How Agricultural Extension Services Improve Farmers’ Organic Fertilizer Use in China? The Perspective of Neighborhood Effect and Ecological Cognition
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The research is very well substantiated, the statistical tools are very sophisticated, and the matter is of great interest.
And the way they support the conclusions is correct and relevant. And the Conclusions are very clearly presented and the recommendations for practice are easy to follow.
The subject seems to be missing in the sentence in line 253.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors investigated How Agricultural Extension Services Improve Farmers' Organic Fertilizer Use in China? and presented The perspective of Neighborhood Effect and Ecological Cognition. There is a lot of work, but poorly structured and provided. The text is confusing, information mixed and the paper is not easy to be followed. Please see below my main concerns/ suggestions regarding this manuscript:
Aim of the study, L98-103 is not presenting the novelty of this paper. I doubt that so far there are any specialised works that answer the questions that the authors mention. Please be clearer.
Text in L103-108 belongs to Materials and Methods section. In this regard, please check the Instructions for authors https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions (which are given to be applied/to be respected, not being optional) regarding the structure of the manuscript. Not respecting it make the sections to interfere, information is mixed (i.e. Introduction with Materials and methods, Material and Methods with Results, etc.). The manuscript must be drastically restructured, respecting ALL the sections required for an original article at Sustainability
L109-112 must be removed. Who is reading the manuscript understand all these information, so they are not necessary (Introduction is not for presenting the Summary of the paper)
Remove the point symbol before ref. [30].
Figure 2. Study area must be also presented in the Materials and Methods section.
Title of the figures must be under the tables, not above them.
In the Materials and Methods section, you must also:
- detail all information about the surveys: who made the surveys? who validated them? there were some collaborations with sociologists, specialists in such questionnaires? were these questionnaires pre-tested before their application to all respondents? based on which criteria the items in the surveys were chosen/ how do you have chosen/decided the optimal items? based on which criteria, the respondents were chosen? etc.
- describe the statistic: how was done ? what parameters were considered? the variants of the computer programs used must be provided as well.
Table 3 belongs to Results section.
Discussion section is mandatory and is missing. Comparative information must be provided in this future 4th section (your results vs. literature results). Literature data provide solid international information regarding long-term using of fertilisers [ I suggest checking and referring to Samuel et al. Effects of long term application of organic and mineral fertilizers on soil enzymes. Chim., 69(10), 2018, 2608-2612. https://doi.org/10.37358/RC.18.10.6590 ; Samuel, A.D., et al.. Effects of liming and fertilization on the dehydrogenase and catalase activities. Rev. Chim. 2019, 70(10), 3464-3468. https://doi.org/10.37358/RC.19.10.7576 ; Bungau et al. Expatiating the impact of anthropogenic aspects and climatic factors on long term soil monitoring and management. Environ Sci. Pollut. Res. 2021, 202, 30528-30550. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14127-7 ). As future directions (a separate paragraph), how the farmers perceive the future technologies? [Behl et al. The dichotomy of nanotechnology as the cutting edge of agriculture: Nano-farming as an asset versus nanotoxicity, Chemosphere 2022, 288 Part 2, 132533. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.132533].
Complete the strengths and weakness of your study - it should be mentioned as the last, separate paragraph of the future Discussion section.
Policy implications (from the 5th section) belongs also to the Discussion.
Conclusions MUST be shortened! The main findings of the study must be briefly presented, highlighting the achievement of the aim (novelty) of the study mentioned at the final of the Introduction section. No numerical values (results) are needed to be reminded, as the text is repetitive with the Results/Discussion section.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Manuscript Number: sustainability-1719559-peer-v1
Title: How Agricultural Extension Services Improve Farmers' Organic 2 Fertilizer Use in China? The perspective of Neighborhood 3 Effect and Ecological Cognition
Comments:
The present research work was focused on ʺHow Agricultural Extension Services Improve Farmers' Organic Fertilizer Use in China? The perspective of Neighborhood Effect and Ecological Cognitionʺ. This article is well written, technically sound and in well scientific style. However, manuscript needs to address certain critical points before recommending it for publication.
1. The abstract of this manuscript is not well written please carefully revise carefully it as per your experimental setup and significant results.
2. Authors have suggested that please update introduction section with few latest references.
3. Novelty point of view, how this study is unique form already published articles? Please write the novelty in the manuscript.
4. Discussion contents is missing in the manuscript, please carefully check it.
5. The discussion section is not well written; authors have suggested that please add few latest references as per your results in the manuscript.
6. Please write advantages and disadvantages of your research work.
7. Please carefully check and remove typo errors in the manuscript.
8. Finally, the language of the manuscript should be improved to increase the readability of the manuscript.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have addressed all my concerns.
