Research on the Microclimate of Protected Agriculture Structures Using Numerical Simulation Tools: A Technical and Bibliometric Analysis as a Contribution to the Sustainability of Under-Cover Cropping in Tropical and Subtropical Countries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Ortiz Rocha et al. presented a very interesting research using bibliometric and technical analysis through the compilation of scientific information reported in the main databases of studies related to the use of CFD computational fluid dynamics applied to the study of natural ventilation in passive protected agriculture structures used for agricultural production in countries located in tropical and subtropical geographic regions.

The paper is well presented.

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer.
We would like to thank you for taking the time to review our work and we are pleased to receive such good comments from you.

Best regards and best wishes.
Edwin

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper does follow the procedure of systematic review, especially bibliometric studies that address the effects of agricultural structures on microclimate. However, this paper lacks consistency in the use of technical terms, objectives, and results, and redundancy in result writing, which diminishes the readability of the paper. This paper mentioned technical aspects of study design such as preprocessing, processing, post-processing in the abstract but did not address it in objectives, and results and discussions. In addition, it would be wise to include some other technical aspects of the study design such as ventilation size (area, unit: square meter), ventilation shape, which has pertinent effects on microclimate. Below are my primary concerns:

1. The lack of a clear definition of protected agriculture structures and their types (active protected agriculture structure and passive protected agriculture structure), greenhouse structure, and its types (active and passive) have made reading this manuscript difficult. These technical terms need to be defined in the introduction section and should be consistent throughout the paper.
2. Authors should elaborate on how link and link strengths [lines: 464-465] are calculated in the methodology section so that readers can follow them in the result section.
3. An abrupt change in topics and introduction of technical terms has made this manuscript too difficult to follow. For instance, the introduction of shade house in lines 654 in result section 3.2.2. Type of covering material. Similarly, the conclusion of implementation of 16 typologies in line 1223, which was not reported in the result section.
4. Many terms are either not defined or described. Authors should explain and describe terms such as thermal and aerodynamics floors, numerical mesh and its types (structure vs unstructured), and quality of the mesh, numerical grid, etc. Authors should also use descriptive statistics to explain the results. For instance, the range of RMSE or MAPE reported in the studies, the lowest RMSE among them could be reported. 
5. Just cite the paper rather than using texts (in the case study developed by, reported in the work of) such as in lines 555, 560, 562, 588, 613, 706, 749, 775-776, 794, 804-805, 884-885, 938, 981-982, 1091, 1098-1100, 1105, 1132.
6. Consider deleting texts such as ‘summarized in the Table #’ in result sections (lines: 531, 665...). Instead, lead the reader to the table by using brackets such as (Table #). Similarly, indicate the authors to Figure # in lines 287-288.
7. Reduce the redundancy in reporting results. Choose either publication number or percentage such as in lines 374-375 and so on.
8. Following 3 – 5 will reduce the verbose and redundant in the paper and reduce the length of the paper as well.
9. Consider synthesizing the results and structure of reporting results in a concise way. For example, lines 490-499 can be reduced to one paragraph, which can start with a co-citation description and reporting the results. Similar kinds of correction can be done in lines 591 – 606, 630-644, and so on. 
10. Be consistent in using technical terms. For instance, plastic cover was used frequently throughout the text, but polyethylene was used in Table 8. 
11. Do not use color in Figures 3 and 5, color does not have any meaning. Just use simple gray or black color.
12. In Figure 4, if different colors indicate different regions then add a legend, otherwise, just use one color and add text to explain the meaning of color in the figure caption.
13. If the size of the symbol has meaning in Figures 7-9 explain it in the figure caption.
14. Consider deleting period after heading and texts in Tables 6, 8 – 18.
15. Rephrase lines 179 – 194 into one sentence to layout the bibliometric analysis in the method section and do not use the term ‘meta-analysis’ here. Meta-analysis summarizes the effects of predictor variables based on statistical analysis.
16. Insert acronym ‘CFD’ after computation fluid dynamics in line 15.
17. Line 290 -291. Numbers reported in the texts (8 and 4 articles) do not match with Figure 2 (18 and 14 in 2019 and 2020, respectively).
18. Lines 768 and 770. The number of studies did not match (84 vs 81).
19. Line 787. The number of research on transient studies did not match with the table (15 vs 16).
20. Line 924. Missing reference (Table or Figure) for 44 studies that used discrete order radiation.
21. Line 1083. The number of studies did not match in the Table 17 and text (9 vs 8).
22. Line 938. Use small letter ‘t’ in They.
23. Line 287. Use a comma before respectively
24. Line 515. Do not use the ‘you’ word.
25. Line 859. Do not use verified because there was no hypothesis in the introduction and objective.

Author Response

Dear reviewer.
We would like to thank you for taking the time to review our work and we appreciate your comments, which undoubtedly helped to improve the scientific character of the document.
We have accepted your suggestions and they have been included in the new version of the document, you will find them highlighted in yellow color.

Below are the answers to your specific concerns.

This paper does follow the procedure of systematic review, especially bibliometric studies that address the effects of agricultural structures on microclimate. However, this paper lacks consistency in the use of technical terms, objectives, and results, and redundancy in result writing, which diminishes the readability of the paper. This paper mentioned technical aspects of study design such as preprocessing, processing, post-processing in the abstract but did not address it in objectives, and results and discussions. In addition, it would be wise to include some other technical aspects of the study design such as ventilation size (area, unit: square meter), ventilation shape, which has pertinent effects on microclimate. Below are my primary concerns:

Reply. Aspects related to preprocessing, process and post-processing have been included in the introduction section of the document, and in the section on the discussion of the type of ventilation, a paragraph has been included referring to the adequate size that naturally ventilated structures should have.

“Finally, what is also clear is that several studies, regardless of the ventilation configuration used, continually suggest increasing the ventilation areas of greenhouses in order to obtain the ventilation rates required for a naturally ventilated structure [37,155]. Therefore, it is important to note that greenhouses with ventilation surfaces equivalent to 30% or less of the covered floor area of the greenhouse present heterogeneous microclimatic conditions due to poor ventilation rates [75-77]. On the contrary, greenhouses with ventilation surfaces higher than 35% show adequate ventilation rates and thermal behavior of lesser magnitude and greater homogeneity [169]. Another trend identified in regions where prevailing wind speed conditions are less than 1 m s^-1, is the increase of ventilation in the roof region, which helps to generate higher rates of renewal via free convection [110, 142].”

The lack of a clear definition of protected agriculture structures and their types (active protected agriculture structure and passive protected agriculture structure), greenhouse structure, and its types (active and passive) have made reading this manuscript difficult. These technical terms need to be defined in the introduction section and should be consistent throughout the paper.

Reply. These terms have been defined in the introduction section of the manuscript and the document has been revised and an effort has been made to always use the same term in reference to the structures.

Authors should elaborate on how link and link strengths [lines: 464-465] are calculated in the methodology section so that readers can follow them in the result section.

Reply. The following paragraph has been included in lines 258 and 264.

For data analysis, we used the methodology described by Aria and Cuccurullo [71], who recommend the implementation of the open source software Biblioshiny, which is structured for its operation in the R-studio software. In addition, the bibliometric software VOSviewer was used. This software allows the exploration and visualization of bibliometric networks through the construction of two-dimensional graphs that are easy to interpret, where, among others, the co-authorship and co-citation networks, the related links between papers and authors and, finally, the strength of the relationship between the links of these two bibliometric networks are determined [72].

An abrupt change in topics and introduction of technical terms has made this manuscript too difficult to follow. For instance, the introduction of shade house in lines 654 in result section 3.2.2. Type of covering material. Similarly, the conclusion of implementation of 16 typologies in line 1223, which was not reported in the result section.

Reply. The terms mentioned above were reviewed and defined and an attempt was made to use the same term for the specific definition.

Many terms are either not defined or described. Authors should explain and describe terms such as thermal and aerodynamics floors, numerical mesh and its types (structure vs unstructured), and quality of the mesh, numerical grid, etc. Authors should also use descriptive statistics to explain the results. For instance, the range of RMSE or MAPE reported in the studies, the lowest RMSE among them could be reported. 

Reply. The following paragraphs were included in the document.

“Another relevant phase in CFD simulation studies focuses on the definition of the type of numerical meshing to be established to discretize the computational domain, which will undoubtedly allow us to obtain accurate solutions in accordance with reality [124]. In general, we found simulation works developed with structured grids; this type of numerical grid presents a regular connectivity between the nodes of the grid and, at the same time, allows to obtain a good convergence and resolution of the analyzed problem [187].

On the other hand, there are the unstructured grids which present irregular connectivity between grid nodes and in terms of computational calculation require more time for the solution of the analyzed problem and, in turn, require more memory for data storage and processing. Although this type of meshing is better suited to complex geometries and requires less experience by the user in numerical meshing processes [11]”

“Within this group of studies, it is worth highlighting those that achieved RMSE values below 0.7 °C for temperature [83, 102, 143] and below 4% for relative humidity [47, 166].”

“Da silva et al. [132] obtained values above 0.94 in the correlation coefficient between measured and simulated data for temperature, humidity and solar radiation inside an arc-type greenhouse”

Just cite the paper rather than using texts (in the case study developed by, reported in the work of) such as in lines 555, 560, 562, 588, 613, 706, 749, 775-776, 794, 804-805, 884-885, 938, 981-982, 1091, 1098-1100, 1105, 1132.

Reply. The reviewer's suggestion is accepted, and the aforementioned paragraph lines are eliminated from all lines.

Consider deleting texts such as ‘summarized in the Table #’ in result sections (lines: 531, 665...). Instead, lead the reader to the table by using brackets such as (Table #). Similarly, indicate the authors to Figure # in lines 287-288.

Reply. The reviewer's suggestions are accepted, and the sentences leading to tables or figures are modified.

Reduce the redundancy in reporting results. Choose either publication number or percentage such as in lines 374-375 and so on.

Reply. The reviewer's suggestions are accepted, the sentences are modified and only the specific number or sometimes only the percentage is left.

Following 3 – 5 will reduce the verbose and redundant in the paper and reduce the length of the paper as well.

Reply. Suggestions 3 to 5 have been accepted, as can be reviewed in the document.

Consider synthesizing the results and structure of reporting results in a concise way. For example, lines 490-499 can be reduced to one paragraph, which can start with a co-citation description and reporting the results. Similar kinds of correction can be done in lines 591 – 606, 630-644, and so on.

Reply. The reviewer's suggestion is accepted, and the mentioned paragraphs are reorganized.

“Co-citation analysis allows to identify the patterns of behavior of the community interested in the research topic under study. That is, in the simplest case, two or more documents share a co-citation relationship when cited by a third document, directly reflecting the relationship in the topics among these document [88]. This relationship gains strength as the frequency with which the group of two or more documents are again co-cited increases [89]. In this case, a graph was found to be formed by a network of 563 nodes related to 65660 links and with a total link strength of 395576. It also identified points of convergence between the networks of the authors Boulard T and Montero JI, accompanied in their vicinity by authors such as Bournet P, Sase S, Teitel M and Mistriotis A (Figure 9)”

“For the case of Indonesia, Romdhonah et al. [170,171], defined that the suitable greenhouse structure is the peak type, while for Korea, Rasheed et al. [116], recommended the use of the gothic greenhouse with conical roof, since these are the types of greenhouses that generate the best natural ventilation performance under the climatic conditions of each country. In China [15] and Thailand [151], the ventilation areas for a Chinese solar greenhouse and an arc-type greenhouse were redesigned to reduce the thermal gradients inside the structures. In Colombia, based on the limitations of the traditional greenhouse, two greenhouse models have been proposed: the DMG (Curved multi-span design) and the GMG (Gothic multi-span design), greenhouses that have 19% more ventilation area, which allows higher ventilation rates and lower thermal gradients. [29]. Likewise, for a chapel type greenhouse, the implementation of ventilation towers was recently recommended as a passive ventilation alternative to obtain a homogeneous microclimate [177]”

Be consistent in using technical terms. For instance, plastic cover was used frequently throughout the text, but polyethylene was used in Table 8. 

Reply. It is reviewed and corrected using the same term in the document.

Do not use color in Figures 3 and 5, color does not have any meaning. Just use simple gray or black color.

Reply. Figures 1 and 2 are modified to grayscale. Figures 3 and 5 are left in color, we understand what the reviewer said, but we prefer to leave them in color since this is accepted by the journal.

In Figure 4, if different colors indicate different regions then add a legend, otherwise, just use one color and add text to explain the meaning of color in the figure caption.

Reply. The legend representing the corresponding colors has been added.

If the size of the symbol has meaning in Figures 7-9 explain it in the figure caption.

Reply. Figures 7 and 9 are generated with the Vosviewer bibliometric analysis software and the explanation of the symbols can be found in the explanatory paragraphs of each of these figures.

Consider deleting period after heading and texts in Tables 6, 8 – 18.

Reply. Corrected according to the reviewer's suggestion.

Rephrase lines 179 – 194 into one sentence to layout the bibliometric analysis in the method section and do not use the term ‘meta-analysis’ here. Meta-analysis summarizes the effects of predictor variables based on statistical analysis.

Reply. The suggestion is accepted and the paragraphs are reorganized as follows.

“As a result of the computer revolution since 1950, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have developed considerably. Therefore, there are now computer techniques that allow the analysis of the scientific production generated in an area of knowledge [63,64]. They facilitate the analysis of information through mathematical tools that allow to establish the existing relationships between the stakeholders of the knowledge networks [65,66]. One of these analysis techniques is part of scientometrics and is known as bibliometrics, which is a technique that allows through a systematic analysis to know the current state of the art of a field of knowledge in which a researcher or a research network is interested [67–69].

Bibliometrics has been implemented in recent years in many countries, which has made it possible to analyze the scientific production of authors, countries, journals, research centers, universities and other divulgation agencies, using different qualitative and quantitative graphical tools that allow the visualization of data [61]. Through the use of bibliometrics, the search for scientific information of a particular topic is now more efficient and accurate, facilitating the distribution of knowledge and its exponential growth [63,68]”

Insert acronym ‘CFD’ after computation fluid dynamics in line 15.

Reply. It has been inserted according to the reviewer's suggestion.

Line 290 -291. Numbers reported in the texts (8 and 4 articles) do not match with Figure 2 (18 and 14 in 2019 and 2020, respectively).

Reply. The values reported in the text correspond to the increase in annual production for the years 2019 and 2020 with respect to the average value of publications for the period.

Lines 768 and 770. The number of studies did not match (84 vs 81).

Reply. The typing error regarding the number of studies has been corrected.

Line 787. The number of research on transient studies did not match with the table (15 vs 16).

Reply. The typing error regarding the number of studies has been corrected.

Line 924. Missing reference (Table or Figure) for 44 studies that used discrete order radiation.

Reply. The corresponding table is referenced.

Line 1083. The number of studies did not match in the Table 17 and text (9 vs 8).

Reply. The typing error regarding the number of studies has been corrected.

Line 938. Use small letter ‘t’ in They.

Reply. The typing error is corrected.

Line 287. Use a comma before respectively.

Reply. The adjustment is made and inserted in the document as many times as necessary.

Line 515. Do not use the ‘you’ word.

Reply. The sentence is modified by eliminating the word "you".

Line 859. Do not use verified because there was no hypothesis in the introduction and objective.

Reply. The aforementioned term is eliminated.

Best regards and best wishes.
Edwin

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

I found your text very interesting. It represents a good overview of previous researches of greenhouse microclimate.

All comments and corrections are inserted in the attached file. I suggest you to article be reviewed by native English speaker. There are to long and sometimes hard to understand sentences in text.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer.
We would like to thank you for taking the time to review our work and we appreciate your comments, which undoubtedly helped to improve the manuscript version.
We have included your suggestions for corrections in the text of the document and you will find them highlighted in red.

Likewise, we have had the entire document revised, and we have made the grammatical details and punctuation marks of the paragraphs, so that they are easier to understand for the reader according to your suggestions.

Best regards and best wishes.
Edwin

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Line 15: correct as: computational fluid dynamics (CF) simulation.

Figure 1. color for each box represent different stages of process so it was good to keep them.

Figure 2: awkward way of writing the year in X-axis. Please correct it and write  Year without decimals like… 2010, 2012, 2014 or use 5 year- interval.

Figures 3 & 4: I still recommend to use one color for bar graph.

Lines 546, 551: simply cite , delete ‘as in the case of….’

Line 751: re-write: such as in Villagran et al. [112] and Flores…., consider to delete ‘as is the case’

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer.
Thank you again for your suggestions and review.
We have included all your suggestions in the new version of the manuscript, you will find them highlighted in yellow.

Line 15: correct as: computational fluid dynamics (CF) simulation.

Reply. The suggestion has been accepted and inserted in the new version of the manuscript.

Figure 1. color for each box represent different stages of process so it was good to keep them.

Reply. The suggestion has been accepted and inserted in the new version of the manuscript.

Figure 2: awkward way of writing the year in X-axis. Please correct it and write  Year without decimals like… 2010, 2012, 2014 or use 5 year- interval.

Reply. The suggestion has been accepted and inserted in the new version of the manuscript.

Figures 3 & 4: I still recommend to use one color for bar graph.

Reply. The suggestion has been accepted and inserted in the new version of the manuscript.

Lines 546, 551: simply cite , delete ‘as in the case of….’

Reply. The suggestion has been accepted and inserted in the new version of the manuscript.

Line 751: re-write: such as in Villagran et al. [112] and Flores…., consider to delete ‘as is the case’

Reply. The suggestion has been accepted and inserted in the new version of the manuscript.

 

 

Grettings

The authors.