic analysis) of the students' outcomes using the proposed Sustainability Matrix. Also, the measures that have been implemented to overcome and diminish the negative aspects or problems are weakly explained without measuring their effects.

The presented approach based on the "Sustainability Matrix (SM) helps students to develop sustainable projects when they graduate, and teachers to assess how sustainability is incorporated across the curriculum in the subjects they teach and in the students’ Degree Theses". Authors should improve the paper content by adding aspects related to: the time where the SM has been implemented in the case of the educational programs that are analysis (how long? from when?); the effects generated by their approach, at least from the teachers' perspective (interview with them by analysing in deep the identified problems ... could be done now, because we are in the phase of finalizing the work for BT and MT)

Finaly, it should be better underlined the link between the statements from line 124 to line 135 in the paper and the define approach of education (teaching-learning-assessment).

Author Response

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

The paper is very well structured and the scientific discourse is very clear. The research approach offers a clear understanding of the authors' experiences in investigating and measuring engineering projects dedicated to sustainable development issues (to develop sustainable products and services or systems). It is not clear if authors have been involved in designing projects' approaches (propose topics and assure coaching for the development) or they were only collecting and interpreting the results of other teaching staff? It is not clear how many students (bachelor and master students) were impacted by the project-based approach in the field of sustainable development.

 AUTHORS’ ANSWER

Thanks for your comments. Authors have been involved in designing projects approaches only on EWOC subject, as specified in section 4.2. In the other two subjects (PAE and MTP), projects are proposed either by companies or by the group of teachers of each subject. The coaching related to the sustainability report is done by one of the authors in all 3 subjects.

In average, around 200 students finish their Bachelor Degree in Informatics Engineering every year at the Facultat d’Informàtica de Barcelona. All of them must do a BT, and the Sustainability Report is mandatory for every Thesis report. Data related to Telecommunications Engineering students is detailed in section 4.2.

 REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

For operationalizing the proposed Sustainability Matrix (transfer it into the educational practices), there have been no explanations about how the questions were chosen (defining the content of Table 2 and 3). It is not clear how the related questions were designed. I suggest that the text from line 439 to line 513 to be included in an appendix to the paper.

 AUTHORS’ ANSWER

We have included at the beginning of Section 3 a paragraph explaining more clearly the methodology used. The questions have been selected from an extensive bibliographic review on the evaluation of engineering projects (we have included this sentence also in the text).

With respect to the text that the reviewer suggests including in an appendix, that was our intention, but the inclusion of appendices at the end of the paper is not allowed in this journal.

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

The chapter 3.4 content is only to inform about the problem ... but there are no facts, data presented during some years of studies and observations (dynamic analysis) of the students' outcomes using the proposed Sustainability Matrix. Also, the measures that have been implemented to overcome and diminish the negative aspects or problems are weakly explained without measuring their effects.

AUTHORS’ ANSWER

Engineering students do not have a very deep prior knowledge of sustainability. Issues concerning sustainability are being progressively introduced in their engineering curricula nowadays. However, it is a long-term project, and no immediate results can be obtained, as stated in section 3.4.1.

The results derived from the use of the sustainability matrix as a guide are objectively measurable by reviewing the student’s answers to the matrix questions. Now, the students include in their reports concrete answers to different issues concerning sustainability dimensions, in a way similar to the one used by ICT companies in GRI reports. 

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

The presented approach based on the "Sustainability Matrix (SM) helps students to develop sustainable projects when they graduate, and teachers to assess how sustainability is incorporated across the curriculum in the subjects they teach and in the students’ Degree Theses". Authors should improve the paper content by adding aspects related to: the time where the SM has been implemented in the case of the educational programs that are analysis (how long? from when?); the effects generated by their approach, at least from the teachers' perspective (interview with them by analysing in deep the identified problems ... could be done now, because we are in the phase of finalizing the work for BT and MT)

 AUTHORS’ ANSWER

The Sustainability Matrix is a tool used to develop sustainability competency all along the student’s career. Sustainability is taught in different subjects from the first to the last semester (all of them). Teachers involved belong to different knowledge areas and departments. Some subjects are optional, and some others compulsory. Subjects deal with sustainability at different Miller’s domain levels, and every teacher uses different materials and methodologies. This concerns a total amount of 15 different subjects along the career. A transversal coordination of the Sustainability competency is definitely necessary, and the coordination is performed by some of the authors of the paper. Interviews with teachers are continuously done and methodologies and results are put in common.  We agree with the reviewer that this information is important and should be published. Paper could be extended with this experience, but honestly, we think that it is out of the scope of the presented work and should be presented in other paper. In fact, we already presented some of these ideas in reference [32].

 REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

Finaly, it should be better underlined the link between the statements from line 124 to line 135 in the paper and the define approach of education (teaching-learning-assessment).

 AUTHORS’ ANSWER

The reviewer is right in this assessment, and we have included a paragraph after the mentioned lines to underline the link:

“Consequently, both in the USA and in Europe, ongoing initiatives are being undertaken to promote the integration of competencies concerning sustainable development in higher education. The work presented in this paper just proposes a way to develop these competencies in the curricula of Engineering degrees.”

Reviewer 2 Report

The Sustainability Matrix: A tool for integrating and assessing sustainability in the Bachelor and Master Theses of Engineering Degrees

The paper examines the topic of sustainability within the context of degrees in Higher Education.   

It is an interesting topic of great value to both practitioners and academics. As a whole, the manuscript contents are well presented. However, the paper requires some minor corrections and some important restructuring. My comments and suggestions are as follows:

Lines 150-157 – seem to be comments that should not be part of the manuscript

The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is

151 important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance. The current state of the

152 research field should be reviewed carefully and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial

153 and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and

154 highlight the principal conclusions. As far as possible, please ensure that the introduction is also

155 comprehensible to scientists outside your particular field of research. References should be numbered

156 in order of appearance and indicated by a numeral or numerals in square brackets, e.g., [1] or [2, 3],

157 or [4–6]. See the end of the document for further details on references

-The contributions of the study should be highlighted further and research gaps could be discussed more which will consequently lead to research questions which are not properly expressed.

-Reference value is adequate but could be improved. The following references will enhance the paper.

1. Sfakianaki, E. (2015), "Resource-efficient construction: rethinking construction towards sustainability", World Journal of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 233-242..
2. Jones N., Roumeliotis S. , Iosifides T., Hatziantoniou, M., Sfakianaki, E., Tsigianni K.E., Thivaiou K., Mpiliraki A., Evangelinos I.K. (2013), “Students’ perceptions on environmental management of HEIs and the role of social capital”, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 278-290.

-All tables. Can the authors use another font type, closer to the fonts of the manuscript? The fonts currently used are really very large.

- An outline of the methodology used is clear in section 3. Before the detailed analysis of each step, the reader needs to understand how the scope of the paper was approached, i.e. qualitative, quantitative, combination and why the method chosen was the best decision. The reader in short should first be able to understand how the researchers aimed to investigate their topic and then read the results.

-Implications of the research should be recorded in the conclusions section.

-In terms of English, some minor revisions are required to improve clarity and overall reading.

Author Response

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

Lines 150-157 – seem to be comments that should not be part of the manuscript.

The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance. The current state of the research field should be reviewed carefully and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the principal conclusions. As far as possible, please ensure that the introduction is also comprehensible to scientists outside your particular field of research. References should be numbered in order of appearance and indicated by a numeral or numerals in square brackets, e.g., [1] or [2, 3], or [4–6]. See the end of the document for further details on references 

  AUTHORS’ ANSWER

The reviewer is right and we have removed these lines

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

The contributions of the study should be highlighted further and research gaps could be discussed more which will consequently lead to research questions which are not properly expressed.

 AUTHORS’ ANSWER

This work has been carried out over the last 8 years. A preliminary version was presented at the FIE2016 (see ref. [50]). Therefore, the sustainability matrix is a well-known instrument and we cannot present it in this paper in response to a research question.

The objective of this paper is to present the problems we have found after implementing the methodology presented in [50], and the solution we have devised to solve them. Therefore, we consulted with the editors of the special issue whether the descriptive approach of the paper was appropriate for the special issue, and they agreed.

This is a paper that presents not only a tool and a methodology, but the evolution of the methodology of using a tool to make it more effective. That is why what we present is a guide on how to use the Sustainability Matrix to avoid the problems that we have encountered when using the methodology proposed in [50].

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

-Reference value is adequate but could be improved. The following references will enhance the paper.

Sfakianaki, E. (2015), "Resource-efficient construction: rethinking construction towards sustainability", World Journal of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 233-242.

Jones N., Roumeliotis S. , Iosifides T., Hatziantoniou, M., Sfakianaki, E., Tsigianni K.E., Thivaiou K., Mpiliraki A., Evangelinos I.K. (2013), “Students’ perceptions on environmental management of HEIs and the role of social capital”, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 278-290.

 AUTHORS’ ANSWER

References suggested by the reviewer have been included in the paper.

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

 All tables. Can the authors use another font type, closer to the fonts of the manuscript? The fonts currently used are really very large.

 AUTHORS’ ANSWER

As suggested by the reviewer, we have used the same font of the paper for all tables and we have converted Figure 1 in a table.

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

An outline of the methodology used is clear in section 3. Before the detailed analysis of each step, the reader needs to understand how the scope of the paper was approached, i.e. qualitative, quantitative, combination and why the method chosen was the best decision. The reader in short should first be able to understand how the researchers aimed to investigate their topic and then read the results.

 AUTHORS’ ANSWER

The first paragraph of Section 3 now includes an outline of the methodology. It has been changed to:

“This section describes the context in which the Sustainability Matrix has been developed and the evolution of the methodology used to assess sustainability in DT since its initial implementation in 2012 and up to the present day. The research approach has been based on the action research methodology, with qualitative analysis of results. In a first stage of the research, the authors elaborated a state of the art based on a documentary search, due to the lack of previous experience in sustainability reports. This first approach led to a tool that is described in section 3.2. The results of the first years of applying this tool were submitted to a qualitative analysis of the sustainability reports presented by the students, finding that they were quite different from what was expected. In a second iteration the problems found were analyzed and a second documentary search for tools that could solve these problems was carried out, resulting in the proposal of the Sustainability Matrix (sections 3.3 and 3.4). The first results of this new proposal are presented in section 3.4, based on a qualitative analysis of the sustainability reports developed according to the new tool. In order to define the improvement process, and in addition to the sustainability reports, the opinions of students and teachers have also been taken into account by mean of focus groups.”

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

 -Implications of the research should be recorded in the conclusions section.

 AUTHORS’ ANSWER

We think that the main implication is already indicated in Conclusions Section: “The proposal may produce a further impact, since it is expected that students will apply this framework to projects in which they may be engaged in the future, with the aim of making such projects more sustainable.”

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

-In terms of English, some minor revisions are required to improve clarity and overall reading.

 AUTHORS’ ANSWER

A Native speaker of English has reviewed the document again.

Reviewer 3 Report

As mentioned by the authors, the topic of this paper is very important and it is also very important for engineering students to learn sustainability in the context of their own work. Hence, a methods like the Sustainability matrix suggested by the authors are very useful tools for engineering educators. I also agree with the authors that a thesis “provide a good tool for reviewing the sustainability competencies developed during the degree, as well as being an opportunity for applying these competencies in a holistic way” (rows 25-26, page 1).

Concerning the matrix itself, its coverage on the concept of sustainability can be considered as good since it explicitly illustrates different aspects of sustainability (economic, environmental and social) in different stages of a project (project development, exploitation and risk assesment) (Table 1, rows 381-382, page 8). When creating the matrix, the authors have also considered the concept of sustainability in detail from the perspectives of public discussion (e.g. SDG of UN, ABET, Brundtland comission, Tuning project etc. as mentioned in chapter 1) and previous research (as covered well in chapter 2).

There is, however, one major issue with the manuscript: it is currently written in a form of a development description rather than a scientific research paper. As commented by the authors themselves: “This paper addresses how to introduce and assess sustainability in the DT of Engineering Degrees” (row 142, page 3). The development project itself is without a doubt well executed and documented, but without proper research questions (as well as methods used to find questions to these questions and discussion on the obtained results) it remains on a level of development description - not a research paper. After chapters 1 and 2 (in which the context and background is described together with a review on the previous studies on this field) the authors should present research questions, for which they are looking for answers and explain the methods they have used, but instead they tell how the purpose of this manuscript is to describe their development on including sustainability in the curriculum in their programme: “This section describes the context in which the Sustainability Matrix has been developed and the evolution of the methodology used to assess sustainability in DT since its initial implementation in 2012 and up to the present day. This evolution is an improvement process that has emerged from the analysis of the students’ sustainability reports of the DTs imparted at the Informatics and Telecommunications schools of our university. In order to define the improvement process, and in addition to the sustainability reports, the opinions of students and teachers have also been taken into account.” (rows 278-284, page 6)

The authors have obviously collected a large amount of useful information concerning the inclusion of sustainability in engineering studies, and this data could well be re-written in a form of research paper rather than development project. For example, it could be possible to use data to answer questions such as “How engineering students master sustainability in their own field when doing their theses?”, “How different dimensions of sustainability are understood and mastered by graduating engineering students?”, etc. (N.B. These are only examles; I am not suggesting that exactly these questions should be considered) Also the problems highlighted by the authors in chapter 3.4 (from row 514, page 12 onwards) could be used as a basis for research articles. One of the questions that is already (at least partly) answered in the manuscript, is to consider how authors’ Sustainability matrix can be used and works in the estimation of engineering students’ ideas and skills on sustainablity. Although there is some consideration for this question, it has not been explicitly mentioned as a research question, for which the authors wish to find answers.

With this kind of re-writing and re-organisation of the manuscript, one could get rid of too detailed descriptions on the development project, context of development and the Matrix itself, which make the manuscript rather heavy to read for someone not familiar with the programme in question. The work that has been done and the data that has been collected by the authors deserves definitely to be published, but in its current form it is unfortunately not in a form fitted for scientific publications. Explicit presentation of clear research questions would make it easier to focus on those things that are relevant in answering to these questions (i.e. methods, results, discussion and comparison with previous studies on the topic), whereas the things which are not relevant could be removed from the manuscript.

To conclude this issue, a major revision (i.e. rewriting most part of the manuscript with a focus on clear, explicitly represented research questions from chapter 3 onwards) is required in order to make this a proper research article. However, if editors of the journal feel that this kind of development projects could be published as such, then there obviously are no need for major revisions.

Furthermore, there are some other smaller issues, that the authors should consider regardless whether the manuscript would be published as a research paper or as a development description:

1. It would be interesting to know whether there are differences on how well this Sustainability Matrix would be adopted in other fields than the ones tested in this study, but this is probably a topic for another paper. However, one could make some estimation on how general this approach is.
2. It is mentioned in the introduction that “some teachers consider sustainability more as a personal choice than as a professional requirement” (rows 79-80, page 2) without any reference. Nowadays, I find this quite hard to believe - and I guess that so does the authors themselves, because later on the authores mention, that “sustainability is not merely a personal choice for an engineer: it is a professional necessity” (row 106, page 3) and that “at present, very few experts are opposed to the introduction of sustainability awareness into higher education” (rows 163-164, page 4). It seems that this non-referenced claim (i.e. the one on rows 79-80) is mentioned only to be able to present how this is not true in UPC (i.e. from row 84, page 2 onwards). Most of this part is not necessary concerning the main point of the manuscript and could well be removed or at least shortened considerably. More generally speaking: if research questions were written explicitly (as suggested above), these kind of off-topic-descripitions could be more easily eliminated from the text in order to make it more accurate and denser.
3. I assume that some guidelines for the authors have been left to the manuscript unintentionally: ”The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance. The current state of the research field should be reviewed carefully and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the principal conclusions. As far as possible, please ensure that the introduction is also comprehensible to scientists outside your particular field of research. References should be numbered in order of appearance and indicated by a numeral or numerals in square brackets, e.g., [1] or [2, 3], or [4–6]. See the end of the document for further details on references.” (rows 150-157, page 4). Manuscripts with these kind of non-finished/non-checked texts should not be submitted: these things should be noticed and removed by the authors before submitting the paper.

Author Response

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

As mentioned by the authors, the topic of this paper is very important and it is also very important for engineering students to learn sustainability in the context of their own work. Hence, a methods like the Sustainability matrix suggested by the authors are very useful tools for engineering educators. I also agree with the authors that a thesis “provide a good tool for reviewing the sustainability competencies developed during the degree, as well as being an opportunity for applying these competencies in a holistic way” (rows 25-26, page 1).

Concerning the matrix itself, its coverage on the concept of sustainability can be considered as good since it explicitly illustrates different aspects of sustainability (economic, environmental and social) in different stages of a project (project development, exploitation and risk assesment) (Table 1, rows 381-382, page 8). When creating the matrix, the authors have also considered the concept of sustainability in detail from the perspectives of public discussion (e.g. SDG of UN, ABET, Brundtland comission, Tuning project etc. as mentioned in chapter 1) and previous research (as covered well in chapter 2).

 AUTHORS’ ANSWER

We would like to thank the reviewer’s comments.

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

There is, however, one major issue with the manuscript: it is currently written in a form of a development description rather than a scientific research paper. As commented by the authors themselves: “This paper addresses how to introduce and assess sustainability in the DT of Engineering Degrees” (row 142, page 3). The development project itself is without a doubt well executed and documented, but without proper research questions (as well as methods used to find questions to these questions and discussion on the obtained results) it remains on a level of development description - not a research paper. After chapters 1 and 2 (in which the context and background is described together with a review on the previous studies on this field) the authors should present research questions, for which they are looking for answers and explain the methods they have used, but instead they tell how the purpose of this manuscript is to describe their development on including sustainability in the curriculum in their programme: “This section describes the context in which the Sustainability Matrix has been developed and the evolution of the methodology used to assess sustainability in DT since its initial implementation in 2012 and up to the present day. This evolution is an improvement process that has emerged from the analysis of the students’ sustainability reports of the DTs imparted at the Informatics and Telecommunications schools of our university. In order to define the improvement process, and in addition to the sustainability reports, the opinions of students and teachers have also been taken into account.” (rows 278-284, page 6)

The authors have obviously collected a large amount of useful information concerning the inclusion of sustainability in engineering studies, and this data could well be re-written in a form of research paper rather than development project. For example, it could be possible to use data to answer questions such as “How engineering students master sustainability in their own field when doing their theses?”, “How different dimensions of sustainability are understood and mastered by graduating engineering students?”, etc. (N.B. These are only examles; I am not suggesting that exactly these questions should be considered) Also the problems highlighted by the authors in chapter 3.4 (from row 514, page 12 onwards) could be used as a basis for research articles. One of the questions that is already (at least partly) answered in the manuscript, is to consider how authors’ Sustainability matrix can be used and works in the estimation of engineering students’ ideas and skills on sustainablity. Although there is some consideration for this question, it has not been explicitly mentioned as a research question, for which the authors wish to find answers.

With this kind of re-writing and re-organisation of the manuscript, one could get rid of too detailed descriptions on the development project, context of development and the Matrix itself, which make the manuscript rather heavy to read for someone not familiar with the programme in question. The work that has been done and the data that has been collected by the authors deserves definitely to be published, but in its current form it is unfortunately not in a form fitted for scientific publications. Explicit presentation of clear research questions would make it easier to focus on those things that are relevant in answering to these questions (i.e. methods, results, discussion and comparison with previous studies on the topic), whereas the things which are not relevant could be removed from the manuscript.

To conclude this issue, a major revision (i.e. rewriting most part of the manuscript with a focus on clear, explicitly represented research questions from chapter 3 onwards) is required in order to make this a proper research article. However, if editors of the journal feel that this kind of development projects could be published as such, then there obviously are no need for major revisions.

 AUTHORS’ ANSWER

This work has been carried out over the last 8 years. A preliminary version was presented at the FIE2016 (see ref. [50]). Therefore, the sustainability matrix is a well-known instrument and we cannot present it in this paper in response to a research question.

The objective of this paper is to present the problems we have found after implementing the methodology presented in [50], and the solution we have devised to solve them. Therefore, we consulted with the editors of the special issue whether the descriptive approach of the paper was appropriate for the special issue, and they agreed.

This is a paper that presents not only a tool and a methodology, but the evolution of the methodology of using a tool to make it more effective. That is why what we present is a guide on how to use the sustainability matrix to avoid the problems that we have encountered when using the methodology proposed in [50].

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

Furthermore, there are some other smaller issues, that the authors should consider regardless whether the manuscript would be published as a research paper or as a development description:

It would be interesting to know whether there are differences on how well this Sustainability Matrix would be adopted in other fields than the ones tested in this study, but this is probably a topic for another paper. However, one could make some estimation on how general this approach is.

AUTHORS’ ANSWER

This proposal is oriented towards engineering Degrees, and has been implemented in degrees in ICT engineering. The proposal is being used as the starting point in the EDINSOST2 project [2019-2022] to adapt it to other university Degrees, in particular, to Degrees in economics and education. We cannot indicate any publication for the project yet because the results are very preliminary. The funding data of the project are detailed in the Funding Section, at the end of the paper.

This adaptation is in process at the moment, but from the work being carried out in the EDINSOST2 project we already know that the final proposal will use a sustainability matrix that will contain questions, following the Socratic Method. The questions will be different for each type of degree, although some of the questions presented in this paper can be used by other degrees. It is also possible to adapt the meaning of the rows and columns of the sustainability matrix, depending on the characteristics of the projects of each degree.

As the reviewer well comments, this topic deserves a separate paper, but we wanted to explain the work we are doing in the EDINSOST2 project due to his/her accurate comment.

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

It is mentioned in the introduction that “some teachers consider sustainability more as a personal choice than as a professional requirement” (rows 79-80, page 2) without any reference. Nowadays, I find this quite hard to believe - and I guess that so does the authors themselves, because later on the authors mention, that “sustainability is not merely a personal choice for an engineer: it is a professional necessity” (row 106, page 3) and that “at present, very few experts are opposed to the introduction of sustainability awareness into higher education” (rows 163-164, page 4). It seems that this non-referenced claim (i.e. the one on rows 79-80) is mentioned only to be able to present how this is not true in UPC (i.e. from row 84, page 2 onwards). Most of this part is not necessary concerning the main point of the manuscript and could well be removed or at least shortened considerably.

 AUTHORS’ ANSWER

We wish to thank the reviewer for the comment. It is a very accurate comment. It would have been more appropriate to say that "for a long time, some teachers considered sustainability more as a personal choice than a professional requirement”. Nevertheless, as the reviewer points out, it is an unnecessary statement and it has been deleted.

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

More generally speaking: if research questions were written explicitly (as suggested above), these kind of off-topic-descripitions could be more easily eliminated from the text in order to make it more accurate and denser.

 AUTHORS’ ANSWER

As previously discussed, we agreed with the special-issue editors that the descriptive approach was appropriate for this paper.

REVIEWER’S COMMENTS

I assume that some guidelines for the authors have been left to the manuscript unintentionally: ”The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance. The current state of the research field should be reviewed carefully and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the principal conclusions. As far as possible, please ensure that the introduction is also comprehensible to scientists outside your particular field of research. References should be numbered in order of appearance and indicated by a numeral or numerals in square brackets, e.g., [1] or [2, 3], or [4–6]. See the end of the document for further details on references.” (rows 150-157, page 4). Manuscripts with these kind of non-finished/non-checked texts should not be submitted: these things should be noticed and removed by the authors before submitting the paper.

AUTHORS’ ANSWER

Reviewer is right. Thanks for pointing out this issue. We have eliminated the paragraph.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for providing some background information in your response to my comments on the previous version. Your explanations helped me to understand why you have chosen to present certain things the way you did. In my opinion, you have carefully considered all my comments and I recommend the publication of your manuscript.