Exploring the Differences and Similarities between Smart Cities and Sustainable Cities through an Integrative Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article presents a systematic literature review of "smart cities" and "sustainable cities" with the aim to identify similarities and differences. It draws on both quantitative as well as qualitative data analysis, adding additional perspectives and value. 

Overall, this is a very interesting study with useful insights, and I can see myself citing this article in the future. There is indeed some overlap and ambiguity between the terms of smart cities versus sustainable cities. Having a systematic review and clarifying those terms therefore seems like a useful contribution to the field.

The contribution is also well-aligned with the goals of the journal. Although, it could be argued that maybe the finding that smart cities are "intrinsically linked to technological advancements" and focus on ICT is not too surprising. However, there is more detail in the more nuanced findings, such as the comparison of dimensions and sub-dimensions. 

The article seemed slightly on the long side, but it also covers a lot, and despite its length it was interesting and engaging to read. It was great to see the RQs identified and then addressed in the results section. 

There was a little bit of repetition between the results, discussion, agenda, and conclusion sections. To some extent that makes sense and is unavoidable, but I would encourage the authors to review the article with that in mind and look out for any potential repetition that could be removed. 

The methodology is very thoroughly described and executed, I really enjoyed reading this part. Although, I was not sure the detailed description of the JSON format was necessary as this is not referred to anywhere else in the article. If it is not relevant for a later point in the discussion, this could be represented in a much shorter way. 

One aspect that might have been interesting to briefly discuss also could be how the use of the terms and their definition changed over time. However, this in itself would be a different study altogether and, as mentioned above, the article is already quite long. If the authors wish, they could address this just very briefly or a potential future area of investigation. 

 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The article is generally well-written. There are a few minor grammatical errors/inconsistencies that the authors should be able to pick up and correct through another round of proofreading and editing. For example, on p.6, some of the methodology description is in past, some in present tense ("is uploaded" rather than "was uploaded"). 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for the opportunity to improve this manuscript. We have provided the responses to the reviewer as attachment. The changes introduced in the manuscript are highlighted using the blue color.

Best regards,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript Exploring the Differences and Similarities Between Smart Cities and Sustainable Cities Through an Integrative Review. Smart cities are mostly associated with sustainability and clarifying the context will add value to the debate.

Strengths of the paper:

- Well written and structured paper

- Follows rigorous and appropriate research method

- Tables and images support the paper content

Aspects that require attention:

- No research focus or research questions are presented at the end of section 1? So what is the purpose of this study in terms of a specific research investigation?

- Present the layout of the paper at the end of Section 1 following the RQ.

- In section 2.1, the authors did not describe or motivate why they only chose WoS and Scopus databases. I can seen in the PRISMA reporting that this is what they referenced? Why only these 2? What is "Registers"? It seems it is a 3rd source.

- What keywords did the authors use to search for their corpus to analyse. The searh terms should be presented in 2.1.

- As I read the paper further, I found the information listed above in section 2.3 only, while the authors already presented the outcome in PRISMA. I would suggest to make paper more readable, section 2.3 should be presented as part of section 2.1. Even before the inclusion and exclusion criteria.

- The research questions are too granular and having 9 is overkill - questions 1 - 4 is a given and is reported as a standard part of an SLR. Is it necessary to define RQs for those?

- In Table 1, how did the authors categorize "Other"? Only journals with single paper publication? This must be described as the "Other bucket represents a significant number of publications.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

- It should be "an SLR" because the pronunciation of "SLR" starts with the sound of a vowel ("es").

- Be careful to personalise an inanimate object e.g. Table 2 "looks"... - re-phrase

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for the opportunity to improve this manuscript. We have provided the responses to the reviewer as attachment. The changes introduced in the manuscript are highlighted using the blue color.

Best regards,

The authors.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf