Impacts of Farming Layer Constructions on Cultivated Land Quality under the Cultivated Land Balance Policy
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General comments:
This paper reports a project which was done at Fuping County of China on cultivated land quality enhancement. The paper might have some value but currently, it is written as a project report which does not have a scientific question and whose scientific values are unclear.
Specific comments
The paper does not have clearly objective. The statement between Lines 146 – 151 is not about the objective of this paper. They are the steps on what tasks were performed on this project. A clear statement of objective should be a clear statement of the scientific question (research question) this paper is trying to answer. It is not about a set of procedures or tasks to completed! The author lumped almost everything that are relevant to land evaluation and enhancement into this paper. The title suggests that this paper is about the impacts of different farming layer constructions on cultivated land quality, but the focus of the paper (the methods and results and discussion) is mostly on the methods for land evaluation and enhancement. Is the paper about the impacts or about the enhancement of methodology? A scientific paper is about using control experiment to answer a scientific question. It is not a report describing what was done and what was found in relation to a project which does not have a scientific question.
Second, even if the scientific question is clearly stated (say the authors are to develop or enhance the methodology for land evaluation and enhancement), the authors also need to justify the existence and the significance of this question through a comprehensive analysis of the relevant literature, which is often done in the Introduction section. The current Introduction does not achieve this at all.
Third, once the question is clearly stated and justified, the experiment should be designed to solely answer that question so that the answers are directed related to the questions. The current methods and results sections do not achieve these at all.
The title of the paper is very difficult to decipher. If the paper is to examine the impacts of the farming layer construction, then I suggest change it to “Impacts of Farming Layer Constructions on Cultivated Land Quality Under the Cultivated Land Balance Policy”. If not, the authors need to change the title to reflect the theme of the paper.
Abstract should have the following components: problem to be addressed, methods employed or developed, results, and conclusions drawn. The current abstract is missing problem and conclusions.
The manuscript is written in a very poor English and needs to be edited by an English editor whose mother tongue is English. Here is an example of how poor the English is. Lines 701- 703, “The impact this technology has on the quality of cultivated land over a longer period of time and how the patterns of the impact factors change need to studied and verified in depth”, have three grammatical errors. The first is “The impact” should be “The impacts” because impacts come in many aspects and it often takes the plural form, unless the authors are absolutely sure that there is only one impact. The second, if the authors meant one impact, then the “need” should be “needs” corresponding to the singular form of “impact”. Third, “to studies and verified” should be “to “be studies and verified”. There are many grammatical errors in the manuscript which would be too time consuming for me to point them out one by one. The authors should have this paper edited by a professional English editor thoroughly.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your time involved in reviewing the manuscript and your veryencouraging comments. We also appreciate your clear and detailed feedback and hope that the explanation has fully addressed all of your concerns. In the attachment, we discuss each of your comments individually along with our corresponding responses. According with your advice, we amended the relevant part. The changes and revisions are using the "Track Changes" function in the manuscript.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for all your time involved and this great
opportunity for us to improve the manuscript. We hope you will find this revised version
satisfactory.
Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions. And we hope that the corrections will meet with approval. Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
Long Kang, Rui Zhao, Kening Wu，Qin Huang, Sicheng Zhang
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
”Impact of Different High-quality Farming Layer Construction Modes on Cultivated Land Quality Under the Cultivated Land Balance Policy”„ it is a paper that attracts attention from the beginning by approaching a complex subject. The introduction contains a substantial number of bibliographic references that support the authors' approach. The methods are complex and include defining variables for the research process. The conclusions are extensive and support the results. A very well and logically organized work. The graphics are defining and comprehensively illustrate the research method and results.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your time involved in reviewing the manuscript and your veryencouraging comments.
Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
Long Kang, Rui Zhao, Kening Wu，Qin Huang, Sicheng Zhang
Reviewer 3 Report
See attached file
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your time involved in reviewing the manuscript and your veryencouraging comments. We also appreciate your clear and detailed feedback and hope that the explanation has fully addressed all of your concerns. In the attachment, we discuss each of your comments individually along with our corresponding responses. According with your advice, we amended the relevant part. The changes and revisions are using the "Track Changes" function in the manuscript.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for all your time involved and this great
opportunity for us to improve the manuscript. We hope you will find this revised version
satisfactory.
Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions. And we hope that the corrections will meet with approval. Thank you and best regards.
Yours sincerely,
Long Kang, Rui Zhao, Kening Wu，Qin Huang, Sicheng Zhang
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
General comments:
This revision has not addressed the concerns raised in the first review. The main issue is that this is a project report, not a scientific research article. The followings are the major problems with this project report like paper: lack of a specific scientific research question, scattered methods which are not directed specifically to address the scientific question, and list of results which do not provide direct answers to the questions. Thus, the findings from this paper cannot be placed in the literature and its contribution to the existing knowledge is low.
I believe that the materials have merits, but I would urge the authors to carefully examine the comments of reviewers and address each of the specifically. I suggest that the authors to focus on one of the areas (see Comment 1 below). Window dressing the comments is not sufficient.
As is, this revision has not improved the paper in any way except rephrasing the same thing. I hope that the authors can conduct revision carefully. I would give the authors one more chance to make improvement.
Specific comments
- Lack of specific scientific research question. The revised section (most the introduction section) has not clearly reasoned out the research question. The authors need to clearly justify whether this paper is about the impacts of farming layer constructions on the cultivated land quality or about developing a new technique for farming layer construction or about how to evaluate the improvement of cultivated land quality.
1a) If it is about the impacts of farming layer constructions on the cultivated land quality, then the authors should justify through literature review that this impact analysis is needed, not simply saying this is needed or the government needs this. The authors need to thoroughly examine the literature and clearly identify the deficiency in the impact analysis of farming layer constructions which have been reported in the literature.
1b) Similarly, if it is about developing a new technique for farming layer construction, then the authors should justify through the literature analysis to clearly justify what is missing in the existing work on farming layer construction.
1c) Similarly, if it is about how to evaluate the improvement of cultivated land quality, then the authors should justify through literature analysis the deficiency in existing research on evaluation of improvement of cultivated land quality.
As the authors can see from the above, the revised version did not achieve the clear justification through literature analysis. Instead, the introduction grossly covers all these three areas. What the authors should have done is to focus on one area and perform a deep literature analysis in this specific area and clearly justify the research question which should be the theme of this research!
- Once the scientific question is set up (as suggested in 1)), the method section should focus on the methods and materials used to address this question. Remember the methods and materials should be designed for the specific research question. For example, if the paper is about the impact analysis of the farming layer constructions, then the methods section should be focused on how the authors are going to perform this impact analysis. Do not include the methods of farming layer constructions and evaluation of improvement of cultivated land quality. The latter two can be part of the experiment design but not as the core methods for the research question which in this example is impact analysis (this is just an example, the authors need to adjust according to their research question). Currently, the method section is designed to complete a project, not focusing on the methods for answering the question.
To help the authors, I would further suggest the authors split the method sections into three parts: Methods for the specific scientific question (whatever the authors decide on) and the experiment design which should include the steps for evaluating the outcome of the methods in addressing the scientific questions.
3) The result section should be focused on the results which provide direct answers to the scientific question. Currently, the results include everything they produced in this project, not directed towards the scientific question of this paper.
Detail comments: (just a couple to show authors they need to be academic in writing).
Line 33: CLBP should be spelled out completely. This is the first time it appears in the main body of the paper (abstract is not part of the main body of the paper). This mistake indicates that the authors are rather immature in writing scholarly research article.
Line 56: “home and abroad”? What does this mean? I think this is a language issue.
Line 573 and 574: “The theoretical framework of the CLQ evaluation system was established by analyzing the constituent elements of the cultivated land system.” What theoretical framework are the authors talking about? The paper did not address this before. Do not add conclusive statement that was not supported by the core analysis and results of the paper!
Reviewer 3 Report
All the comments and suggestions that I mentioned have been responded and revised; then the paper should be accepted for publication now.
