Review of Publications on the Water-Energy-Food Nexus and Climate Change Adaptation Using Bibliometric Analysis: A Case Study of Africa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

l In abstract: “Countries with the highest number of publications were South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Germany, Kenya and Zimbabwe. In this period, South Africa had the highest number of published articles on the WEF nexus in the world.” The second sentence shows the same information of the former one.

l Line 100: “Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus [20-22]; WEF nexus [23-32]; ” what’s the difference between them?

l Line 105-106: “Our review of literature showed in Africa WEF nexus studies contributed 52.8%, FEW nexus studies contributed 15.8%,” the same question. What’s the difference between WEF and FEW?

l Table 1 shows less useful information.

l Figure 2a, “In that period, hundreds of publications were published in the World,” “ global studies could be as high as 180 publications a year (this is recorded in 2018)”...how to get data for this figure?

l Figure 3, “integrated water resource man”, “man” means management?

l For bibliographic analysis, this study only covers several aspects, more work can be drawn based on this method, such as hot spot changing with time, collaboration between authors and so on.

l The discussion part looks more like conclusion rather than discussion.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1

Thank you so much for taking out time to review this paper. We really appreciate your constructive comment given to improve the paper. The comments have been attended to accordingly.

Please find attached the response to your comments and also how we addressed them 

Kind regards 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The review article in the field of water-energy-food nexus and climate change has a good structure and proper analysis, but it seems that due to the wide range of articles in this field, a small number of studies done in the study area of ​​Africa have been ignored. This can result from a search with the exact term 'climate change'. For example, according to this type of search, the following article is not included in the research, although it is in the same concept.

"The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Climate Risks and Opportunities in Southern Africa"

Also, the classification based on the conceptual framework of studies needs a better review. For example, the classification based on the techniques and methods of implementing the effects of climate change in water-energy-food supply or the implementation of climate change adaptation strategies is very important in this concept. Therefore, it is necessary to add a column under the title of technique or method used in the table of review studies.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2

Thank you so much for taking out time to review this paper. We really appreciate your constructive comment given to improve the paper. The comments have been attended to accordingly.

Please find attached the response to your comments and also how we addressed them 

Kind regards 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript was improved, there still format problem needs to be solved. 

1. The format of the tables is not uniform, such as:

-- the setting of the border, such as table 1,4,5.

--alignment of the table title

2. “3.3.1 Bibliometric analysis” It seems that there’s no 3.3.2

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for the comments. We revised them accordingly.

Regards

Prof Ramoelo, on behalf of the Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx