Influence in Technological Innovation Spaces: A Network Science Approach to Understand Innovation for Sustainability in the Global South

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I really enjoyed reading the paper, that sheds a light on innovation hubs and dynamics in Africa by using SNA with data coming from Twitter. I also appreciated the analysis of the data, that grounds the results of the SNA on the local realities of the three innovation hubs.

My only suggestion would be to speak of Africa and not of global south, because dynamic in other southern regions (such as Latin America) might be different. I think addressing Africa is already a lot.

Another thing that could be improved is the way future research on the topic is called for. I think t could be specified better what kind of research would be needed and how new researches could build on the paper.

 A last comment deals with the fact that some readers might not be familiar with Network Analysis, so a short description of what this method is could help.

Author Response

- "My only suggestion would be to speak of Africa and not of global south, because dynamic in other southern regions (such as Latin America) might be different. I think addressing Africa is already a lot."

"Global South" has been changed to "Africa" where it applies and a footnote explaining the term Global South has been added on page 1.

 

- Another thing that could be improved is the way future research on the topic is called for. I think t could be specified better what kind of research would be needed and how new researches could build on the paper.

After discussing this point we disagree with this assessment. This article's aim does not include a specific research agenda and if other researchers want to build on our work, the last section of our discussions offers more than enough entry points for their own ideas and interdisciplinary perspective.

- "A last comment deals with the fact that some readers might not be familiar with Network Analysis, so a short description of what this method is could help."

This is explained on page 5:

"According to Kenett & Havlin [49], network science is one of the most active fields in interdisciplinary research and shows that connections between different entities in complex systems can be analyzed by not only looking at the entity itself but also at their position and connection within a network [50]. Network science works with the connections between entities and focuses on the structures and relations between nodes [51]. In network science, a node is a representation of an entity that stores data. Nodes are connected to each other via edges that therefore function as link between nodes and can also store additional data in form of weight [52]."

 

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript used social media data and network theory to analyze the transition towards sustainability and digital innovation hubs. This paper gives a novel perspective to study these topics and may have broad interests for researchers in different disciplines.

My main concern about this paper is below:

On page 3, the authors state "Concluding our practical and theoretical context, we identified four above mentioned trends that can be summarized as follows..." As a basis for the research in this article, the authors need to provide more proofs, such as references, statistical data, etc., to support this assertion.

Some minor comments:

1. In some places, the authors wrote the decimal point "." as ",", for example, on page 6, "286 (2,32294%) locations resulted in an error due to unclear information for Google maps API...". There are more than 1 place occur this typo;

2. Some of the figures missed labels and captions. In context, describing a figure's content does not explicitly reference the figure's label;

3. The details about the network construction need to be provided: what does the "mention" mean on page 10? How was the link added between nodes of the two network graphs?

Author Response

- "On page 3, the authors state "Concluding our practical and theoretical context, we identified four above mentioned trends that can be summarized as follows..." As a basis for the research in this article, the authors need to provide more proofs, such as references, statistical data, etc., to support this assertion."

Citations added

 

- 1. In some places, the authors wrote the decimal point "." as ",", for example, on page 6, "286 (2,32294%) locations resulted in an error due to unclear information for Google maps API...". There are more than 1 place occur this typo;

Spelling has been corrected

 

- 2. Some of the figures missed labels and captions. In context, describing a figure's content does not explicitly reference the figure's label;

Labels and captions have been added

 

- 3. The details about the network construction need to be provided: what does the "mention" mean on page 10? How was the link added between nodes of the two network graphs?

All of this is very clearly explained in the methods section. The reviewer pointet to page 10, which is the results section and ofcourse does not repeat the meta structure of our analysis that can be found earlier. Both Twitter specific terms are explained as well as our methods that created the mention network itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Review of “Influence in Technological Innovation Spaces: A Network Science Approach to Understand Innovation for Sustainability Using Twitter”

 

The paper creates an innovative network science approach to analyze the production environment of digital innovations in Africa, by utilizing social media data (Twitter). The research has the merit to deal with a quite neglected argument in literature, in particular in the African context. It also shows interesting results, coming from a real case analysis (composed by three “cases”, concerning different African geographical area).

However, I think the paper needs some relevant modifications before the publication.

In the introduction, the authors should improve, by discussing more in-depth, the justification of this research. Why this research is important for scientific literature? In particular, it should be reinforced the reasons why it is important the contribution described by the following sentence “it introduces an innovative way of dealing with large social media data to analyze and understand influence in niche environments”. Social Network Analysis methods and issues are not well treated, while these are methods that can deal with such analysis. The paper lacks of background about Social Network Analysis and similar methods for analysing networks in social science. This is true for both theoretical and practical papers. I think the authors should include more paper related to such arguments. I suggest to include at least the following: - Antonacci, G., Fronzetti Colladon, A., Stefanini, A., & Gloor, P. (2017). It is rotating leaders who build the swarm: social network determinants of growth for healthcare virtual communities of practice. Journal of Knowledge Management, 21(5), 1218-1239. - Wasserman, S., and Faust, K. (1994), “Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications”, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. - Stefanini, A., Aloini, D., Gloor, P., & Pochiero, F., (2020); Patient Satisfaction in Emergency Department: Unveiling Complex Interactions by Wearable Sensors; Journal of Business Research. Article in press. DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.12.038. The Figure about networks and geographical distribution, which are interesting, have not the captions. The paper lacks of a definition statement of “Global South”. I think that not all people know such term and in particular is very strange to see it in the first sentence of the abstract also without the capitation of the first words. Readers might not understand immediately. The conclusions should better discuss the limits of the work and the eventual future works of this research The paragraphs lack of numeration

Author Response

-In the introduction, the authors should improve, by discussing more in-depth, the justification of this research. Why this research is important for scientific literature? In particular, it should be reinforced the reasons why it is important the contribution described by the following sentence “it introduces an innovative way of dealing with large social media data to analyze and understand influence in niche environments”. Social Network Analysis methods and issues are not well treated, while these are methods that can deal with such analysis. The paper lacks of background about Social Network Analysis and similar methods for analysing networks in social science.

This feedback is very valid and we added another paragraph in the introduction that shortly highlights Social Network Analysis.

 

- I think the authors should include more paper related to such arguments. I suggest to include at least the following: - Antonacci, G., Fronzetti Colladon, A., Stefanini, A., & Gloor, P. (2017). It is rotating leaders who build the swarm: social network determinants of growth for healthcare virtual communities of practice. Journal of Knowledge Management, 21(5), 1218-1239. - Wasserman, S., and Faust, K. (1994), “Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications”, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. - Stefanini, A., Aloini, D., Gloor, P., & Pochiero, F., (2020); Patient Satisfaction in Emergency Department: Unveiling Complex Interactions by Wearable Sensors; Journal of Business Research. Article in press. DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.12.038.

The recommendations are not helpful, as they are embedded in a complete different scientific context and have very little to do with this article. We chose our own, better and more relevant literature.

 

- The Figure about networks and geographical distribution, which are interesting, have not the captions.

Captions have been added (Also see review 2)

- The paper lacks of a definition statement of “Global South”. I think that not all people know such term and in particular is very strange to see it in the first sentence of the abstract also without the capitation of the first words.

Definition has been added (see review 1)

- The conclusions should better discuss the limits of the work and the eventual future works of this research

A paragraph has been added in the methods section to address the valuable feedback of not adequately pointing out the limits of this work.

We also added a short input on future research in the conclusion that matches our outlook in the discussion part.

- The paragraphs lack of numeration

Numerations have been added

 

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors has improved the paper.

However, I think the conclusions should better emphasize the limitations of this research that, at this moment, are quite overlooked.

Author Response

The limitations of the research are discussed at the end of the method chapter. In our understanding, limitations should be discussed in the beginning of the article - before presenting and discussing the results - rather than in the conclusion. This way the reader can critically evaluate the results based on the elaborated limitations.

 

A good academic conclusion should highlight the relevant academic frameworks and underline the major arguments supported by the study. A conclusion should not repeat the whole article including all methodological aspects ad nauseam.

We therefore disagree with the assessment of the reviewer to again highlight the limitations in the conclusion.