Accelerate the Mobilization of African and International Scientific Expertise to Boost Interdisciplinary Research for the Success of the Sahelian Great Green Wall by 2030

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a good paper on an important topic and demonstrates some novel ideas and approaches to address pertinent issues. It reads well.

A minor change is suggested p9: 

‘The other SGGW countries are not very present, with between 1 and 8 publications.’ Re-word –

‘The other SGGW countries are less well represented, with between 1 and 8 publications.’

My only query concern whether or not a broader range of multi-disciplinary works are published on issues pertinent to the project but simply not labelled or badged as such ..... this might be worth an explanatory comment. 

Also, in terms of future collaborative works on the SGGW I suspect one key recommendation for this to be better achieved would be for directives and encouragement to this effect from funding bodies. Universities and researchers will often follow funding streams ....

 

 

Author Response

Reviewer 1 :

 

Comment 1:  We have corrected the mistake pointed at page 9

 

Comment 2: A sentence has been added in 4. Discussion section about the fact that some of the extended papers can be directly related to SGGW but are not badged or labelled as such. This will effectively put the issue of the labelling of SGGW-related work by researchers into perspective.

 

Comment 3: We have also added a sentence about recommending to funders to ensure effective collaborative research to ensure the success of the SGGW project

“Similarly, a close partnership with funding agencies should be set up to co-design solution-oriented research projects »

Reviewer 2 Report

Good literature overview with sound recommendations for future research!

Figure 1: the text is not readable (too small and low resolution). Please change to higher resolution.

Tables 1 and 2: Larger characters (not bold) would improve reading. 

It would be good if the literature found and analysed would be made available for interested readers. Please consider to provide a comprehensive list of the literature reviewed. It should be made available either in an extended literature section directly in the paper (Annex) or online, if possible, together with the link.

 

Author Response

Comment 1: For figure 1, we have resubmitted it in a better resolution in the hope that it will be sufficient.

 

Comment 2: We have also increased the size of characters in the two tables to make it more readable

 

Comment 3: All the literature we have found is already available and reported in reference 7. This reference is a published and validated data paper which is accessible on Mendeley Data and which makes transparent and available the list (Excel format) of papers collected for this study. The reference is available with this link: https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/fv6xg2rc26

Reviewer 3 Report

The article has developed an informative literature review by collecting literature related to the SGGW topic and analyzing information on its main topics, geographic regionality, research teams, and data sources. After review, my recommendations are as follows.

 

1. In the 3. Results section of the manuscript, it is recommended to add statistical graphs to show the trends in the volume of relevant literature as it grows over the years.

 

2. The legend of Figure2 does not seem to clearly illustrate its meaning, please make corrections or clarifications.

 

3. We notice that the article does not seem to analyze the research methods related to the SGGW topic, please make a short addition if you can.

 

4. An overview of the overall content of the article is missing in the 5. Conclusion section, and it is suggested to be added.

 

In any case, this paper's starting point is meaningful. I hope the suggestion can make the paper more readable.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

Comment 1: we have added a graph describing the number of publications in each database (SGGW and extended) to illustrate the trend of literature over the years from 2007 to 2021. See SupMat Figure 1

 

Comment 2: we have modified the legend of Figure 2 to make it clearer

 

Comment 3: Thank you for your comment. In our results (3.1) we have already had information on the main methods used in the different topics. In addition to that, we have added here a more general sentence about the methods used in the SGGW papers

 

Comment 4: In the conclusion, we have added a more in-depth overview of our results. We hope that this will make it clearer for the reader to know the main lines of our study.