A Taxonomic Analysis of Smart City Projects in North America and Europe

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper shows an interesting literature review of Smart cities on different countries. I consider this article to be more likely a review paper and therefore, I would suggest the authors to send it to a more specialised journal.  Apart from that, there are some issues in the article that make the reading a little bit difficult.

First, SCP acronym is not defined at the start of the article. The meaning can be understood by reading the article, but it would be easier if it was explicitly defined on the text.

Second, the figures are misplaced all over the article. Some of them are in different sections to where they should be. Correct this and please comment the figures right before or after where they are placed if possible.

Third, the font size in some figures7tables is too small and difficult to read. For example table 1 and figure 3.

Author Response

"Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for your exploration and explaining the smart city projects. Here are some suggestions that should improve your paper. 

1. In the title: city instead cities.
2. "A comparison" in the title has some scientific weight if real comparative method was used in this paper. I can see a good collection of data, but not a method that should give us some results as findings to contribute in this field of science.
3. In Abstract, line 1: it should be written '...the concept of a 'Smart City'
4. In Abstract, line 3: instead of 'are needed' should be written 'would be needed'
5. In Abstract, line 11: you should state what you want to do with collected data. Which kind of comparison method you would exercise and what thesis you want to prove. There are so many comparison methods that could be used in this paper, depends to what your thesis would be. Taxonomy, investigation of how the concepts are aligned, etc., are not scientific methods which would bring up enough scientific contribution.
6. Line 13. Introduction should be chapter number 1.
7. In Introduction, line 14, 'were' instead of 'are'.
8. In line 22: SCPs was mentioned for the first time so it has to be explained there in the brackets.
9. In Introduction, line 32, you say 'it's the first comparative analysis etc.', but comparative analysis has to have parameters that should be compared in a method that makes results contributing in this field. Results aren't data collection. An example of it is comparison PROMETHEE II method (example paper 'Comparisons of interdisciplinary ballast water treatment systems and operational experiences from the ships') etc.
10. In a critical review the authors give their suggestions for improvements based on the findings and results.
11. Table 1. should be rewritten in bigger font.
12. In line 260 says 'the results obtained', but that is collected data, not results.
13. This paper has a potential to become a scientific paper. It is a professional article now, not a critical review in this present form.

Author Response

"Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for getting the opportunity to read and review a paper titled "A comparison of Smart Cities Projects in North America and Europe”.

I found this paper very interesting, with a wide-ranging literature background and an meticulous empirical analysis. The findings are of general interest and the paper fits the aims and scope of the “Sustainability” Journal.

This paper merits publication, though I believe it suffers from few weaknesses. Therefore, I suggest some recommendations for the Authors’ consideration in order to improve the reviewed manuscript.

1. The Authors claim that outstanding SCPs were selected for the purpose of this study. Please specify what made these projects outstanding?

2. I suggest to use some statistical tests to indicate the significance of difference in the achieved results concerning European, US and Canadian SCPs’ characteristics.

3. I recommend to change titles of figures 5, 9 and 13. These figures concern public, private or mixed characteristics related to specific dimensions and categories of elaborated taxonomy. However, the existing titles suggest that ‘Role of the Public Sector’ is shown exclusively.

4. Section 4. Trends and future directions - In fact, it is very difficult to find proposals of future directions in this section. Please indicate clearly such directions.

5. Conclusion(s) - I suggest to add such section to this paper which will include a summary of the results achieved and specify any limitations of this study. No important limitations of the conducted analysis have been identified so far. However, there are for sure some limitations in this study.

Author Response

"Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf