Building and Health: Mapping the Knowledge Development of Sick Building Syndrome

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting study, mapping the knowledge development of sick building syndrome through bibliometric analysis, exploring the most influential countries, institutions, journals and scholars, as well as the main subject categories and keywords. The approach presented would be very interesting for many readers involved in various research as well as beneficial for working in the associated field. Otherwise, I do not have any further comments or suggestions for improvement of this article.

Author Response

Thank you for your approval. We have re-reviewed the article and revised some of the errors, as follows:

1. The last sentence in the abstract was inaccurate and we revised it.
2. We expand the discussion in Figure 3 to analyze the relationships between countries, institutions, authors, and journals.
3. We have corrected errors in Figure 5, such as miswriting "symptoms" as "symtoms".
4. We have also corrected grammatical issues and some spelling mistakes in the article.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for submitting an important research article. The methodology presented to do systematic literature review is excellent and you present with articulation. However, I have few comments on the results presentation. 

It would be helpful if you could provide a figure showing a network of the topics from Figure 5. It could be something like Figure 6 of the authors. 

You mention about other components in the metrics, such as countries, institutions, and journals. It would be great if you could expand the discussion over Figure 3. 

Basically, I am trying to see how these components relate and contribute to the scholarship. I am hoping to get answers for questions like: which topics are trending over the years and what countries are the leading contributors? what journals are popular in which countries? I hope the request is not too much given the number of references and techniques you use.

Thank you,

Author Response

Thank you for your supportive review and invaluable comments. Our manuscript has now been carefully revised according to the comments. The changes in the revised manuscript are marked in yellow.

Comment 1：It would be helpful if you could provide a figure showing a network of the topics from Figure 5. It could be something like Figure 6 of the authors.

Response 1：Thanks for your suggestion. According to the topics shown in Figure 5, we first normalized the keywords in the SBS field(merging keywords with the same meaning), and then used the keyword co-occurrence method in bibliometric to count and map the network of these topics through vosviewer software, as shown in Figure 6 in the revised manuscript. In addition, a paragraph was added to explain Figure 6 in Section 3.3.

Comment 2：You mention about other components in the metrics, such as countries, institutions, and journals. It would be great if you could expand the discussion over Figure 3.

Response 2：Thanks for your suggestion. We expand the discussion of Figure 3, such as which continents and countries have the strongest scientific research institutions in the SBS field; which countries are the ones where scholars have made more contribution to SBS field; which journal is more popular in which country in the SBS field. Specifically, it has been revised in Section 3.1 of the revised manuscript.

Comment 3：Basically, I am trying to see how these components relate and contribute to the scholarship. I am hoping to get answers for questions like: which topics are trending over the years and what countries are the leading contributors? what journals are popular in which countries?

Response 3： Following your suggestion, we have revised Chapter 3 of the manuscript. According to Figure 6 in Section 3.3, we found that health, symptoms, office, ventilation, air quality, VOCs, asthma, etc. are all trending topics in the SBS field over the years. USA, Sweden, Denmark are leading contributors in the SBS field. In addition, the journal of Indoor Air is very popular with scholars in USA, Sweden, and Denmark. Likewise, Environment Health Perspectives is popular in USA, Building and Environment is popular in China and USA, and Science of the Total Environment is popular in Sweden.

Reviewer 3 Report

You have done a very good literature review in relation to SBS. In the abstract, you mentioned that "the solution on SBS at the design stage has been found"  I did not find the solution in your paper. Was this solution part of the literature review?

  Check this citation Jones AP and Vardoulakis S reviewed the existing literature 48and found that the sources of pollutants causing SBS mainly include combustion generated by heating, cooking and smoking, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) generated by 50building material emissions, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, mold, fungi, etc. [9,10].

Is it symtoms or symptoms? please check figure 5

Author Response

Thank you for your supportive review and invaluable comments. Our manuscript has now been carefully revised according to the comments. The changes in the revised manuscript are marked in yellow.

Comment 1：In the abstract, you mentioned that "the solution on SBS at the design stage has been found". I did not find the solution in your paper. Was this solution part of the literature review?

Response 1：Thanks for your suggestion, it was a misunderstanding we caused. The solution at design stage is indeed part of the literature review, proposed by scholar Ghaffarianhoseini A in his 2018 article “Sick building syndrome: are we doing enough?”, which is currently highly cited, thus reflecting an emerging trend in the SBS field. We have revised this sentence in the abstract of the revised manuscript, as follows “Furthermore, it is an emerging research trend to propose SBS solution in building design stage”.

Comment 2：Check this citation Jones AP and Vardoulakis S reviewed the existing literature and found that the sources of pollutants causing SBS mainly include combustion generated by heating, cooking and smoking, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) generated by building material emissions, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, mold, fungi, etc. [9,10].

Response 2：We are sorry for our inaccurate literature description. This citation is modified as follows “Vardoulakis S and Jones AP reviewed the existing literature and found that the sources of pollutants causing SBS mainly include particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) generated by heating, cooking and smoking, etc.; nitrogen dioxide(NO2); volatile organic compounds (VOCs); and polycyclic aromaric hydrocarbons (PAHs) [9,10]”.

Comment 3：Is it symtoms or symptoms? please check figure 5.

Response 3：It is our negligence and we have modified it in figure 5.

I hope we have fully cleared these questions. We'll keep revising till all the incorrections are properly dealt with.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for making the revisions accordingly. I accept the article in its current form. Thank you

Author Response

Thank you for your approval. 

Reviewer 3 Report

Remove initials from citations. Only surnames are required 

Author Response

Thanks for your suggestion. We have revised these types of citation issues throughout the full text.The changes in the revised manuscript are marked in yellow.