Spatial and Economic Effects of Yangtze River-Huaihe River Water Transfer Project on the Transportation Accessibility of Bulk Cargo within Anhui Province, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors!

Please improve Your research in the following :

1/ The focus of the journal is Sustainability, please add more  details about connection of Your topic with SDG.

2/L Hu, M., Sarwar, S., & Li, Z. (2021). Spatio-temporal differentiation mode and threshold effect of Yangtze river Delta urban ecological well-being performance based on network DEA. Sustainability, 13(8), 4550.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper needs to make the improvement before making a final decision. 

1. Strength of economic linkages is not a keyword. Please revise it. 

2. For Figure 1, it is not clear. Please provide another one. 

3. Please separate the introduction and literature review sections. For the paper structure, please provide it at the end of the introduction section. 

4. For the Baidu map and Google map, any significant difference that will affect the research results?

5. The conclusion needs to be rewritten. It needs to include the academic and managerial implications, limitations of the study, and future research trends. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript entitled "Spatial and Economic Effects of Yangtze River-Huaihe River Water Transfer Project on the Transportation Accessibility of Bulk Cargo within Anhui Province, China" has been reviewed. This paper aims to explore the influence of the Yangtze River-Huaihe River Water Transfer Project (YHWTP) on the transportation accessibility of bulk cargo. The subject of the manuscript is very interesting, it is well written and contains important results that help the decision-makers. Some general and minor comments are provided below.

English: there are some typos and grammar mistakes in the text that should be corrected. For example, on Page 2 Line 69 “effect on” should be replaced by “affect”, Page 3 Line 86-89 “Although…” should be linked by a contrasting idea, Page 4 Line 150 “This” should be “this”, etc.

Figures: the quality of the figures is not satisfactory. The figures should be replaced with a higher quality ones. Specifically, in Figure 1, the components of the project are not visible.

 

Materials and Methods:

While the project includes “107.1 kilometers of pressure pipelines”, it is not clear how “the shipping link between the two rivers will not need to go eastward through the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and the Yangtze River and the Huaihe River will be directly connected”? (Page 4 Lines 142-144). Please clarify and illustrate with higher quality in Figure 1. Page 8 Lines 281-288: all of the variables, including CV should be in italic.

 

Results and Discussion

While the authors have presented the results in an admirable manner, the results are rarely discussed in the manuscript. Also, it could be helpful if the authors provide a comparison between their results and those of similar studies.

 

Conclusion
The conclusion usually aims to generalize the findings of the study and explore its limitations. Every study has its limitations which the authors should not hesitate to mention explicitly. Since this study is not an exception, the limitations of the study should be clearly mentioned at the end of the conclusion section.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

 

The subject of the manuscript is relevant, perhaps a bit too long, but a different wording would not accurately reflect the content.

 

The abstract is written correctly, succinctly, and clearly. The selection of keywords is accurate, thanks to which people selecting articles for text mining will find valuable material.

 

In the introduction, the problems of the article are appropriately described. The goal was properly formulated. However, there was no short description of the transport structure.

 

The article uses methods in the field of spatial data analysis. The authors correctly applied the mathematical apparatus.

 

The icing on the cake is the result of the standard deviation illustrated by the diagram cards in Figure 7.

 

The discussion of the results could be in-depth, and less technical, but it is correct. The conclusions are interesting. However, they lacked information about the study's limitations, who might be interested in the results presented in the manuscript, and information on how to extend the study in the future.

 

Shortcomings that should be corrected:

·         In section 2, the text on lines 142-147 should be bulleted.

·         On lines 149-150, the word "This" should be lowercase.

·         I have doubts about the vocabulary used, incl. on line 205, ie "inland river waterway". This does not seem correct to me.

·         The web pages listed in section 2 should be included as sources and given a reference number.

·         In table 2, the unit should be expressed as yuan/tkm instead of yuan/km/ton. Later in the calculations (results), the yuan/ton unit is used - it should be noted in the text that the authors used a conversion key for the cost category.

·         In tables 3 and 4, please complete the standard deviation and skewness.

·         How was the Coefficient of Variation (CV) for TCA calculated in Tables 3 and 4 since no mean was calculated?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The revised version is fine for me and ready for publication.