Scientific Landscape of Sustainable Urban and Rural Areas Research: A Systematic Scientometric Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article could have great potential in the scenario of systematic literature analysis.

In order to be complete, I suggest reworking introduction and literature background - in which there are too many concepts not well assembled - and the conclusions - where there is only a synthesis of the results while it should include complete or preliminary answers to the research questions.

The core of the article is well organised. I suggest only to clarify in which way the Citespace program has been used. In the sense that some reasoning steps could be not understandable for who is not used to use this program or is not used to develop this sort of mathematical reasoning. As an example, in line 428, the author cites the value of centrality of 0.00, I suggest explaining what does it mean.

It is not very clear in which way the author developed the Table A1 about Sustainability indicators, I suggest to explain it.

In order to make the article really exhaustive, I suggest developing a qualitative section of findings in which are presented the contents of the selected publications to give an idea of how much this typology of research could be useful for the scientific community in terms of subject-matter. 

Author Response

 

This article could have great potential in the scenario of systematic literature analysis.

Thank you very much for the constructive feedback.

In order to be complete, I suggest reworking introduction and literature background - in which there are too many concepts not well assembled - and the conclusions - where there is only a synthesis of the results while it should include complete or preliminary answers to the research questions.

The mentioned sections of the paper are significantly edited.

The core of the article is well organised. I suggest only to clarify in which way the Citespace program has been used. In the sense that some reasoning steps could be not understandable for who is not used to use this program or is not used to develop this sort of mathematical reasoning. As an example, in line 428, the author cites the value of centrality of 0.00, I suggest explaining what does it mean.

In appendix B, authors provided an extensive explanation with formulation of all scientometric indices, which have been used in this study.

It is not very clear in which way the author developed the Table A1 about Sustainability indicators, I suggest to explain it.

According to the reviewer’s suggestion, the explanation is added.

In order to make the article really exhaustive, I suggest developing a qualitative section of findings in which are presented the contents of the selected publications to give an idea of how much this typology of research could be useful for the scientific community in terms of subject-matter. 

We highly appreciate the suggestion of the editor. While this is a great idea, we will take this comment to develop a new paper after the publication of this one, undertaking thorough qualitative analysis on the contents of the selected publications. This is due to undertaking such analysis requires about 2-3 months intensive work and unfortunately, we do not have such capacity at this instance. A track changes version of the paper is provided for the referee to see the changes made in the paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,
First of all, congratulations for the great work done. Indeed, the manuscript presents relevant issues. Nonetheless, still, some minor reviews should be performed.
I would like to recommend small changes:
Abbreviations should not appear in the summary (SURA).

Author Response

Dear Authors,

First of all, congratulations for the great work done. Indeed, the manuscript presents relevant issues. Nonetheless, still, some minor reviews should be performed.

Before final publication, I would like to recommend small changes:

Abbreviations should not appear in the summary (SURA).

 

Thank you very much for the constructive feedback. The SURA acronym is removed from the abstract. A track changes version of the paper is provided for the referee to see the changes made in the paper.

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a fascinating subject and the paper could form as valuable contribution (accepting of course that it will be short-lived as future years provide further data).

However it needs significant improvement.  The first key improvement is in the use of English.  There are many detail problems here, and either a fluent English-speaking contributor or editor is needed.  Some of these issues do affect the sense of the text.

Second, the presentation needs improvement.  Not only are some diagrams so illegible (6 top, 7 top, 8 to a lesser extent) that one wonders whether they are necessary; but there are lengthy sections (including lines 354-387, 409-443) that seem to do no more than repeat what is shown in diagrams or tables,  More critical analytical discussion is needed instead.

Third, the discussion of method needs to discuss analysis as well as data acquisition.

Some specific details:

The abstract is too vague about the results; you need to attract people to read the paper.

lines 71-4 are unnecessary: we do not need to know simply what the top 5 journals in scientometrics are.

Odd that definitions of sustainability and of smart cities are given separately - and the latter are structured poorly (single-sentence paragraphs; sentences without verbs).

First 2 sentences of Methodology are unhelpful: avoid the comment about miscellaneous journals, and the list of a few of them.  Lines 235-7 could be deleted since we already know (line 214) that the focus is on WoS.

Selection of some factors needs explanation. For example line 253, what is the significance of a 1.5-fold increase? Line 317, why select 80?

Lines 263-5, no direct link between the jump and the Earth Summit is proven, especially given lags in academic publishing (greater then than now, of course).

Section 4.3 is about origin of authors, this needs stating in the heading.  And, at present, England, Wales and Scotland form the United Kingdom: is there any benefit in disaggregating them?

Section 4.6: might be worth commenting on the major gap between the first 3 keywords, which are overarching, topic-wide, and those focusing on detail/applications.

Section 4.7, some discussion of key concepts of, and relevant literature of, citation analysis would seem relevant here.

Table 6: is the focus on the author, or on specific publications (publication year is given).  if the latter, it might be better to draw together all versions of a single publication (for example if the J Jacobs citation is originally 1960, there have been numerous reprints).

Presenting conclusions as bullet points, largely just repeating what has been given in the main text, misses the opportunity to really draw the study together and say something about the whole, not just individual parts.

 

Author Response

This is a fascinating subject and the paper could form as valuable contribution (accepting of course that it will be short-lived as future years provide further data).

Thank you very much for the constructive feedback.

However, it needs significant improvement.  The first key improvement is in the use of English.  There are many detail problems here, and either a fluent English-speaking contributor or editor is needed.  Some of these issues do affect the sense of the text.

The language is carefully edited.

Second, the presentation needs improvement.  Not only are some diagrams so illegible (6 top, 7 top, 8 to a lesser extent) that one wonders whether they are necessary; but there are lengthy sections (including lines 354-387, 409-443) that seem to do no more than repeat what is shown in diagrams or tables,  More critical analytical discussion is needed instead.

The mentioned graphs are generated by the CiteSpace software based on some rules which was explained in the manuscript (L329-330). The font size and position of each word is meaningful and according to a certain rules and algorithm. It is inevitable that following these rules may cause overlaps and make few parts of a figure somehow illegible. Exactly due to this entitles criticism, in order to provide readers the original graph with correct word positioning and word font-size, and at the same time, to avoid from illegible graph, authors decided to present them (Fig. 6 to 8) in two different forms: the original and modified exploded one. But, about lengthy sections (including lines 354-387, 409-443), authors must say that, these lengthy parts are the core part of any scientometric study! Actually, these parts are the main contribution of this study that provided a deeper understanding on the condition of sought scientific topic quantitatively by mentioned indices. By a quick browse of published papers on these kind of studies, respected reviewer may find it very common. In fact, all scientometric studies have been performed to present the quantitative results of analysis of distinct techniques and bibliometric indicators.

Third, the discussion of method needs to discuss analysis as well as data acquisition.

Some specific details:

The abstract is too vague about the results; you need to attract people to read the paper.

The abstract is rewritten.

lines 71-4 are unnecessary: we do not need to know simply what the top 5 journals in scientometrics are.

With great respect to the reviewer’s opinion, L71-74 which are related to the top journals in the section 1.2, is an important part of scientometric study. Reader’s needs may differ from one to another. This part, although simple, but is coherent to the whole part of manuscript. Authors humbly insist to keep it.

Odd that definitions of sustainability and of smart cities are given separately - and the latter are structured poorly (single-sentence paragraphs; sentences without verbs).

The main focus of this study is “Sustainable Urban and Rural Areas” and as it is mention in L163-4, the concept of “smart city” is presented in this work just to clarify the border of these two concepts. In order to keep this manuscript comprehensive, authors provided readers some well-known definitions for “smart city” in order to clearly draw the border of this study and avoid possible confusion.

First 2 sentences of Methodology are unhelpful: avoid the comment about miscellaneous journals, and the list of a few of them.  Lines 235-7 could be deleted since we already know (line 214) that the focus is on WoS.

According to the reviewer comment, lines about miscellaneous journals, and the list of a few of them were deleted. In future, one may check the result of this manuscript with number of citation in “Google Scholar” and claim against this manuscript that authors presented incorrect values. Authors mentioned Lines 235-7 in order to avoid possible misunderstanding, and hence, authors humbly insist to keep it.

Selection of some factors needs explanation. For example line 253, what is the significance of a 1.5-fold increase? Line 317, why select 80?

In order to cut the presented data and end the table and avoid presenting lengthy table and simultaneously provide enough and suitable information authors decide to cut where there is significant number and considerable changes. After 80, keyword’s frequencies were so close and with a small variation. In addition, about the factor of 1.5, authors tried to detect the considerable increase in the number of publication respect to its previous value in its one year ago. By numerical analysis of the figure 2, this value was the smallest value we could consider to detect a jump. In fact, bellow this value, it is hardly can name the increment of publication a “jump”.

Lines 263-5, no direct link between the jump and the Earth Summit is proven, especially given lags in academic publishing (greater then than now, of course).

The purpose of this study was not to prove the direct link between the jump and event. It was just mentioned that in the distribution of publications, there are two jumps: first occurred in 1991 from 4 to 20 (5 folds), and second occurred in 1992 from 20 to 36 (1.8 folds). Well, the difference in number of published papers in 1992 and 1991 are equal although the fraction is different. Besides, the Earth Summit known as Agenda 21 was held in 1992. This study pointed out to this synchrony and coincidence. Although number of published papers and Agenda 21 cannot be considered as cause and effect, but there may be a motivation and stimulus for. This part (Lines 263-5) is revised to avoid from possible confusion.

Section 4.3 is about origin of authors, this needs stating in the heading.  And, at present, England, Wales and Scotland form the United Kingdom: is there any benefit in disaggregating them?

This graph is extracted from WoS and disaggregating the England, Wales and Scotland form the United Kingdom just to provide more detail and keep the precision.

Section 4.6: might be worth commenting on the major gap between the first 3 keywords, which are overarching, topic-wide, and those focusing on detail/applications.

This section is further expanded.

Section 4.7, some discussion of key concepts of, and relevant literature of, citation analysis would seem relevant here.

This section is further expanded.

Table 6: is the focus on the author, or on specific publications (publication year is given).  if the latter, it might be better to draw together all versions of a single publication (for example if the J Jacobs citation is originally 1960, there have been numerous reprints).

According to L348, Table 6 is the most cited author in the area of SURA. Actually, the mentioned year was not year of author’s publication. In fact, it is the year at which an author received the most citations from other publications. It is also evident that an author can be cited for his/her different publications which have been published in different years. Finally, Table 6 ordered these authors by the frequency of the citation.

Presenting conclusions as bullet points, largely just repeating what has been given in the main text, misses the opportunity to really draw the study together and say something about the whole, not just individual parts.

Conclusion is revised (and highlighted in yellow) according to the reviewer comments so that satisfy the entitled expectation. A track changes version of the paper is provided for the referee to see the changes made in the paper.