Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,
The article Socio-economic aspects of centralized wastewater system for rural settlement under conditions of Eastern Poland presents an interesting approach to the presented topic.

The paper consists of 5 chapters, which structure is logical. The strong side of the paper is the described subject of sanitary infrastructure which is nowadays an important element of social life, especially in terms of threats to clean water.

Despite this, the article has a few shortcomings that should be taken into account in order to improve its attractiveness to the reader:

- Multi-citations in addition to commas should be separated by spaces, e.g. line 113: is [11,32,33,41,42] and should be: [11, 32, 33, 41, 42].
- Chapter 2 should be moved to the next page, do not leave the heading on the previous page.
- All tables in the text should be placed in the same way. Table 1 is to the right of the text, Table 2 is probably indented, Tables 4-7 are placed to the right of the text, Table 3 is indented.
- Equation 5 is placed in a table, why, when the others have no tables.
- I suggest that under the equations, the word "where" should not have an indentation - this will look better in the text.

Conclusion: 
In order to proceed further with the publication process, the reviewer would like to encourage authors to follow the comments/suggestions. A thorough revision of the paper is required. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for the remarks allowing to improve our manuscript. All the mentioned shortcomings were corrected.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The main drawbacks of the pare are the following:

We recommend that authors consider rewriting the abstract sections. The research ideas could have been more effective through the use of elaborative and concise sentences. The abstract, as is, does not provide a concise account of the work and conclusion of the research study. It needs to be more structured and synthesized for research clarity. The manuscript lacks a clearly structured research methodology.

The Introduction section should be divided into two sections: One section: Introduction, where the authors should elaborate on relevant contextual ideas and background leading to research, and additional literature to explain why it is important for this research study. The other section, Literature review or Background, could have represented an engaged and lively foundation from which the study is derived, thus supporting the research findings. This section can be improved by adding other theories related to the topic.

Section 2, Materials and Methods, needs improvements.

It is essential to add more details regarding the research data collection, analysis, and interpretation of results.

The authors provide a description of the methods of data employed and their application and appropriateness for data analysis.

The research methodology protocols were not clearly described.

The results were not well-presented to readers to understand the focus of the research study.

The results must be interpretive rather than just descriptive and connect the research results with relevant literature citations for validity and reliability.

The Discussion is not well-presented as it does not integrate with the research study results to provide a coherent scholarly argument.

The Discussion section should connect the research results with relevant literature citations.

The authors should correlate the literature reviews with the findings and results on improving existing knowledge.

Discussing the results could be improved by interpreting them in support of theories related to the research topic.

The conclusions are not supported by the research data, which does not indicate a clearer path for future studies on the topic.

A follow-up of restated results with supporting literature reviews could make the conclusion section more effective.

 

Good luck!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for the remarks allowing to improve our manuscript. We did our best to correct the manuscript according to your comments.

The Abstract was rewritten, we hope that now it’s clear and better synthesized.

As it was proposed the Introduction was divided into two sections: “Rural sanitary sewage management and groundwater quality” presenting the background and “Sustainability of rural sanitation” directly introducing to the presented research. Both parts were supported by the new references which number after revision reached 67 sources used in Introduction.

The Materials and methods chapter was rearranged and expanded. The clear description of the used methodology, supported by the new figure, the block scheme of the performed research, was introduced to the text.

According to the MDPI’s requirements the Results section contains descriptive presentation of the results, but this section was also improved.

The discussion of our findings already presented in the Discussion section was extended, numerous new references were introduced allowing comparison of our research to the ones previously reported. After revision 26 references were used in Discussion. However, it should be remembered that the direct correlation of various results of studies performed for different locations, even inside the same country, may be misleading due to different possible economic conditions (including e.g. pricings, salaries, services, materials), social and legal issues or even population density.

Conclusions were rearranged, now they refer to the obtained results of the study. The direction of future research was also presented.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Good luck!