The “Island Formation” within the Hinterland of a Port System: The Case of the Padan Plain in Italy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript “The “island formation” within the hinterland of a port system: the case of the Padan Plain in Italy” presents an interesting study, however, the presentation of the research needs revision.

1. The paper is not well-formatted and should be re-arranged. The sections Materials and Methods, Results are required. Please follow the Authors Instruction and use template when revising the paper.
2. Please set information at lines 146-164 as a table instead of the list.
3. The results obtained from interview (from line 207 and further) should be presented in a Table
4. Please avoid multiply repetition of the same word in one sentence (e.g. at lines 37-39 you repeat “port 6 times in the same sentence). The text style needs editing.
5. The Figures quality is not good and must be improved
6. The comments on the data presented in tables 8-11 should be substantially shorter, not repeating the values in the tables.
7. The data at lines 737-753 should be re-arranged as a table
8. Please avoid citations in Conclusion. Discussion with citing should be a part of section Results.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The investigation of the emergence of the region within the hinterland of a port served by another port is the main goal of the manuscript. Padan Plain in northern Italy is a case study. This area is served not only by close Ligurian ports but also by North Sea seaports. For experts in logistics and intermodal transport chains, the paper may be very interested for the rest audience - profoundly less due to very great detail.

The main outcomes are the estimations of total container traffic between the case study area and northern ports and a comparison of total intermodal costs and travel times of cargo from/to the Far East and North America to the heart of Padan Plain. The analysis is overly detailed. Readers who are not familiar with First Italy's geography may feel lost between toponyms widely occurs in the text. Adding a map showing the geographical circumstances of  "island formation" is strongly recommended. 

My great concern with the paper is its contribution to science. However, the results of detailed estimations are original and have applied value, change little in understanding the "island formation" process. I suggest separating the "Discussion" chapter from the "Conclusion" to discuss the results more systematically.

Finally, however, the link between article topics and journal aims and scope exists; it is practically not emphasized in the text. "Introduction" and "Discussion" are a suitable part of the place those considerations.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript estimated the number of TEUs to/from the Pandan Plain in Italy under the concept of “island formation.” I am glad to review this paper and had a chance to view the regions. However, the manuscript is very challenging to follow for a short time of review period due to the number of locations and places with numbers and years. MTOs and terminals are mixed and back and forth throughout the paper so it is tough to imagine and validate. I don’t have all comments here, but have just some of them. 

I have some comments as follows:

1. Page 1, Line 24: The port should be “maritime” or “marine” port since the sentence specified “to the sea.”
2. Page 2: Map(s) will be very helpful to understand the geography and locations of the ports and harbors.
3. Page 2, Line 59: It needs references.
4. Page 2, Line 82: “in several studies” also need references.
5. Page 3, Table 1 needs references in the column of Source.
6. Page 3, Line 113: I don’t see a table.
7. Page 3, Line 118 – 135, a map will be of help.
8. Page 3, Table 1: what is n(superscript o)? and what year the data in?
9. Page 5, Line 221 – 239: it is not the sequence of MTOs, so better way is to say MTO 1, MTO 2, MTO 3 and MTO 4 to hide the companies.
10. Page 5, Line 227-229: UTI should be ITU…
11. Page 6, Line 243: is “satellite terminal” “island formation?” It is a new concept which is not addressed before.
12. Page 6, Line 283-295: a table may be of help.
13. Page 5, Line 222-225: if the number of wagons are averages, why do they have ranges such as 25-26, 23-24, and 25-26?
14. Page 8, Line 344: 87:75?

Author Response

Please find the responses in the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I appreciate the work done by the Authors, however, the revision still is required.

1. Authors should study the Instruction for authors of the journal, and revise properly the format of the manuscript, as indicated:

Research Manuscript Sections

• Introduction: The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance, including specific hypotheses being tested. The current state of the research field should be reviewed carefully and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the main conclusions. Keep the introduction comprehensible to scientists working outside the topic of the paper.
• Materials and Methods: They should be described with sufficient detail to allow others to replicate and build on published results. New methods and protocols should be described in detail while well-established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited. Give the name and version of any software used and make clear whether computer code used is available. Include any pre-registration codes.
• Results: Provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.
• Discussion: Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible and limitations of the work highlighted. Future research directions may also be mentioned. This section may be combined with Results.
• Conclusions: This section is not mandatory, but can be added to the manuscript if the discussion is unusually long or complex.
• Patents: This section is not mandatory, but may be added if there are patents resulting from the work reported in this manuscript.

You should unite all the materials and methods as a single section, with sub-sections if necessary. Also, the results should be presented as a single section with sub-sections, corresponding the specific results.

2. As you can see from the Instruction, Conclusions section is not mandatory. However, if you prefer to prepare Discussion section with introduced Conclusions, not necessary to rename section Discussion as Discussion and Conclusions. The section Discussion usually unlike from Conclusions contain the citations of the key literature and comparison the results obtained with previous researchers.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

I would like to say thank the authors. Most of the concerns were clearly addressed. However, the organization of the paper should be improved. for example, Results of the study were discussed in Section 2.3-6 along with Literature Review. I would recommend the manuscript carries Literature Review in Chapter 2 and Methodology and Materials in Section 3. The current title of Section 3 is too long. Some of titles of figures and tables are also too long. The results listed in Section 3.4-6 should be in a new section, Section 4 Results and Implications. 

Author Response

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