Ecosystem Services in Southern Africa: Current and Emerging Trends—A Bibliometric Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I checked the revised version of this post. I think the authors have revised the article well. All questions I raised have been corrected. I also checked the comments of two other reviewers. I think the revised version is already a big improvement over what reviewer #2 said. In conclusion, I think this article should be finalized by the editor-in-chief. It's not a perfect article, but there are parts of it that will interest readers and contribute to science. My revised decision: Accept in current form

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your comments, kindly find attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1) Maybe this paper can be published as a Systematic Review rather than Article or Review. (2) The citations are still far from publishable in the current form, do follow the form in some published papers. (3) Figure 1 is so imprecise, and considerable improvement is needed. For example, the frame of VOS viewer Software can be broader, maybe the overall width of this figure can be unified. The lines with the arrow should be closely connected with the frames, either horizontally or vertically.   Overall, maybe there are many official languages in Switzerland and South Africa, but obviously, this paper need to have English proofreading.  

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Thank you very much for your comments and input. Kindly find attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Bibliometrics is an important means for scholars to grasp the development of research fields. The bibliometric work undertaken in this paper on ecosystem services research in South Africa is of great importance and of great interest to the reader.
However, I recommend that the authors make the following revisions:
1. The authors should read the samples before using the software for analysis, as search results are not necessarily accurate. I recommend that the authors supplement this step.
2. Some pictures in the text are not clear, such as Figure 6.
3. There are some typos in the text, such as "Major reseearch methods".
4. Most importantly, the article cannot be just a textual representation of the software analysis results. The authors should write a separate title addressing gaps and trends in ecosystem services research in South Africa. These are now scattered across chapters, including the conclusion. But I recommend writing it as a separate title, supplemented by figures and tables made by the authors themselves (rather than software-exported). This is the core content of the article. This part is what readers care about most, and it is also the biggest contribution of the article.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1, thank you for the comments, Please see attachment for corrections. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

(1) This paper is more like a report than an academic paper, and it is full of list-style summaries and seriously lacks in-depth analysis. More importantly, what is the core theme of this paper?

(2) The content arrangement is far from satisfactory, for example, the Introduction part is too long, with too many paragraphs. What is worse, some paragraphs are very inappropriately split.

(3) The tables should be a three-line table, and the clarity of the picture is very unsatisfactory. Line 206, (Table 1), figures and tables should not appear in the text in this way.

(4) Overall, the layout of the paper is very irregular; in particular, there are considerable problems in the citation format and arrangement. Please refer to the published papers carefully.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you for the comments, please see attached for the corrections.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

 

Your article “Ecosystem Services in Southern Africa: Current and Emerging Trends – A Bibliometric Review” is generally well written and easy to follow. However, the references style has to be changed by adding the name of the (leading)author together with the numerical reference where is the care, in order to make the text easier to read. The beginning of the introductory part has to be slightly improved regarding the definitions used for some concepts (see attached file). Material and methods are very well presented and easy to reproduce. Results are well structured but in most of the cases elements from the figures are very difficult to be read (too small labels). In the end, the last two chapters (i.e., Discussions and Conclusions) are summarizing the results. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3

Thank you for the comments, please find attached the corrections.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf