A Glimpse at the Future Technological Trends of Road Infrastructure: Textual Information-Based Data Retrieval
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsGeneral comment: The manuscript is generally informing and with good scientific contribution. However, both the abstract and the conclusions need to be rewritten to make them look more clearer and more related to each other.
In addition, the following comments should be addressed by the authors:
1. Line 31: Four distinct groups were identified. Please name these groups.
2. Lines 48 to 52: Too long sentence. Please use short clearer sentences to help the reader catch the meaning easily.
3. Lines 54 to 55: Rewrite the sentence and remove the brackets.
4. Line 65: Write United States instead of U.S.
5. Line 149: Elaborate on the meaning of "alpha" and "beta" and the associated numerical values.
6. Line 154: Section 2.3 - LDA modelling was well discussed. However, it would have been better to limit the examples to road, road infrastructure, transport systems and other topics related to the paper's title.
7. Line 161: Between the words "weight" and "importance", please chose one to use and avoid brackets.
8. Line 163: This sentence is isolated. Does it belong to the previous or next paragraph? Please fit it where it belongs.
9. Lines 168 to 170: The sentence needs rewriting to improve English and make it more clearer.
10. From line 2012: The authors discussed "identification of trends" (1). However, the other points of "prediction of future environment and behaviour" (2) and "automated operations of machines and devices" (3) were not discussed or supported. Why? Would you like to elaborate on these two points too?
11. Line 300: Do you mean "string" or "strong"?
12. Line 305 and onward: Please refer to equations before writing them down.
13. Line 345: Please explain every symbol in the process!
14. Line 369: The text in Korean (in brackets) should be put in English.
15. Line 379: Can everything in the visualisation section be readable?
16. Line 541: it is mentioned that there is "four distinct key words". Please list these key words.
Author Response
Thank you for your insightful comments, which have helped to improve this research. We thoroughly reviewed the comments received from the first round review and have responded with them in this letter. All edited (or newly added) parts are highlighted in blue in the revised manuscript.
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe article focuses on future technological trends in road infrastructure, employing keyword extraction techniques through text mining. Specifically, the methodology was applied to Korean-language documents to outline directions and developments in the field of transport infrastructure, utilizing TF-IDF and LDA techniques to identify key themes such as autonomous vehicles, digital infrastructure, sustainability, and intelligent road management.
From my perspective, I do not question the quality of the article in terms of writing, the quality of presentation, nor the use of sophisticated text mining techniques.
However, I find the application of such advanced techniques in relation to the paper’s objective, as well as the restriction of the analysis to a local context (Korea), to be limiting. In fact, the main topics resulting from the analysis (autonomous vehicles, digital infrastructure, sustainability, and intelligent road management) have global applicability and are already well-defined in the scientific literature, as well as in official reports from individual states and supranational organizations. This suggests that a simple qualitative and quantitative review of the scientific literature could have led to similar conclusions, especially given the limited number of documents analyzed (only 100).
I would have justified the methodology, and thus the use of advanced text mining, if the goal had been to extract information from large amounts of data/text, possibly on a global scale.
Therefore, I believe that the article does not provide any novelty or advancement to the current state of the art.
Author Response
Thank you for your insightful comment, which have helped to improve this research. We thoroughly reviewed the comment received from the first round review and have responded with them in this letter. All edited (or newly added) parts are highlighted in blue in the revised manuscript.
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis paper explores future technological trends in road infrastructure by employing a textual information-based data retrieval approach. The study scope, methodology, and outcomes are noteworthy. However, the following points should be addressed in the revised version of the paper.
Firstly, the statement, “Then, a specific text mining approach is employed to collect textual online sources (news articles, research articles, and reports) written in Korean while most studies gather information written in English” requires a more in-depth explanation. Why were only Korean and English selected for analysis? This decision may introduce bias, as relying on a single language or a limited selection of languages can affect the results. English alone might suffice for broader accessibility.
Additionally, the criteria for judging relevance and inclusion of texts need to be clarified. The authors are encouraged to elaborate on the inclusion process and provide more detailed descriptive statistics of the final dataset. The statement “via Google and Google Scholar web searches” also requires further justification. Why was Google, which includes non-scientific sources, considered alongside Google Scholar, which primarily offers academic content? The inclusion of non-scientific data needs to be substantiated, as it may impact the study scientific rigor.
Moreover, Figure 4 should focus on presenting only relevant terms rather than generic words, enhancing the figure contribution. Lastly, the discussion section lacks sufficient analysis and interpretation of the extracted outcomes.
Author Response
Thank you for your insightful comments, which have helped to improve this research. We thoroughly reviewed the comments received from the first round review and have responded with them in this letter. All edited (or newly added) parts are highlighted in blue in the revised manuscript.
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsGiven that the methodology used in the paper remains unchanged, in my opinion the paper is not suitable for publication.
