The Beautiful Risk of Collaborative and Interdisciplinary Research. A Challenging Collaborative and Critical Approach toward Sustainable Learning Processes in Academic Profession
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a very interesting paper, discussing a difficult road of interdisciplinary collaboration. I must admit, I really enjoyed reading it and I would like to thank the Authors for sharing their experience with us.
The paper is well structured and well written. The presented study is properly organized. Method is well chosen, and the presented results are relevant and interesting. The research process is well thought.
The presented study was properly organized and presented in a concise and specific, but exhaustive way. The reader is lead through the study in a logical and properly explanatory way. The cited literature was also well chosen and is up-to-date. This article has proper scientific soundness and is very interesting, as it provides a complex overview of the topic and authors' own experience.
There are only minor issues to improve in the text:
- line 27 - 29 Is that a question or a statement?
- line 67 Who are the third-party stakeholders in this particular case?
- The choice of the members of the research group is very inetersting and I would like to find out more about how the participants was chosen and why? Were there any criteria used?
- line 239 You mention the analysis of statistical data, but I cannot find information of what kind of statistical data you used for analysis.
- It would be enriching to find out what are the future scenarios / paths of this research and do authors plan to continue or develop further this cooperation?
Author Response
Dear, Reviewer
Hereby you´ll find our response incl comments to our revisions
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The article presents an interesting idea of the importance of interdisciplinarity when working in research.
However, the focus of the article is a description of the experience carried out, without seriously addressing a more scientific approach.
There are no objectives, hypotheses, problem to be solved or a serious bibliographical review on the subject.
In Education for Sustainable Development, there are many works on interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity...
Author Response
Dear, Reviewer,
Hereby we´ll enclose our revisions according to your comments
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The study presents a highly interesting objective, aligned on existing challenges in Higher Education such as interdisciplinarity. To this end, the authors develop a methodology based on the opinion of a group of teachers. This in itself leads to the fact that the scientific rigour of the method can be controversial. The conclusions reached in this study come from a group of teachers whose average age, areas of knowledge, teaching experience and professional career are unknown. This information would allow us to better contextualise the study. Likewise, we do not know the inclusion and exclusion criteria used to include this group of teachers whose characteristics are unknown in this study. Interdisciplinarity could also be situated between teaching models according to countries or even public vs. private universities. This gap would be worth commenting on.
With regard to the results, the fact that there are no questions with possible answer options or Lickert-scale questions means that the results extracted and described in the different sub-sections (3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5) of the Results section are too extensive. The study would be improved if part of the results could be represented in table format. Similarly, it is necessary in the Methodology section for the authors to describe precisely how they have extracted these results from the open questions they initially proposed.
In this sense, it is important that they structure the different methodological phases of the intervention, and not so much of the study in general. It is also relevant to indicate whether the study has been registered in any institution and whether it has been approved for implementation.
Table 4 refers to the activities carried out in phase 4 (presentations), but in the text it is not represented with this Table. Please unify the terms to avoid confusion for the reader.
The discussion is correct, although it would include a section on future implications which could include the limitations and challenges to be addressed in Higher Education.
The conclusion is too long, and does not focus on the objectives stated at the beginning.
Author Response
Dear, Reviewer,
Hereby we´ll enclose our revisions according to your comments
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript in the form presented, and after revision, still presents serious methodological problems that do not allow the extraction of conclusive results. The methodology used is very limited, making the reproducibility of the results achieved difficult. The expert opinion does not present clearly defined inclusion and exclusion criteria. The disclosure of identity shown in table 1 is not a good idea on the part of the authors.
The results are very few and limited, and are not obtained from a rigorous qualitative analysis.
The authors do not provide point-by-point answers to all the questions raised in the first review, which does not allow for a positive assessment of the review sent for appraisal.
Author Response
Reviewer 3 made the following comment: “The disclosure of identity shown in table 1 is not a good idea on the part of the authors.”
Here is our reply:
We have changed the top of the table and instead of having first and second names, we have now only second names – more in accordance with academic traditions.
The content is, however, methodologically important and was asked for by Reviewers 1 and 2 in review round 1. We will therefore keep the table.
