The Importance of Individual Actor Characteristics and Contextual Aspects for Promoting Industrial Symbiosis Networks
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
- I enjoyed this manuscript. It dealt with an interesting and important topic. It was well-written and organized in a logical fashion.
- In the paper, the authors refer to network managers. I wonder if the authors could elaborate on network managers. Who are they? Who do they work for? How do they make their money? How common are they? And can the authors provide a description of what they typically do?
- In Tables 1, 2, and 3 geographic proximity and geographic isolation are listed under the “Geographic Context” column. However, in the discussion of geographic factors on page 18, there is no discussion of the respective roles of geographic proximity and geographic isolation. Why not? I think that such a discussion should be added to this section.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1
Thank you for your valuable comments. In what follows we will try to address and respond to the best of our ability.
Comment 1:
“I enjoyed this manuscript. It dealt with an interesting and important topic. It was well-written and organized in a logical fashion.”
Answer: Thank you, we’re glad you enjoyed the manuscript.
Comment 2:
“In the paper, the authors refer to network managers. I wonder if the authors could elaborate on network managers. Who are they? Who do they work for? How do they make their money? How common are they? And can the authors provide a description of what they typically do?”
Answer: Thank you for addressing this, we can see now that we have not been consistent in this section. What we mean here is the facilitators of the network, referred to in Noori et al. as cluster management. We have now corrected this and we hope that this section is a bit clearer now. You can find this clarification in section 3.2.3.
Comment 3
“In Tables 1, 2, and 3 geographic proximity and geographic isolation are listed under the “Geographic Context” column. However, in the discussion of geographic factors on page 18, there is no discussion of the respective roles of geographic proximity and geographic isolation. Why not? I think that such a discussion should be added to this section.”
Answer: Thank you for your constructive feedback. We have added a section where this is addressed in section 3.2.4. We think that this was a valuable addition to this section and that it also makes a nice introduction to the rest of the analysis of the effect of an actor's geographical context.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
I think you have to consider adding the bibliometric analysis with Vos viewer software to know the most "keyword" using in your topic.
How to categorize the Influencing Factors ? What tool do you use? It seems not clear to me. I mean, you have to use more reliable data processing technic to get the result. Maybe specific software can help you tho make this categorize
How to make the relationship in figure 3? Any data processing used for this? Same with the previous. I think the author should use more reliable data processing technic to get the relationship
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2
Thank you for your valuable comments. In what follows we will try to address and respond to the best of our ability.
Comment 1
I think you have to consider adding the bibliometric analysis with Vos viewer software to know the most "keyword" using in your topic.
Answer: Thank you for your comment. However, the purpose of this paper was not to make a bibliometric analysis, investigating the state of the art of the field as such. Our goal was to qualitatively examine how drivers, barriers, and enablers of industrial symbiosis had been used in the literature, and if they were looked at from the network’s or individual actor’s perspective, not how frequently a specific terminology occurred. As described in the paper, the coding and analysis of the literature was conducted in NVivo, a qualitative data analyzing software commonly used for this purpose. The more frequentist approach that you are suggesting is nonetheless interesting and is perhaps a good topic for another review.
Comment 2
“How to categorize the Influencing Factors ? What tool do you use? It seems not clear to me. I mean, you have to use more reliable data processing technic to get the result. Maybe specific software can help you tho make this categorize”
Answer: Thank you for your suggestion. We have now clarified the methodology used when analyzing the codes and the categorization of the influencing factors in Microsoft Excel. You can find the clarification in section 2.2; the coding and review procedure is also illustrated in figure 2.
Comment 3:
“How to make the relationship in figure 3? Any data processing used for this? Same with the previous. I think the author should use more reliable data processing technic to get the relationship”
Answer: Thank you for your comment. This figure has not been generated through any data processing, it is an illustration to visualize our analysis of the results that we have conducted in Chapter 3. Clarification on the figure has been added in the discussion of our main findings section 4.1. We have re-written the first paragraph of the chapter to more clearly address the purpose of the review and highlight the findings. Furthermore, a paragraph explicating and highlighting the main findings of the review has been added in 4.1. There were indeed some potential topics for future research scattered in the body of this chapter, but these have now been gathered in a paragraph before the limitations of the study are presented. This paragraph also clarifies some theoretical and practical implications of the research.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The topic under study is interesting.
The title is appropriate.
The Abstract lacks originality at the end.
In the introduction check the sentence: “Chapter Error! Reference source not found.”
I recommend deleting the last paragraph of the introduction. It adds nothing and something is not right.
In the introduction, I recommend addressing the circular economy a little. I also recommend addressing the competitive advantages of the symbiosis industry. I recommend reading and citing:
- Industrial Symbiosis in a Circular Economy: Towards Firms' Sustainable Competitive Advantage
- Business models for industrial symbiosis: A taxonomy focused on the form of governance
- Tracing Relationship between Cluster's Performance and Transition to the Circular Economy
There are already systematic reviews of the literature on this topic. It is advisable to identify them in the introduction and say what is different about yours. Some of them I recommended above.
After the objective of the study is missing:
- Originality of the study (not available)
- What are the expected results (to captivate the reader) – I recommend putting one more important result.
The study is already a little outdated… Data extraction was done in August 2021. I think it is better to update and include studies from 2022. Studies that should have been included here are certainly out. This type of study goes out of date very quickly.
The steps taken in the methodology must be justified with other studies that have done the same. They had 326 publications and only consider 46 in the study. There are few, there are authors who recommend that this type of study should have at least 50 publications. Some journals also indicate this.
The study has interesting results. I think it would be better to propose some model with the findings. Thus, they made this study original.
The conclusion needs to be extensively revised. I recommend developing as follows:
1. Remember the purpose of the study
2. Main findings
3. Theoretical implications
4. Practical implications
5. Social implications
6. Originality of the study
7. Limitations of the study
8. Future lines of research
I recommend reviewing English. Some ideas are not fully understood.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3
Thank you for your valuable comments. In what follows we will try to address and respond to the best of our ability.
Comment 1:
“The Abstract lacks originality at the end.”
Answer: Thank you for your comment, the abstract has been revised to clarify the novelty and originality of this paper. The new Abstract has been added and the old has been deleted.
Comment 2:
In the introduction check the sentence: “Chapter Error! Reference source not found.”
Answer: Thank you for alerting us to this error, we have corrected this in the current version.
Comment 3:
“I recommend deleting the last paragraph of the introduction. It adds nothing and something is not right.”
Answer: Thank you for your suggestion. However, this paragraph is there to guide the reader in what it is expected to find in the article, we think it is of value to the reader. A section where the disposition of the paper is presented is common in both reviews and research articles, see for example Lopes and Farinha (2019), Fraccascia et al. (2019) (full reference below).
Lopes JM, Farinha L. INDUSTRIAL SYMBIOSIS IN A CIRCULAR ECONOMY: TOWARDS FIRMS' SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE. International Journal of Mechatronics and Applied Mechanics. 2019.
Fraccascia L, Giannoccaro I, Albino V. Business models for industrial symbiosis: A taxonomy focused on the form of governance. Resources, Conservation and Recycling. 2019;146:114-26.
Comment 4:
In the introduction, I recommend addressing the circular economy a little. I also recommend addressing the competitive advantages of the symbiosis industry. I recommend reading and citing:
- Industrial Symbiosis in a Circular Economy: Towards Firms' Sustainable Competitive Advantage
- Business models for industrial symbiosis: A taxonomy focused on the form of governance
- Tracing Relationship between Cluster's Performance and Transition to the Circular Economy
There are already systematic reviews of the literature on this topic. It is advisable to identify them in the introduction and say what is different about yours. Some of them I recommended above.
Answer: Thank you for suggesting relevant literature, these publications add interesting insights to this study and have now been referenced to in the introduction. In the introduction we have also included literature reviews (References number 3, 9-12, 15 in the list of references) regarding drivers, barriers, and enablers for IS that we find to be relevant and supportive of the objective of this paper. We do not entirely agree that the articles you are suggesting above are relevant to motivate this review. One of the above-mentioned reviews (by Lopes and Farinha) are of a very broad character looking at trends within the literature on CE, IS and sustainability. It is interesting as background information but does not add to the motivation of why this particular study is of interest.
Comment 5:
“After the objective of the study is missing:
- Originality of the study (not available)
- What are the expected results (to captivate the reader) – I recommend putting one more important result.”
Answer: Thank you for your constructive feedback. We have clarified and highlight the originality of this paper even more in the introduction by rearranging sections and adding some text according to you suggestion. We have also added a section in Chapter 1 on research regarding competitive advantage of IS to put the study in a greater perspective. We think this was a valuable addition to the paper.
Comment 6:
The study is already a little outdated… Data extraction was done in August 2021. I think it is better to update and include studies from 2022. Studies that should have been included here are certainly out. This type of study goes out of date very quickly.
The steps taken in the methodology must be justified with other studies that have done the same. They had 326 publications and only consider 46 in the study. There are few, there are authors who recommend that this type of study should have at least 50 publications. Some journals also indicate this.”
Answer: Thank you for this valuable comment. We have updated the search on 28 March 2022. The search rendered an additional 50 publications out of which 26 were unique hits. These were screened according to the same literature selection criteria described in the article. After abstract review 11 remained for full-text review. After full-text review 7 remained and were added to the literature sample, these articles were coded in Nvivo according to the same coding principles explained in the methodology chapter, the coding procedure rendered one new code in the driver and barrier categories which was added to table 3. Figure 2 was also updated according to this finding. In addition, we have also updated the time span in the search strings in appendix A. The findings in the additional publications added from March 28 reinforced my earlier findings and codes were added to already existing subcategories of drivers, barriers and enablers. The reference list has been updated according to the new addition of literature as well. We think that this addition improves the study’s relevance and accuracy as it is more up to date.
The methodology in this study follows the PRISMA guidelines as stated in the methodology chapter. This is common practice when it comes to a systematic review and it is also requested by this specific journal. Similar approaches have been applied in e.g., Nicolaidis et al. 2019 and Torresin et al. 2019 (full reference below). The number of publications included in the literature sample has now been updated to 53 publications due to the additional search.
Nicolaidis, A., Broberg, S., Tufvesson, L., Khalil, S., Prade, T., 2019. Bio-Based Production Systems: Why Environmental Assessment Needs to Include Supporting Systems. Sustainability 11, 17.
Torresin, S., Albatici, R., Aletta, F., Babich, F., Kang, J., 2019. Assessment Methods and Factors Determining Positive Indoor Soundscapes in Residential Buildings: A Systematic Review. Sustainability 11(19), 5290.
Comment 7:
The study has interesting results. I think it would be better to propose some model with the findings. Thus, they made this study original.
Answer: Thank you for your comment. The concluding discussion of the main findings have been updated and clarified, and the discussion related to figure 3 has been developed.
Comment 8:
The conclusion needs to be extensively revised. I recommend developing as follows:
1. Remember the purpose of the study
2. Main findings
3. Theoretical implications
- Practical implications
5. Social implications
6. Originality of the study
7. Limitations of the study
8. Future lines of research
Answer: Thank you for the constructive suggestions regarding changes to the Conclusion chapter of the paper. We have re-written the first paragraph of section 4.1 to more clearly address the purpose of the review and highlight the main findings. Furthermore, a paragraph explicating and highlighting the main findings of the review has been added. There were indeed some potential topics for future research scattered in the body of this chapter, these have now been gathered in a paragraph before the limitations of the study are presented. This paragraph also clarifies some theoretical and practical implications of the research.
Comment 9:
I recommend reviewing English. Some ideas are not fully understood.
Answer: Thank you for the recommendation. The new version of the article has been reviewed by a native American speaker.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Could you separate the answer for each reviewer.
I am little bit confuse, which is my previous review. So I cannot give any judgment, weather you already fix the problem or not
I think I asked you how to make a figure 3. (The relationship the relationship between three underlying critical considerations identified in relation to actor characteristics and specific contextual aspects). I cannot see any statistical tool for make this figure. You said that you did not use it. I think you have to use it I am still need you to make a revision that using the statistical tool for getting the reasonable result. Please make explanation in your manuscript why you did not use any statistical tools and how this condition still make your work valuable. Use theory or anything to prove that not using statistical tools still make your work valuable. I need you to add this statement with relevant theory in your manuscript.
And the important thing, please make sure that you did not mix up your response to all reviewer.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2,
Thank you for your additional comments!
Comment 1
“Could you separate the answer for each reviewer.“
Answer: We have examined the document we sent with responses to the reviewer comments. The responses to the different reviewers were clearly separated in the document and ordered correctly (i.e., no responses were positioned together with the wrong question). Unfortunately, we do not understand why you found it difficult to locate the responses to your comments. Your individual response was also sent separately to you via the submission portal.
Comment 2
“I am little bit confuse, which is my previous review. So I cannot give any judgment, weather you already fix the problem or not
I think I asked you how to make a figure 3. (The relationship the relationship between three underlying critical considerations identified in relation to actor characteristics and specific contextual aspects). I cannot see any statistical tool for make this figure. You said that you did not use it. I think you have to use it I am still need you to make a revision that using the statistical tool for getting the reasonable result. Please make explanation in your manuscript why you did not use any statistical tools and how this condition still make your work valuable. Use theory or anything to prove that not using statistical tools still make your work valuable. I need you to add this statement with relevant theory in your manuscript.“
Answer: Thank you for reiterating some of the points you made regarding Figure 3. Although it was clear from the previous version of the text (see page 21 in the previous version) that the figure was not associated with any statistical analysis, but resembled our conceptual understanding of discussions found in the sampled literature, we do recognize that the figure had some visual resemblance with e.g. a path analysis diagram. Therefore, we have now changed Figure 3 in the paper to a table format and named it Table 4. We have also changed the text accordingly and clarified the intention of the table.
The method we used to analyze the literature sample is described in the methodology section and supports the objectives of this paper: “The objectives of this paper are 1) to identify factors, i.e., drivers, barriers, and enablers, that influence decisions by actors to participate in symbiosis collaborations and 2) to explore, based on the current literature, if and how the perception and impact of these factors differ depending on individual actor characteristics and specific contextual aspects.” (p. 3). We never attempted, or set out to conduct a statistical analysis of the literature examined, and since that was the case, we sincerely hope that changing the figure and pointing out that it was never a direct result of any statistical analysis to begin with will suffice to clarify any questions you had regarding that part of the manuscript.
Comment 3
“And the important thing, please make sure that you did not mix up your response to all reviewer.”
Answer: We have examined the document we sent with responses to the reviewer comments. The responses to the different reviewers were clearly separated in the document and ordered correctly (i.e., no responses were positioned together with the wrong question). Unfortunately, we do not understand why you found it difficult to locate the responses to your comments. Your individual response was also sent separately to you via the submission portal.
Kind regards,
Lovisa Harfeldt-Berg, Sarah Broberg and Karin Ericsson
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors made most of the suggestions. The paper has improved a lot and in my opinion it can be published.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 3,
Thank you for your additional comment!
Comment 1
“The authors made most of the suggestions. The paper has improved a lot and in my opinion it can be published.”
Answer: Again, thank you for your valuable comments during review round 1, we think they helped improve the paper significantly. We are now grateful that you found our changes suffice and that you think the paper can be published.
Kind regards,
Lovisa Harfeldt-Berg, Sarah Broberg and Karin Ericsson
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
