A Scoping Review Examining Governance, Co-Creation, and Social and Ecological Justice in Living Labs Literature
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This scoping review on Living Lab (LL) literature makes an important contribution and the authors have used sound methods and written carefully and clearly about their results. I learned several things I did not know from their scoping approach targeting 2015-2020. For example, I would not have predicted the involvement to be as European dominated. Also, the high urban focus makes sense, but I had not seen it identified this clearly previously.
I have spent considerable time thinking about the extent to which a concern I have about this work needs to be addressed in revisions. I want to be realistic about what can be accomplished with a scoping review - which I think the authors have done well here generally. However, since the phrase of 'centering' social and ecological justice is used repeatedly as a goal and since the authors are involved in this LL work directly, I hope they will be open to hearing what I think needs to be said, because I think it could cause harm, if not. While I do not think a gap analysis is realistic in this piece, I suggest it would be a valuable next step for this work (and could be mentioned to address my concerns below). What is the gap between what the LL say they do, and what they really do? Are there some that are really doing what they say, how many, and how are the results different? I know this goes beyond the objective here, but let me show why I suggest it is so necessary to be more attentive to these gaps and call for more attention to potential constraints and problems.
Universities are so entrenched in structures that cause social and ecological INjustice that the language and conclusions here need to go further. I have done this work long enough to know that there is excellent high quality, high integrity work done by some schools and people in LLs and also that there can be major harm caused if participants do not address elements like power and unequal knowledge production.
My greatest concern methodologically was that I could not see how the results in one section tied to another. Was it the same respondent who does not mention power (pg. 10 lines 370-375) that later says they center social justice? Or were there a subset of institutions/faculty doing this work in a transformative way, and another subset doing it in a way to reinforce the status quo (brimming with racism, sexism, classism, etc.). It is not enough to say you want to center environmental justice if you are privileged and hold the decision making power - and yet don't know what a frontline household experiences or how it got to be that way or how it is being maintained by dominant institutions including often universities and their partners in the private sector, business, etc. The NGOS that many universities select to do social and environmental work with are often the biggest and most resourced in an area, but maybe the least prepared to address JUSTICE. I know this is not the only way institutions engage with NGOs and some work with smaller groups. In my own work I specifically select to work with the NGOs that are doing powerful social and ecological work, but their ability to engage in big LL programs (writing grants, co-producing scholarly knowledge) is limited because of all the pressing concerns in the community and these groups rely on volunteers. We co-produce knowledge all the time, but we often don’t publish it except as it emerges in policies and op-eds.
Every LL partnership figures this out in their own way, and I am not suggesting there is only one way, but MOST of the schools that do this work are very poorly equipped for co-production of knowledge and if they are doing it, it can be very superficial or in a few stages of the project, not from start to finish as justice work needs to be transformative. In my own work, I have come to the conclusion that we need to have a category for the enablers - and should not let them pretend rhetoric is enough - especially if/when there isn't a drive to do it better or move past early governance errors. We need to push faculty to learn and do better, which I cannot see in the scoping results as reported, especially with just a 5 year recent period.
Based on experience I will suggest LLs can be damaging if we allow for any mode to be considered fine, depending on however the LL wants to define themselves and work with community partners. If people are clear that they do not center justice and they have no intent to share power with staff or students, much less a single mom from a local NGO, then they should have to state it - and should not be assessed in this literature in the same way as if they were working for long-term sustainability. If we do not call out the selfish actors in this sphere and how their work can function at cross-purposes to sustainability and justice, we also let them take their privileges to take all the grants for this work and write most of the publications. There are people like me doing this work day and night, but who value my low wealth community partners and our long-term working relationships so much that I do not emphasize publications and grants (with overhead going to my institution) in ways I would have before a decade of deep LL engagement for social and environmental justice. Not all faculty has this experience - and I am happy to see the blossoming of LL in its many shapes and forms - but our collective practices need to address what is 'governance' more effectively before scholarly work and academic institutions can effectively center social and environmental justice. If we don't point that out, we are doing an injustice to our students and to our community partners. Anything else allows too much 'greenwashing,' 'whitewashing' and 'wokewashing' to pass as OK. If these biases and inequalities were not re-creating harm in the very places the LL claim to want to help, we might be able overlook it, but I know the horror stories of this work gone amuck in situations of racial and economic conflict - and universities are not learning because they sweep everything under the rug and reframe conversations in ways to not be held accountable. Yes, I say this at my school too. I have been in the trenches for many years and it isn't pretty seeing how some universities/faculty engage when they are allowed to define the rules and results (outputs) of LL initiatives.
In sum, I think this scoping article does not go far enough to address how the buzzwords that academics often claim they do with LL has to be broken down so we can really train ourselves and our students to address the most difficult challenges in real-life situations and do it in a way that shatters the unfair privilege of academia.
Overall, I agreed with the methods in the work except I would argue that being guided by best practices p. 10 line 377 there would need to be ground truthing. I really like the opening discussion of the Lake Superior LL Network and while I wanted to see more, I am not sure how well that fits with the scoping review focus of the piece. Nevertheless, I would like the mention of LSLLN to be more directly attentive to the concerns about governance, knowledge co-production, justice longevity/sustainability mentioned above and in the rest of the article. This section does not do enough as developed here, and if it is to be mentioned in a scoping article, it would be helpful to return to the topic in a deeper way in the later discussion or conclusion.
Author Response
Thank you for your thoughts and reflections. We are particularly pleased to hear that you believe the methodology is sound and that the findings are relevant.
We have taken time to reflect on your comments and how best to integrate them into the manuscript recognizing, as you do, that this manuscript is a scoping review study and the need to ground our discussion and recommendations in the data.
While some of the suggestions are beyond the scope of this manuscript, we have drawn out four key points from your comments and made changes to the manuscript based on these points:
1) We have removed the language of “centering social and ecological justice”. Your point on this ineffective/inappropriate word choice is well taken given the limited engagement with social and ecological justice in the LLs literature as outlined in our findings. Thank you for flagging this issue. We are now using the language of “Working towards social and ecological justice”.
2) We now integrate, where appropriate, more of our own experiences from the LSLLN project (described in the introduction of the paper) in the discussion section. We also make it clearer that the discussion is shaped by the findings and our practical LLs work. In other words, our discussion section speaks to both existing literature and our experiences as LL researchers and practitioners.
3) You write “I think this scoping article does not go far enough to address how the buzzwords that academics often claim they do with LL has to be broken down so we can really train ourselves and our students to address the most difficult challenges in real-life situations and do it in a way that shatters the unfair privilege of academia.” We agree with these thoughts generally, but also note that our data (information and details gathered and synthesized from peer-reviewed articles) only enable us to go so far on this and to make certain claims. We now call for researchers writing and publishing about LLs to describe more fully governance-related aspects of LL work and HOW both co-creation and (in)justice issues are being addressed. Our study has identified that this information is not being shared in peer-reviewed articles, which we argue is needed to advance LLs work. Additionally, we now also call for future consideration and subsequent research examining how academic institutions are impeding/supporting innovative advances in relation to governance and justice in LLs work.
4) We address your comment that “universities are so entrenched in structures that cause social and ecological injustice that the language and conclusions here need to go further in this way”. We have added a conclusion section where we outline more explicitly four key future research directions. This includes commentary on the role of academic institutions in impeding and/or supporting innovation and governance that supports the movement towards social and ecological justice.
All changes are indicated with tracked changes in the revised manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
Generally article is interesting literature review. However, I have 3 remarks:
- Lines 555-556: I doubt that critical theory could be helpful here. Especially in the form it is present now in the philosophical literature. However, it would be helpful if the authors could explain how they understand the role of critical theory more precisely.
- in the discussion the standpoint of the authors is not clearly stated. I think it would be good if an original research paper would consider author's point of view
- "a" is 3 times repeated in numeration of the last part
Author Response
Thank you for your review and comments, we are glad to hear you find the article interesting and relevant. We have responded to your specific comments (as described below) and made changes in the manuscript using track changes.
1. Lines 555-556: I doubt that critical theory could be helpful here. Especially in the form it is present now in the philosophical literature. However, it would be helpful if the authors could explain how they understand the role of critical theory more precisely.
→ We have removed lines 555-556 rather than adding additional text and justification for the potential utility of critical theory. We decided to take this approach to shorten rather than lengthen an already lengthy discussion section.
2. in the discussion the standpoint of the authors is not clearly stated. I think it would be good if an original research paper would consider author's point of view
→ Our discussion section now discusses our findings in relation to both the scholarly literature and, where appropriate, some of our own experiences as LLs practitioners (drawn from our work in the LSLLN project in particular). Additionally, we have added a conclusion section that serves to further illustrate our opinions/recommendations in relation to future research directions.
3. "a" is 3 times repeated in numeration of the last part
→ We have addressed this issue. The subsections in the results and the discussion are now “a.”, “b.” and “c.”. Thank you for identifying this error.
Reviewer 3 Report
In considering the purpose of this research, it seems that the selection of research methodology and scope of analysis, the process of deriving alternatives, and the specificity are sufficiently systematic as an academic article. However, in theoretical composition, this research requires supplementation since the review of preceding studies is somewhat limited when quotations are taken into consideration. In addition, in order to explain the policy alternatives logically, separate drawing and presentation of implications regarding case analyses seem to be more useful.
Author Response
We have not made changes to the manuscript based on this review given that the overall assessment of the research, scope, methodology, and findings are reviewed as strong. We note that scoping reviews articles generally have a short and succinct introduction section, aiming to briefly describe the rationale and the specific objectives, without integration of background and theory. However, we have made several revisions based on the requests from other reviewers, improving the manuscript overall.
Reviewer 4 Report
General comments
This study focuses on the potential role of Living Labs (LL) in addressing the complex challenges of sustainability. The topic is very interesting, and it has practical importance, particularly for sustainability areas. Though this topic is quite interesting and of practical significance, the manuscript requires revision in several sections.
Title
The title reflects the insight of the study.
Abstract
It is not well structured. The author is advised to revise the abstract by following IMRAD style and avoiding unnecessary text. The author added more background information but now needs to add key findings and practical implications briefly.
Introduction
-The introduction is not structured. The author should introduce the issue, its importance, and its practical implication properly.
-The research gap and objective are clear. But “why do you select Governance, Co-creation, and Social and Ecological Justice as the basis of investigation” is not clear. The author should add at least one paragraph to why the process of selection of these keywords.
-There is no coherence in the description.
-Need to avoid unrelated discussions.
-The author should also explain “how do you form research questions?” and how can it contribute to existing literature.
Materials and Methods
-The description of the steps of methodology is fine. But the author should explain why you use specific databases like “ScienceDirect, web of science and PubMed” and avoid large databases like Scopus and Engineering Village.
-The overall methodology is okay and acceptable.
Results
-This section is also well written.
-The author is advised to correct the numbering of sub-sections and add an outline of the subsection.
-The remainders are okay
Discussion
-The author is advised to separate the discussion section from the conclusion and add a separate conclusion section. It will be reader-friendly.
-The organization and arguments in the discussion section are okay.
Conclusion
The author is advised to add a separate conclusion section focusing on key findings and practical implications.
References
Need to check the whole section and address many missing issues (lines 601, 616, 620, 636, 643, 648, 664, 674, 676, 692, 695, 706, 712, 713)
Author Response
Thank you for your helpful and thorough review. Please see a point-by-point response below.
General comments:
This study focuses on the potential role of Living Labs (LL) in addressing the complex challenges of sustainability. The topic is very interesting, and it has practical importance, particularly for sustainability areas. Though this topic is quite interesting and of practical significance, the manuscript requires revision in several sections.
→ Thank you for these encouraging comments about the relevance of our work. We have made changes according to your review which we believe have improved that manuscript overall.
Title
The title reflects the insight of the study.
→ Thank you.
Abstract
It is not well structured. The author is advised to revise the abstract by following IMRAD style and avoiding unnecessary text. The author added more background information but now needs to add key findings and practical implications briefly.
→ Thank you for this comment and suggestion. We have revised the abstract accordingly.
Introduction
-The introduction is not structured. The author should introduce the issue, its importance, and its practical implication properly. The research gap and objective are clear. But “why do you select Governance, Co-creation, and Social and Ecological Justice as the basis of investigation” is not clear. The author should add at least one paragraph to why the process of selection of these keywords.
→ We have selected governance, co-creation, and social and ecological justice as focus areas for three reasons. Firstly, recent systematic and scoping reviews engaging with the LL literature have outlined and called for the need to examine these dimensions of LL work more fully and purposefully. We wanted to respond to these calls. Second, our interest in examining governance, co-creation, and social and ecological justice is also informed in part by our own LL work, in the context of the LSLLN. As participants of the LSLLN, we are experiencing challenges that relate to governance, how to engage in co-creative work, and how to work towards social and ecological justice in practice. Our team recognized the need to synthesize knowledge from the literature relating to these challenges. Finally, as outlined in the methods section, these areas of focus were shaped by an interactive workshop with LSLLN members. We have made these points more clear in the introduction.
-Need to avoid unrelated discussions.
→ It is not clear to the co-authors what the reviewer is speaking to specifically, however, we have made some revisions in general to the paper that likely address this suggestion.
-The author should also explain “how do you form research questions?” and how can it contribute to existing literature.
→We speak to this in the methods section (sub-section 2.1, specifically). Although a discussion of “how do you form research questions?” can often be answered in an introduction section, in scoping review papers following the Arksey and O’Malley methodology, this is most commonly articulated and described in the methods section as we have done (thereby describing the 5 steps outlined by Arksey and O’Malley in the scoping review process: 1) identifying the research question(s); 2) identifying relevant studies; 3) selecting studies for inclusion in the review; 4) data extraction; and 5) collating, synthesizing, summarizing, and reporting results. Consequently, we have opted to leave this content in the methods section rather than integrating it into the introduction section.
Materials and Methods
-The description of the steps of methodology is fine. But the author should explain why you use specific databases like “ScienceDirect, web of science and PubMed” and avoid large databases like Scopus and Engineering Village.
→ Thank you for this suggestion. We have included the following information about database selection in subsection 2.2: “These databases were recommended by the Lakehead University librarian and enabled breadth and comprehensiveness in terms of journals and disciplinary perspective. Additionally, preliminary searches in other potential databases indicated a very high-level of duplication across identified articles.”
-The overall methodology is okay and acceptable.
→ Thank you.
Results
-This section is also well written.
→ Thank you.
-The author is advised to correct the numbering of sub-sections and add an outline of the subsection.
→ We have corrected the numbering of subsections and added an outline of the subsections at the beginning of the results section.
-The remainders are okay
Discussion
-The author is advised to separate the discussion section from the conclusion and add a separate conclusion section. It will be reader-friendly.
→ We have separated the discussion section from the conclusion section to enhance readability and to make specific recommendations in the conclusion section regarding key directions for future research.
-The organization and arguments in the discussion section are okay.
→ Thank you.
Conclusion
The author is advised to add a separate conclusion section focusing on key findings and practical implications.
→ We have added a conclusion section identifying four key directions for future research.
