The Disappearance of COVID-19 Data Dashboards: The Case of Ephemeral Data

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. I suggest expanding and clarify the literature review to differentiate your work from others, highlighting the unique contributions of your study.

2. Methods section should be expanded and include more in-depth explanations for your research study.

3. In the methods section, describe the selection process for the COVID-19 dashboards analyzed in more detail to enhance the transparency of your research.

4. I suggest clarifying the statistical methods or analytical tools used to assess the dashboard effectiveness, especially how you quantified accessibility and operationality.

5. Can you elaborate more on the implications of the ephemeral nature of data dashboards for public health. It would be helpful to discuss the long-term strategies to mitigate the loss of crucial pandemic data.

6. I suggest including a section on user feedback or case studies demonstrating how the ephemeral nature of these dashboards has impacted public health decisions.

1. Geospatial data analysis (lines 242-267):

     (a)    Can you provide a detailed critique of the geospatial data's limitations, such as resolution, coverage, and               updating frequency that might affect the results.

     (b)    Please discuss how these limitations could be addressed in future dashboard designs.

2. Validation of data (lines 222-239): it would be helpful to discuss the methods and techniques for updating and validating the data presented in the dashboards to maintain their relevance and accuracy.

3. Conclusions and future work (lines 401-426):

     (a) Can you link the results to actionable recommendations for future dashboard development and data                     preservation strategies.

    (b) It would be very useful to highlight some specific areas for future research such as technological advancements that could mitigate the issues of data ephemerality observed in this study.

Author Response

Please see attached file that addresses all of the reviewer comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents an important aspect of data reporting and the ease of tracking different statistics using a dashboard. As mentioned in the paper, dashboards served as an important resource during the COVID pandemic and has also been in use in other disease reporting. 

The introduction is clear and provides sufficient background on the study. The methods have been described well. The data presented support the methodology.

The references are appropriate for the study. 

The data presented and the conclusions support the need of continued use of data dashboards to track and and monitor various diseases and will help in faster response times to address challenging issues. 

Minor comment:

The numbering of the tables and figures needs to be checked. 

Also, in figure 3.1 - the y-axis the spelling should be corrected as "dashboard" 

Author Response

Please see the attached file that addresses all of the reviewer comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for responding to my comments. I suggest a publication in its current form.

No additional comments.