Sufficiency, Consistency, and Efficiency as a Base for Systemizing Sustainability Measures in Food Supply Chains

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper is developed within the framework of sustainable supply chains in the food sector. The paper results quite confusing, but I think that the authors proposed a method to systematise the application of sustainability measures on the basis of some strategies (sufficiency, consistency and efficiency). 

After a detailed review, I consider that the whole paper needs to be improved. Its current organisation makes it difficult to read,  understand and evaluate its novelty within the field of study. For this reason, I propose to reject the paper.

Main concerns

• I consider that the title is not descriptive of what you are proposing. It is a very general title. Is this a review paper? Are you proposing a new method? Please clarify it.
• In section 2, methods, I think that sub-sections should be used to organise the content. If not, it seems that several definitions are being presented without connection between them.
• In the same section 2, after presenting the aforementioned definitions, it seems that the authors stablish the strategy for performing a literature review, whose conclusions and findings are presented in section 3 results. Why is this done in this way? Are the results of your research a literature review?
• In section 4, discussion, the authors propose a method to categorize sustainability measures. How is this possible? Why do you propose it here? Shouldn’t it be in materials and methods section? Later, in the same discussion section, a case study is presented, having the label 1.1 exemplary application. According to my opinion this does not make sense.
• In the discussion section, the authors must clearly discuss the novelty of their proposal, and compare it with other existent methods. Why is this method better that others?
• Authors should also clarify if they are proposing a Decision Support System or not. If that’s the case, they should add some lines to that in the introduction.

Other comments

• A full stop seems to be missing in Line 75, after [18,19]. There are more problems like this in the paper, please, revise it.

Author Response

Dear respected reviewer.

Thank you for your comments, I tried my best to adress them all.

I hope this time, it will be easier to read/understand. Please see my replies below:

Main concerns

• I consider that the title is not descriptive of what you are proposing. It is a very general title. Is this a review paper? Are you proposing a new method? Please clarify it.
  • I changed the article type and specified the title.
• In section 2, methods, I think that sub-sections should be used to organise the content. If not, it seems that several definitions are being presented without connection between them.
  • I added subsections for a clearer organisation of the paper.
• In the same section 2, after presenting the aforementioned definitions, it seems that the authors stablish the strategy for performing a literature review, whose conclusions and findings are presented in section 3 results. Why is this done in this way? Are the results of your research a literature review?
  • I changed the strucutre of the methods and results sections, to separate the methods, findings and conclusion in an understandable way.
• In section 4, discussion, the authors propose a method to categorize sustainability measures. How is this possible? Why do you propose it here? Shouldn’t it be in materials and methods section? Later, in the same discussion section, a case study is presented, having the label 1.1 exemplary application. According to my opinion this does not make sense.
  • I changed the strucutre: So now the proposed systematization (section 3.2) follows the findings of the SLR (section 3.1), because it is based on them. A new section for the example is added.
• In the discussion section, the authors must clearly discuss the novelty of their proposal, and compare it with other existent methods. Why is this method better that others?
  • I rewrote the discussion. This time I directly referenced publications with existent systematizations to  show, what  hase been added and improved.
• Authors should also clarify if they are proposing a Decision Support System or not. If that’s the case, they should add some lines to that in the introduction.
  • I added this in the section "Research aims".

Other comments

• A full stop seems to be missing in Line 75, after [18,19]. There are more problems like this in the paper, please, revise it.
  • I completely revised the punctuation of the paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

The first part of the introduction from line 27 to line 49 contains information which, while on the one hand they are part of a widespread general knowledge, in my opinion require appropriate bibliographic references. Also reading this part of the introduction one has a bit the impression of reading a long list, I think the section could be rewritten in a more fluid way to improvde its readability.

Line 55: SC-networks, please explain the meaning of abbreviations the first time you use it. Moreover, if you decide to use an abbreviation be consistent through the whole document (i.e.  line 328)

Line 58 – 59: unclear sentence. This sentence is supposed to introduce the main goal of the research, still it is poorly written and difficult to understand.

Line 76 – the citation should be always put before the period, not after.

Line 80 - 84: this repetition makes me doubt that the authors re-read the paper before submitting it to the magazine, moreover I would say that the whole introduction needs to be improved substantially.

Line 117: [28] add page number when you quote a reference between “ … “

Line 186: The query search is not clear: the authors state they used the following search terms: “Supply Chain “, "Emission Reduction Measures", "classification" OR "Systematization “. First, it is not clear if the commas in the query are to be interpreted as “AND”, I tried to make the same search in WOS and the results included more than 6000 documents. Moreover, the whole methodology section is sometimes confusing, for example between line 191 to 193 the authors do not mention Scopus, that appears in table 1.  Table 1 also presents a different query of research (Search Terms: "Categorization of" AND (measures) OR "systematization of" AND (measures) AND "Supply Chain" AND "Sustainability" ) that resulted in 693 documents on WOS. It is very difficult for me to understand the selection process of the documents.

 

Line 185: I wonder why the authors used Google Scholar and not something like Scopus or Web of Science. The author should justify this choice.

“The big difference between the databases is the content: in Scopus and WoS editors select and curate which journals, books, conference proceedings and other materials are inserted. Google Scholar on the other hand will include everything that can be found via automated processes (crawling), which means that there is no quality control or filtering. Consequently, Google Scholar has much more content, but it is less structured and it is more likely to include errors in the metadata as well as including documents like presentations, posters, grey literature, websites and others. Scopus and WoS prioritize English literature, while Google Scholar is more inclusive to different languages. All three databases though, while a lot of content is present in all, differ substantially in coverage and therefore it can be useful to consult all of them when doing research.”

Source: University of Bolzano, https://www.unibz.it/it/news/135792-scopus-web-of-science-and-google-scholar

Table 2 is quite difficult to read

The discussion - if not the whole paper - needs a profound revision of the English, there is a strange use of the comma (sometimes too many, sometimes too few) which makes reading very difficult.

The discussion seems unrelated to the documents analyzed. Furthermore, the process of defining the hierarchical order of the strategies is not clear, the discussion about it is not clear (300-316)

Author Response

Dear respected reviewer!

Thank you for your valuable comments. I tried to implement all the suggestions you gave, because I found them constructive.

In my opinion the paper has improved a lot, due to your feedback.

Please see my responses below:

The first part of the introduction from line 27 to line 49 contains information which, while on the one hand they are part of a widespread general knowledge, in my opinion require appropriate bibliographic references. Also reading this part of the introduction one has a bit the impression of reading a long list, I think the section could be rewritten in a more fluid way to improvde its readability.

I added many bibliographic references to better support the assertions. Also, I  rewrote parts of the introduction to improve the readibility.

Line 55: SC-networks, please explain the meaning of abbreviations the first time you use it. Moreover, if you decide to use an abbreviation be consistent through the whole document (i.e.  line 328)

I checked and streamlined all abbreviations in the document.

Line 58 – 59: unclear sentence. This sentence is supposed to introduce the main goal of the research, still it is poorly written and difficult to understand.

I changed the sentence, because it was misunderstood.

Line 76 – the citation should be always put before the period, not after.

I changed many literature references, for them to be in line with the referencing style. They are always before the period.

Line 80 - 84: this repetition makes me doubt that the authors re-read the paper before submitting it to the magazine, moreover I would say that the whole introduction needs to be improved substantially.

The repetitive sentence was changed. I restructured the introduction and rewrote it partly.

Line 117: [28] add page number when you quote a reference between “ … “

First I added the page number. But another reviewer told me to erase all page numbers, as they are not part of the referencing style of the journal. I am used to add page numbers, when I reference books - now I am unsure and I have decided for a consistent approach without any page numbers.

Line 186: The query search is not clear: the authors state they used the following search terms: “Supply Chain “, "Emission Reduction Measures", "classification" OR "Systematization “. First, it is not clear if the commas in the query are to be interpreted as “AND”, I tried to make the same search in WOS and the results included more than 6000 documents. Moreover, the whole methodology section is sometimes confusing, for example between line 191 to 193 the authors do not mention Scopus, that appears in table 1.  Table 1 also presents a different query of research (Search Terms: "Categorization of" AND (measures) OR "systematization of" AND (measures) AND "Supply Chain" AND "Sustainability" ) that resulted in 693 documents on WOS. It is very difficult for me to understand the selection process of the documents.

I tried to clear it up in the text. Before I also included the search term of my pre-analysis, which I admit, was confusing, because it differs from the actual search term.

Line 185: I wonder why the authors used Google Scholar and not something like Scopus or Web of Science. The author should justify this choice.

The choice is justified by the aim of this pre-analysis: delivering a broad base for the SLR. I added this to the text.

Table 2 is quite difficult to read.

I completely changed Table 2, which is called Table 4 because of rearrangements. It needs much more space now, but I hope it is easier to read.

The discussion - if not the whole paper - needs a profound revision of the English, there is a strange use of the comma (sometimes too many, sometimes too few) which makes reading very difficult.

I revised the punctuation of the whole paper. I am sorry for the difficulties, correct punctuation is very difficult for me, also in my own language.

The discussion seems unrelated to the documents analyzed.

I revised it and tried to support all arguments in the discussion with literature references.

Furthermore, the process of defining the hierarchical order of the strategies is not clear, the discussion about it is not clear (300-316)

I also revised this part, hopefully it is clearer now.

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper aims to present decarbonization measures in food supply chains in a sustainable context. The paper’s topic is interesting, but the whole work needs to be further improved:

1. Since you are going to summarize decarbonization strategies, your work should be based on a robust literature review, but the structure of the work does not reflect a clear and rigorous analysis. The introduction and presentation of the RQs sound good, but it is not clear if you are presenting a literature background or a research method. I suggest separating the method from the background presentation and highlighting each step in a rigorous way. Did you limit the language of the articles? Did you limit the time period? Did you limit the subject area? Did you carry out a snowball analysis? Moreover, results should be supported by graphs and tables, analysis of journals, years, the relationship between keywords, etc.. are missed. Please deeply revised this part.

Please check works as: Varaniūtė, V.; Žičkutė, I., Žandaravičiūtė, A. The Changing Role of Management Accounting in Product Development: Directions to Digitalization, Sustainability, and Circularity. Sustainability 2022, 14, 4740. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084740; Rosário, C.; Varum, C.; Botelho, A. Impact of Public Support for Innovation on Company Performance: Review and Meta-Analysis. Sustainability 2022, 14, 4731. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084731; Raković, L.; Marić , S.; Đorđević Milutinović, L.; Sakal, M.; Antić, S. What about the Chief Digital Officer? A Literature Review. Sustainability 2022, 14, 4696. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084696; 

2. Table 4 is the new method you proposed to categorize sustainability measures; why do you present a table with infrastructure, compensation, and resilience but then you said it is out of scope? It has not much sense. Moreover, how did you get to this table?
3. Please improve conclusions and further research 
4. Technical suggestions: Don’t use bold type in the text, nor indicate pages of references and revised punctuation (row 269 “The results of the SLR show that…”, row 270 “As shown in the section above, there are..”, etc..).

Author Response

Dear respected reviewer!

Thank you for your valuable comments. I tried to implement all the suggestions you gave, because I found them constructive.

In my opinion the paper has improved a lot, due to your feedback.

Please see my responses below:

Since you are going to summarize decarbonization strategies, your work should be based on a robust literature review, but the structure of the work does not reflect a clear and rigorous analysis. The introduction and presentation of the RQs sound good, but it is not clear if you are presenting a literature background or a research method. I suggest separating the method from the background presentation and highlighting each step in a rigorous way. Did you limit the language of the articles? Did you limit the time period? Did you limit the subject area? Did you carry out a snowball analysis? Moreover, results should be supported by graphs and tables, analysis of journals, years, the relationship between keywords, etc.. are missed. Please deeply revised this part.

 I separated the methods part from the background information, while I focused on describing each step in a much more detailed way. Also, the publications years and the publishing journals were included in the analysis. I checked the publications you suggested and tried to improve my work in their direction. Unfortunately, I could not access the software, which is used to analyse co-authorships, keywords and so on.

Table 4 is the new method you proposed to categorize sustainability measures; why do you present a table with infrastructure, compensation, and resilience but then you said it is out of scope? It has not much sense. Moreover, how did you get to this table?

I moved infrastructure, resilience and compensation out of this section and moved it to the outlook section, as they just represent an option for a further development of this concept. Additionally, II tried to better explain how the results of the SLR (3.1) lead to the systematization/table (3.2.).

Please improve conclusions and further research.

I rewrote the second half of this section.

Technical suggestions: Don’t use bold type in the text, nor indicate pages of references and revised punctuation (row 269 “The results of the SLR show that…”, row 270 “As shown in the section above, there are..”, etc..).

I changed the bold type, erased the page number and deeply revised the punctuation of the whole paper.

 

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper is on “Decarbonization measures in food supply chains”.

The area is nice and interesting. The comments are as follows:

1. The abstract must explain the novelty in theory and methodology. The major findings must be in the last part of the abstract. The amount of contribution of the numerical results can be written.
2. The introduction should be the line of symmetry of the journal and research contribution.
3. How do the authors prove the impact of the decarbonization? Prove it in this direction of these research studies (A supply chain model with service level constraints and strategies under uncertainty; Reduction of waste and carbon emission through the selection of items with cross-price elasticity of demand to form a sustainable supply chain with preservation technology)
4. How does the author prove the effectiveness of the food supply chain? Prove it in this direction with existing literature (Synergic effect of reworking for imperfect quality items with the integration of multi-period delay-in-payment and partial backordering in global supply chains; A continuous review production-inventory system with a variable preparation time in a fuzzy random environment).
5. What is the novelty of theoretical and methodological aspects?
6. What is the major finding in the line of direction of the research?

Author Response

Dear respected reviewer!

Thank you for your valuable comments. I tried to implement most of the suggestions you gave, because I found them constructive.

In my opinion the paper has improved a lot, due to your feedback.

Please see my responses below:

The abstract must explain the novelty in theory and methodology. The major findings must be in the last part of the abstract. The amount of contribution of the numerical results can be written.

I changed the abstract to highlight the novelty.

The introduction should be the line of symmetry of the journal and research contribution.

I rewrote and rearranged the introduction.

How do the authors prove the impact of the decarbonization? Prove it in this direction of these research studies (A supply chain model with service level constraints and strategies under uncertainty; Reduction of waste and carbon emission through the selection of items with cross-price elasticity of demand to form a sustainable supply chain with preservation technology)

The studies

How does the author prove the effectiveness of the food supply chain? Prove it in this direction with existing literature (Synergic effect of reworking for imperfect quality items with the integration of multi-period delay-in-payment and partial backordering in global supply chains; A continuous review production-inventory system with a variable preparation time in a fuzzy random environment).

The proposed studies represent a different field of research in my view (Operations Research). As this is not my field of research, I am unable to use the proposed numerical methods. My work is based on a qualitative analysis, where I support my hypothesis by referencing the work of other or by reasoning.

What is the novelty of theoretical and methodological aspects? What is the major finding in the line of direction of the research?

I highlighted these points in the rewritten abstract, introduction and conclusion. The novelty is an systematization approach for sustainability measures, which is generally applicable (broader) and  includes an in-depth analysis of the mechanism of sustainability measures.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

After this review round, I think that the authors have improved a lot the paper, addressing all my comments.

I would like to thank them for their effort.

There is one minor point missing that I would like to suggest them to improve: please, add a paragraph in the introduction section explaining how the paper is organized.

Author Response

Dear respected reviewer!

Thank you again for your review. I am glad to hear that my efforts have been worthwhile.

I added the section 1.3 and explained the structure of the paper.

Reviewer 3 Report

 

Authors deeply improved their work, anyway minor revisions are still needed.

1. Please Table 2 and table 4 are not clear and readable, please deeply improve them.
2. Please insert a table in the literature review in which you summarize most relevant journals that arise from your research and the number of papers, %.
3. Figure 2: you can’t compare past years with 2022, I suggest to delete it and explain you stop to 2021. Or specify the month, es. APRIL 2022 also in the graph.
4. There are still many typos, es rows 35, 217, etc… please check them.

Author Response

Dear respected reviewer!

Thank you again for your review. I am glad to hear that my efforts have been worthwhile so far.

Please see my responses below:

• Please Table 2 and table 4 are not clear and readable, please deeply improve them.

I changed Table 2: I hope the clarity improved – I was a bit unsure, what exactly needed to be changed. Alternatively, I can transform this table into text, like it was in the first draft of the paper. But I think using a table like this gives a better overview than using texts.

I tried to improve Table 4 by the following actions:

• I combined the 7 columns for sustainability and abstraction level into just two columns.
• I changed the column headings.
• I added the first authors names and sorted the rows.
• Unfortunately, it is not possible to fit the table on just one page, therefore I added another row with headings on the second page.

 

• Please insert a table in the literature review in which you summarize most relevant journals that arise from your research and the number of papers, %.

I added Figure 3 with the shares of the most important sources.

• Figure 2: you can’t compare past years with 2022, I suggest to delete it and explain you stop to 2021. Or specify the month, es. APRIL 2022 also in the graph.

I deleted the year 2022 for a sound comparison.

• There are still many typos, es rows 35, 217, etc… please check them

I asked a person with very good English skills to read my paper. Afterwards I corrected many mistakes following her recommendations. Especially punctuation, but also some wording and grammar were improved.

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper can be accepted for publication.

Author Response

Dear respected reviewer!

Thank you again for your review. I am glad to hear that my efforts have been worthwhile.