How ‘Networked’ are Online Collaborative Concept-Maps? Introducing Metrics for Quantifying and Comparing the ‘Networkedness’ of Collaboratively Constructed Content
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an interesting, but lengthy paper on online collaborative concept maps. The paper is generally well written. But not so great regarding length.
The conclusion is missing and ends with the discussion which is very short. I suggest you tighten the writing of the results and then add in a short conclusion. Although not mandatory it is nice to conclude a paper, particularly with such a short discussion. Limitations are details and so are the future directions, however you haven't particularly discussed the results in light of further studies.
The last paragraph in the literature review section (prior to materials and methods) is a very nice paragraph as it synthesises the literature well.
Some smaller details:
-Line 45 you state 'goal'. I would change this to 'aim'. You also used the word 'suggest' on the same line. I would change this to 'investigate' as this makes the exploratory work so much more important.
-Line 115 should be 'and' and not '&'.
-On page 6 the spaces at the top of the page are different to paragraph 2.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you kindly for taking the time and effort to review our work. We read your comments carefully and introduced some changes accordingly.
Please see the attachment for a detailed response.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
It is a study of interest to the scientific community. It fulfills the requirements as a research proposal for the journal Education Sciencies.
Author Response
Thank you for taking the time and effort to review our work and for finding it worthy of publication.
Reviewer 3 Report
This is a very interesting approach, but in their line 32 they state "The importance of incorporating the practice of collaborative discussion into the curricula is gaining recognition but poses some new challenges." I believe that this is not a new issue since Johson and Johson (1989) or Johson, Johson and Smith (1998) is a much debated issue and I believe that it is very much implemented in teaching.
On the other hand, Peña (2005) referred to collaboration as a coordinated synchronic activity that is the result of a continuous attempt to build and maintain a shared conception of a problem. Therefore, collective learning in online communities can be seen as a facilitator of individual learning, but in this article I do not see whether individual learning has been measured (e.g. with associated learning outcome indicators such as pre- and post-test scores), and how collaboration has improved the learning.
In addition, learning interactions occur when one student responds to or expands on another learner's idea by emphasizing the relationship between two ideas published by other learners or even by reading a publication written by a learner to whom he or she had not previously been exposed. Representing collaborative learning as the process of building and growing an interaction network, which includes all these interactions, allows us to evaluate the structure and dynamics of learning interactions between learners and resources. But at no time do they tell us how many learners have participated in these communications.
And although authors such as Romero et al. (2013) conclude that the number of messages sent and the number of words written, together with the degree of centrality and prestige, were the most important attributes to predict the final performance of the student, as I see their results I believe that motivation is a variable to be taken into account, since those who have sent more messages are those of the degree "Information and Knowledge Management" and it is not differently significant the participation in the online courses.
Johnson, D. W. y R. Johnson (1989): Cooperation and Competition: Theory and Research, Edina, Minnesota, Interaction Book Company.
Johnson, D. W., R. Johnson y K. Smith (1998): Active Learning: Cooperation in the College Classroom, Edina, Minnesota, Interaction Book Company.
Peña, A. (2005) Collaborative Student Modeling by Cognitive Maps (2005). First International Conference on Distributed Frameworks for Multimedia Applications (DFMA’05)
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for taking the time and effort to review our work. We carefully read your comments and made some changes accordingly. Please see attachment for a detailed response.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The changes you have made improve the paper and the flow of the paper - well done with this.
Overall the paper adds to the literature well.
