Where Are the Best European Road Runners and What Are the Country Variables Related to It?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In the article the hypothesis is clearly distinguished but the objective is not clear as it should be placed at the end of the introduction.
The abstract should include part of the theoretical background and not only the objective.
The article uses a simple methodology but it is sufficient to obtain interesting results and conclusions.
In the discussion, few bibliographical references already used in the introduction are used and a large percentage of citations not used in the introduction are used.

Author Response

Reviewer 1

Reviewer comment: In the article the hypothesis is clearly distinguished but the objective is not clear as it should be placed at the end of the introduction.

Authors answers: Thanks for the comment. We readjusted as sugested, including the aims of the study.

Reviewer comment: The abstract should include part of the theoretical background and not only the objective.

Authors answers: Adjusted.

Reviewer comment: The article uses a simple methodology but it is sufficient to obtain interesting results and conclusions.

Authors answers: Thanks for this comment. We appreciate reviewer’s comments/suggestion, since they allowed us to improve the quality of the manuscript quality.

Reviewer comment: In the discussion, few bibliographical references already used in the introduction are used and a large percentage of citations not used in the introduction are used.

Authors answers: In the introduction, as supposed to be, we presented a background of “what is already known about the subject”, while in the discussion we tried to explain and discuss resutls found. So, we believe that is expected that references used in bot section are not the same.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, I had the opportunity to read your paper. I see a good potential of the paper. I have some comments: 

• In the introduction I would welcome more information about your motivation to make this research. 
• In the methodology I miss the research question/s and hypotesis. That complicate to understand the results. 
• There is time diferences in data. Some were obtained from 2015 and some in 2019. Would be great to epxplain it, or use the same timeline. 
• You mentioned that you used SPSS. Did you take the dataset as panel data?
• As you mantioned the study has some limitations, that agree.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

Dear authors, I had the opportunity to read your paper. I see a good potential of the paper. I have some comments: 

Authors’ answer: We appreciate reviewer’s comments/suggestion, since they allowed us to improve the quality of the manuscript quality.

Reviewer comment: In the introduction I would welcome more information about your motivation to make this research. 

Authors answer: We included the information required.

Reviewer comment: In the methodology I miss the research question/s and hypothesis. That complicate to understand the results. 

Authors answer: We adjusted the introduction section, including the aims of the study. Hope this elucidates the understanding of the results.

Reviewer comment: There is time differences in data. Some were obtained from 2015 and some in 2019. Would be great to explain it, or use the same timeline. 

Authors answer: In fact, unfortunately, this difference exists. Given we used secondary information, not always the available information was the most updated. We included this gap in time as a limitation.

Reviewer comment: You mentioned that you used SPSS. Did you take the dataset as panel data?

Authors answer: We used available information from official webpages/organizations. After extraction, we organized all the data in excel sheets, and the SPSS was used to data analysis.

Reviewer comment: As you mentioned the study has some limitations, that agree.

Authors answer: We updated this section.