Sustainability from Policy to Practice: Assessing the Impact of European Research and Innovation Frameworks on Circular Bioeconomy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Colleagues,

Thanks for the opportunity to look at your manuscript, there are certainly many interesting points, but I would recommend some corrections:

1. In the abstract, the word pioneering should be abandoned, because it is quite difficult to prove what kind of research is a pioneer these days.

2. Section 2.2 is presented very reductively, but it is important to reveal the European perspective.

3. It is necessary to provide information about The European Framework Programs (FPs) and Interreg. Now the foreign audience can't know what it's about.

4. The application of TBL and the methodology itself are described very reductively, inspiration can be found here: Burksiene, V., Dvorak, J., & Burbulyte-Tsiskarishvili, G. (2018). Sustainability and sustainability marketing in competing for the title of European Capital of Culture. Organization, 51(1), 66-78.

5. Are the results here part of a larger assessment or is this an independent study?

6. Visualization in pictures is very difficult because it is unclear what you want to depict.

7. Conclusions require policy implications.

All the best

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses attached and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I thank my colleagues for the idea to measure the link between public investments in science and the development of a circular bioeconomy aimed at zero-waste production. The paper analyzed the most prominent EU-funded scientific programs and, accordingly, attempted to link different projects and environmental care. The methods used for solving the set tasks are focused on qualitative subjective assessments, which, on the one hand, reduces the level of reliability of the results, on the other hand, reflects the complexity of solving the problem by methods of more accurate quantitative analysis.

In the process of reviewing several questions, comments and suggestions arose.

1. How adequate is the evaluation of EU-funded projects in terms of their environmental component: many projects are not directly or indirectly related to this area of knowledge, and some respondents may evaluate these very projects. The transfer of such assessments to general issues seems to me wrong. This should be explained, or the order in which respondents were selected according to the subject matter of the projects they supervise should be shown.

2. Concretize the abstract, especially the second part. Identify here and in the introduction the purpose of the research.

3. Table 1 presents the specific projects. You should explain why these particular projects were chosen. If they are projects carried out by a specific university, a serious limitation of the study will be low representativeness. Arguments are needed that the results of a similar study conducted at another university would be similar.

4. The conclusions are formulated in a very generalized way, despite the sufficiently detailed analytical material. Limitations of the study should be shown in relation to the results obtained, rather than being limited to the obvious features of the qualitative analysis methods used, while whatever the variety of respondents used, the limitations of qualitative analysis methods will still remain.

5. I suggest that the questionnaire and a summary of the questionnaire data be provided in the appendix so that the study can be repeated.

I wish you success in your future research!

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses attached and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

thank you for interesting and important research. However, I have a few suggestions to improve your paper.

1. Please go through the text again. It is interesting research, but it is written in a very complicated manner. It gives a feeling that you wanted to cover everything, all interesting concepts, methods and theories but sometimes less is more. 

2. I find it not convincing about the notion of industrial symbiosis. I do feel that the current explanation is not enough. How do you define it, how do you measure it. A more elaborated notion of IS would be very welcome. Could you elaborate "In parallel, IS is also increasingly acknowledged as a strategic tool for economic development and resource efficiency, garnering support from European policy documents [27]. (lines 133-134)"?

3. The explanation of Part 3 Material and Methods is particularly complicated. I strongly suggest providing systematic picture/scheme on your research design and what each method and materials contribute to the research.

4. Could you please provide time frame for contacting project leaders, how many emails you have sent, what was the response rate, how long did it take you to receive answers, etc.

5. Please elaborate the Theory of Change, as 181-186 lines are not enough. Also, you are saying that "Grounded in the ToC framework" (line 262) or "Consistent with the ToC's guiding principles" (line 297) but you have not clearly presented the framework or guiding principles.

6. I suggest improving conclusions and support it not only with the direct results of your research but also to show what scientific gap your research fills.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of English language required.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses attached and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Colleagues,

 

Thank you for the updated manuscript. I think your manuscript can be published at a Sustainability journal. 

All the best

Author Response

Anything to upload.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I thank the authors for clarifications and changes made to the manuscript of the article. I think the material can be published, although I found the attached questionnaire rather simplistic, and the authors did not attach the aggregate results of the questionnaire, which would have increased the clarity of the process of obtaining results and formulating conclusions.

Author Response

Anything to upload.