Sustainable Development of Eco-Cities: A Bibliometric Review
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have done a very productive work of revision, but the following points are still worth noting.
1. As I said last time, this manuscript conducts research on "Sustainable Development of Eco-Cities". Eco-city itself is a way of sustainable urban development, which already contains the connotation of sustainable development. So, how should the sustainable development of eco-city be defined? The manuscript must introduce the definition of "sustainable development of eco-city". The author focuses on eco-city in lines 54-67 in the revised manuscript, However, the connotation of "Sustainable Development of Eco-Cities" is still not explained clearly. I suggest that the author further define or explain this concept, for example, it can be defined from the aspects such as the sustainable construction, operation and management of eco-cities. Authors also need to ensure that the literature reviewed and analyzed is consistent with the scope of the concept.
2. I suggest moving the last paragraph of “5. Conclusions” to "4.3 Research Deficiency", and removing the secondary headings (4.1, 4.2, 4.3) of “4. Discussion”, which is more in line with the standards of academic papers. After this work is completed, the rest of the content in “5. Conclusions” should be further simplified (because it has been described above), or even deleted.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Dear Editor of sustainability,
Thanks a lot for arranging the reviews of our paper so fast. It is great that you have suggested 3 experts to help us to improve our paper.
We have carefully reviewed the revised manuscript. The revised manuscript has also been carefully reviewed by coauthors for several times. We hope you will be satisfied with responses and revisions.
Dear Reviewer 1,
Thanks very much for your generous time and your constructive comments and
suggestions. We have listed the point-to-point changes or rebuttals against each point
which has been raised (please see the following responses, C=comment, R=response).
The changes have been highlighted by using red text.
C1: As I said last time, this manuscript conducts research on "Sustainable Development of Eco-Cities". Eco-city itself is a way of sustainable urban development, which already contains the connotation of sustainable development. So, how should the sustainable development of eco-city be defined? The manuscript must introduce the definition of "sustainable development of eco-city". The author focuses on eco-city in lines 54-67 in the revised manuscript, However, the connotation of "Sustainable Development of Eco-Cities" is still not explained clearly. I suggest that the author further define or explain this concept, for example, it can be defined from the aspects such as the sustainable construction, operation and management of eco-cities. Authors also need to ensure that the literature reviewed and analyzed is consistent with the scope of the concept.
R1: Thanks, we have re-added the introduction of the definition of "sustainable development of ecological cities" in lines 66-76, and we can ensure that the literature reviewed and analyzed is consistent with the scope of the concept.
C2: I suggest moving the last paragraph of “5. Conclusions” to "4.3 Research Deficiency", and removing the secondary headings (4.1, 4.2, 4.3) of “4. Discussion”, which is more in line with the standards of academic papers. After this work is completed, the rest of the content in “5. Conclusions” should be further simplified (because it has been described above), or even deleted.
R2: Thanks, we have moved removed the last paragraph of “5. Conclusions” to "4.3 Research Deficiency", please check lines 541-556. And we have removed the secondary headings (4.1, 4.2, 4.3) of “4. Discussion” and simplified the content in “5. Conclusions”. Please check the “5. Conclusions” in lines 558-576.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Minor comments:
Line 10 to 13: The statement
“In this paper, a bibliometric analysis of publications on sustainable development of ecological cities in the Web of Science (WOS) (Core Repository) database is conducted to analyze the current status, hot spots, and research trends in this field from 1990 to 2021.”
needs to be reformulated as follows:
“In this paper, a bibliometric analysis of journal articles on sustainable development of ecological cities using the Web of Science Core Collection database from 1990 to 2021 is conducted to analyze the current status, hot spots, and research trends in this field”
Line 98: Section “2. Materials and Methods” would be better to change it into “2. Methods”
Line 463: There is a redundancy of the word sustainability “Sustainability and sustainability”
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Dear Editor of sustainability,
Thanks a lot for arranging the reviews of our paper so fast. It is great that you have suggested 3 experts to help us to improve our paper. We have carefully reviewed the revised manuscript. The revised manuscript has also been carefully reviewed by coauthors for several times. We hope you will be satisfied with responses and revisions.
Dear Reviewer 2,
Thanks very much for your generous time and your constructive comments and
suggestions. We have listed the point-to-point changes or rebuttals against each point
which has been raised (please see the following responses, C=comment, R=response).
The changes have been highlighted by using red text.
C1: Line 10 to 13: The statement
“In this paper, a bibliometric analysis of publications on sustainable development of ecological cities in the Web of Science (WOS) (Core Repository) database is conducted to analyze the current status, hot spots, and research trends in this field from 1990 to 2021.”
needs to be reformulated as follows:
“In this paper, a bibliometric analysis of journal articles on sustainable development of ecological cities using the Web of Science Core Collection database from 1990 to 2021 is conducted to analyze the current status, hot spots, and research trends in this field”
R1: Thanks, we have modified it. Please check in lines 10-13.
C2: Line 98: Section “2. Materials and Methods” would be better to change it into “2. Methods”
R2: Thanks, we have modified it. Please check in line 110.
C3: Line 463: There is a redundancy of the word sustainability “Sustainability and sustainability”
R3: Thanks, we have modified it. Please check in line 474.
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper is dealing with a very interesting topic. The authors have done very good research with valuables result. They also take into consideration all the comments provided to them.
I would only ask the authors to explained the abbreviation MAB in Introduction line 41
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
Dear Editor of sustainability,
Thanks a lot for arranging the reviews of our paper so fast. It is great that you have suggested 3 experts to help us to improve our paper. We have carefully reviewed the revised manuscript. The revised manuscript has also been carefully reviewed by coauthors for several times. We hope you will be satisfied with responses and revisions.
Dear Reviewer 3,
Thanks very much for your generous time and your constructive comments and
suggestions. We have listed the point-to-point changes or rebuttals against each point
which has been raised (please see the following responses, C=comment, R=response).
The changes have been highlighted by using red text.
C1: I would only ask the authors to explained the abbreviation MAB in Introduction line 41.
R1: Thanks, we have added the full name of the abbreviation “MAB” in line 41.
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
The sustainable development of ecological cities has been a significant challenge for all countries in the world. This paper systematically analyzed the evolution and research hotspots of SDEC, and main areas, main authors, main countries, main institutions, main journals of study in SDEC research over the past 30 years, which is very helpful for researchers and stakeholders in this field. To further improve the quality of the manuscript, the following comments needs to be addressed:
1. Perspectives of the research trends summarized from the most frequently cited article should be discussed, which would be very helpful for the readers.
2. In 3.7, It is Suggested that adding analysis of views from most frequently cited article. What we can learn from these papers?
3. When the abbreviation in the paper appears for the first time, both the full name and abbreviation are needed. Such as “SDEC”, “UNESCO”, “SDUE”. Please check the full paper.
4. Line 96: “Papers published in 2020 were excluded to ensure that we compare the complete annual cycle”, The year 2020 should be included.
5. Please add the software version of CiteSpace and Vosviewer.
6. Line 118, It should be Table 1, not Table 2; Line 179, It should be Figure 4, not Figure 2; Line 180, It should be Table 2, not Table 1; Line 203, It should be Figure 5. Please check all charts in the paper.
7. The font in Figure 8 is recommended to be checked again.
8. The Year and strength in Figure 8 are not described in the text, How the strength is calculated?
Reviewer 2 Report
1. Line 74: “2.1. bibliometric analysis”. The first letter of "bibliometric" should be capitalized
2. The name of the country in the Figure 5 should be standardized, for example, “people r china” should be "China" or "People's Republic of China".
3. This manuscript conducts research on "Sustainable Development of Eco-Cities". Eco-city itself is a way of sustainable urban development, which already contains the connotation of sustainable development. So, how should the sustainable development of eco-city be defined? The manuscript must introduce the definition of "sustainable development of eco-city".
4. This manuscript summarizes the current status, hot spots and trends of research in this field over the past three decades by conducting a bibliometric analysis of publications on the sustainable development of eco-cities in the WOS (core collection) database from 1990 to 2021. However, the manuscript does not sufficiently summarize the research content. I suggest that the author further summarizes the research content of sustainable development of eco-city into several aspects and expounds them one by one.
5. The manuscript does not provide research perspectives or recommendations for future research. This is very important and it is recommended to supplement this section.
Reviewer 3 Report
Title: Sustainable Development of Eco-City: A Research Overview through Bibliometric Analysis
Manuscript ID: sustainability-1816990
Overview :
This article is a review article. It provides a bibliometric review of papers that dealt with the sustainable development of eco-city using VOSviewer and Citespace softwares. The Web Of Science database from 1990 to 2021 is used as the main source of information. Although the relevance of the topic, the contribution of the authors is slight. This is because they followed a pre-established system of literature review. Moreover, some more comments need to be addressed. These are:
Comments
1-The present paper is a review manuscript. Therefore, the title needs to be readjusted accordingly. It may be in the following form: “Sustainable Development of Eco-City: A bibliometric review”
2-In the abstract (Line 17 and Line 23) the abbreviations “WOS” and “SDEC” appeared for the first time in the manuscript. So, they should be expanded.
3-The authors need to explain the rationale for conducting a bibliometric analysis and how the study would contribute to the existing knowledge. The authors should cite and review previous reviews, discuss their strengths and weaknesses and explain why a new review should be conducted. For example, the following review article should be cited and discussed showing to what extent your work is different from it and you are not repeating the same work:
The authors Rodrigues, M., & Franco, M. (2022). Bibliometric review about eco-cites and urban sustainable development: trend topics. Environment, Development and Sustainability, pp. 1-22.
4-A discussion section needs to be added for manuscript quality and consistency.
5-References need to be relevant:
a-The following references are irrelevant and should be removed.
18 - 20 - 24 - 25 - 34 - 37- 40 - 46 - 49 - 50 - 51 - 52 - 53 -59 - 62
b-The following references are more appropriate and their inclusion enrich the manuscript.
-Rodrigues, M., & Franco, M. (2022). Bibliometric review about eco-cites and urban sustainable development: trend topics. Environment, Development and Sustainability, pp. 1-22.
-Huang, X., Gao, J., & Zhang, H. (2022). Low-carbon eco-city development policy in China: a bibliometric analysis of policy documents. Kybernetes, (ahead-of-print).
-Roula, F., & Bouchair, A. (2021). Application of the INDI Model of the HQE²R Approach to Assess the Sustainability of a Neighbourhood: Case of Jijel City in Algeria. International Journal of Built Environment and Sustainability, 8(3), 63-75.
-Li, Y., Commenges, H., Bordignon, F., Bonhomme, C., & Deroubaix, J. F. (2019). The Tianjin Eco-City model in the academic literature on urban sustainability. Journal of Cleaner Production, 213, 59-74.
-Bouchair, A., Tebbouche, H., Hammouni, A., Lehtihet, M. C., & Blibli, M. (2013). Compact cities as a response to the challenging local environmental constraints in hot arid lands of Algeria. Energy Procedia, 42, 493-502.
-De Jong, M., Joss, S., Schraven, D., Zhan, C., & Weijnen, M. (2015). Sustainable–smart–resilient–low carbon–eco–knowledge cities; making sense of a multitude of concepts promoting sustainable urbanization. Journal of Cleaner production, 109, 25-38.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
