Community-Based Tourism through Food: A Proposal of Sustainable Tourism Indicators for Isolated and Rural Destinations in Mexico
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study tried to create well developed and properly validated sustainability indicators because it is important to make a proper assessment for sustainable tourism, especially for a gastronomy/food tourism. This research idea is quite unique and important in order to promote tourism policies not only for Mexico but for counties all over the world.
- Ambiguity of the academic point of a discussion in this study:
It is written that the aim of this study is reviewing the existing literature on sustainable tourism indicators and approaches to gastronomic tourism. However, the discussing topics in this manuscript is quite spread and not focus on gastronomic tourism. As a result, it is quite difficult to understand the research purpose of the manuscript, i.e. “promotion of tourism”, “promotion of agriculture industry”, “preventing poverty” or “sustaining community” and so forth.
- Definition of a keywords:
This study uses several words relating to “gastronomic tourism” such as “gastronomy”, ”agri-food”, culinary”, ”cuisine”, and so forth. Authors must make a definition on the important keywords in the research paper and never use the similar words with no clear definition.
- Consistency of the submitted manuscript:
The submitted manuscript is divided into two parts. In other words, they are a reviewing part and an creating indicator part. I will judge the connectivity between the two parts are not smooth. I will recommend dividing this manuscript into two articles, i.e. a review article for the literature review part and a research article for the indicator part.
- Research question:
Research questions are not stated clearly in this manuscript. Authors should write research questions which will be verified in this manuscript.
- Reliability of research method:
I cannot verify the academic reliability of the research methods taken in the manuscript. I can understand authors have taken time for accomplishing this research. But I cannot confirm the validity and scientific repeatability of this study. Authors should make an enough explanation in this point.
- Case study:
This study has proposed new STIs for Mexico but has not verify this indicators through case studies. Authors should show the result of case studies in order to show the academic soundness of this study. Also, the authors show the relationship between Fig. 1 and Table 2 through case studies.
Author Response
Response to editor's review comments. We thank the editor and reviewers for their helpful comments. Our answers are provided below in the attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Overall, the paper is well done and accurate as regards the analysis of the literature and the identification of the set of indicators. The focus on rural destinations and food strategies for tourism development is also of interest. Finally, the need to provide stakeholders with a set of indicators on the basis of which to make decisions is fundamental.
However, precisely in light of this last aspect, I would suggest to the authors to integrate table 2 of the 27 selected indicators by specifying their construction (e.g. 26 contribution of tourism ...% of total GDP?). Furthermore, it would be important that the authors provide some indication on the real feasibility in the construction of each indicator, starting from the available data, in particular at local level. Probably, not all 27 indicators can actually be calculated using the existing information system and therefore without excessive costs.
Author Response
Response to editor's review comments. We thank the editor and reviewers for their helpful comments. Our answers are provided below in the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Good day, dear authors!
Thank you for the opportunity to get acquainted with your work «COMMUNITY-BASED TOURISM THROUGH FOOD: A
Proposal of Sustainable Tourism Indicators for Isolated and Rural Destinations in Mexico».
Let me remind you that in the annotation Authors must supply a structured abstract: Purpose, Methodology, Approach, and Findings.
It is advisable to choose keywords so that they do not duplicate the words in the title of the article
You should not start the introduction with the purpose of the research
It is debatable whether to indicate in the introduction «The main outcome of the work is the proposal of a system of indicators»
Section: "materials and methods" needs to be systematized. It is not necessary to cite here a literary review of the methods of other scientists.
Section 4 begins again with the purpose of the research «The aim of this study was to develop and validate sustainability gastronomy indicators»
Was it necessary to divide the indicators in section 3 into table 1 and section 4 of table 2.? The material of the sections is interesting, the authors have worked hard, but it should be systematized. It may be worth adding an integrated indicator.
The conclusions state again the purpose «A further aim of this article has been to develop and validate sustainability indicators that might help monitor tourism activity and its impacts». And what is the peculiarity of this test, and what it showed - is not mentioned in the text.
You should also add the following: Author Contributions, Funding, Data Availability Statement, Acknowledgments, Conflicts of Interest.
The authors should reconsider the editorial requirements for the design of the article.
There should properly arrange References
Capital letters 1.ALARCON, O. A., GONZÁ LEZ, H. E. (2018).
- extra characters Durston, J. (2000). ¿ Qué…
- Palomino Villavicencio, B., Gasca Zamora, J., & López Pardo, G. (2016). And, for example, 50 Rasoolimanesh, S. M., Ramakrishna, S., Hall, C. M., Esfandiar, K., & Seyfi, S. (2020)
- Salido, P. et al. (2010) According to this scheme, the author of the citation is indicated in the text, but not in the list of references
- Timothy, D. J., & Ron, A. S. (2013). 15 Heritage….
- the electronic resource is submitted without a name
Best regards
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Response to editor's review comments. We thank the editor and reviewers for their helpful comments. Our answers are provided below in the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I can judge this manuscript is dramatically improved. And I can also recognize the logical structure and social significance of this study were made clear comparing to the former manuscript.
However I have to say the new manuscript should be improved especially in terms of the relationship between the gastronomic resources in Map 1 and the research result in this study. It is still difficult to understand this relationship for the readers. I hope the authors will add some detailed explanations on the point.
I will write several individual comments below. I hope the authors will be also revise these points.
P1 Abstract L1: "(1)" should be removed. Otherwise, (2), (3), (4) should be added before "Methodology", "Findings" and "Approach", respectively.
P1 L12 "Community-based" ---"community-based" ?
P3 L16 Authors should explain the meaning of "credit" in this sentence.
P4 L10-11 I hope authors will explain what is "a symbolic identification framework" more precisely.
P4 L50 "Map 1" should be "Figure1" in the academic paper.
P5 Map 1: This figure has no title. authors must add the title of this figure. Also, it is quite difficult to understand the meaning and significance of the map especially non-Mexican people. This lack of explanation made the relationship between the map and research results.
P8- Table 1: Authors should align the top line for the text line between the items of "Indicator" and "Objectives".
P10- Table 1: Item No. 11 of the "Objectives" is missing.
P10- Table 1: In the item No. 16, "Regenerative" may be "regenerative"
P12 L25 "average., plus" may be "average, plus".
P14 Graphic1 should be "Figure2".
P15 L19 "I26" must be the "Item 26 of Indicator" in the Table 1. Authors should add the explanation on it. The same hereinafter.
P16 L10 It is difficult to understand the "contribution of Map 1" because of insufficient explanation. Authors should add explanation with cause and effect relationship.
Author Response
We thank the editor and the reviewers for their helpful comments. Our responses are provided below.
It is also important to say that the document was sent to an English reviewer for the correct understanding, indeed we have adhered to the guidelines of the bibliography and have taken all their suggestions within the document.
With many changes, we have chosen to put the most noticeable changes in red.
Greetings.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
I can evaluate the second-revised manuscript is dramatically improved. And I can understand the relationship between Figure 1 and Table1 smoothly.
I noticed the title of Figure 2 should be put under the graph, but I can judge this article is basically accepted in present form.
