Perspectives on Smart Villages from a Bibliometric Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to read the paper. It is an interesting toping and I consider it fits to the journal. The article reports on a very interesting study that may reach large audiences. The article is very well organized, in conceptual and methodological terms, and presents very relevant results. 

Figure 4. Co-occurrence analysis in the SV study using keywords is identical to Figure 5. Visualize the analysis of co-occurrences by overlapping keywords in SV research, but shows different things. My recommendation is to make a distinction between the two figures.

Within the limits of the possibilities, the following mapping can be done:

• Mapping of journal co-citations
• Mapping of institutions’ co-citations

The bibliography is up to date, but I also recommend the following source:

Radu, V., Radu, F., Tabirca, A.I., Saplacan, S.I. and Lile, R., 2021. Bibliometric Analysis of Fuzzy Logic Research in International Scientific Databases. International Journal of Computers, Communications & Control, 16(1).

Author Response

In the new form of the article, you will find the additions in the comments sent.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

While this is an interesting compilation of analyses on journal publications of articles related to the smart villages concept, I am not quite sure what the authors are contributing to science? This is worth making clear.

 

The authors themselves note that many publications (mainly books) are overlooked - I am thinking here of the publication 'The smart village concept. Examples from Poland', Smart Villages in the EU and Beyond, Smart Villages: Bridging the Global Urban-Rural Divide or Sustainable Smart Cities and Smart Villages Research: .... This is where my thought comes in, so does choosing only the Scopus database allow to create the kind of generalisations the authors used? Wouldn't taking into account other forms of publication, of which there are many in recent years, change the clusters, and the links between them? This is worth writing about.

 

It is also worth defining at the outset what the concept is? Where does it come from, what connotations does it have.

 

I think that the range of literature applied and used is insufficient.

Author Response

In the new form of the article, you will find the additions in the comments sent.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

1.    introduction is not concise enough for readers to understand your motivation quickly. More specifically, in the introduction it would strengthen the argument on the research question if it would be clearly stated what is meaning and innovative about this specific research gap.

2.  Some research avenue for further analysis is need to give before the Conclusion section-given the title of this manuscript (perspective) . 

3.  Figures and tables should be improved.

Author Response

In the new form of the article, you will find the additions in the comments sent.

The figures are generated by the VosViewer program according to the selection of keywords.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Taking the papers on Smart Village (SV) from Scopus database as the basis data and using the document visualization tool VOSviwer, the manuscript divides the papers into 4 clusters of studies by the co-occurrence of keywords and 6 clusters of studies by the bibliometric combination of documents. The topic selection of this paper has some significance and interesting, the research method is feasible, and the research conclusion has some contribution to SV research. However, there are still some problems:

1. The correspondence between the theme and content of the manuscript is not strong. From the content of the manuscript is the analysis of SV research progress, not SV progress.

2. The manuscript uses two methods to classify the literatures, including four clusters based on keywords and 6 clusters based on literature coupling. Why the clusters based on keywords are research results, while the clusters based on literature coupling are research discussion?

3. The manuscript mainly lists a number of literature and the research content, but comments are not enough. The manuscript does not analysis the deficiencies of the research based on the existing research, and put forward the corresponding research prospects.

4. Part of the noun or phrase abbreviations not noted in first appeared, such as SV, ICT, SME, etc. Their full name needs to be supplemented.

5. Keywords selection is not proper, and the main object, SV, discussed in the manuscript was not selected.

6. What is the time period of the research literature? 2011-2021? 2011-2022.5? 2011-2022.6? 2011-2021.3? Line 121-123, Figure 1 and Figure 2 show different time period.

7. Which figure associated with Table 3? Not reflected in the article. Is it necessary to distinguish colors in the table if there is no figure?

8. Line 383: the title is the fifth cluster, but content writing for the fourth cluster. Some color used is inconsistent, purple=violet?

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

1. The present research aims to show what the prospects are for SV through a bibliometric analysis, in other words, the progress of the literature in this field. We believe that bibliometric analysis of the latest research results captured by us in this article can guide other communities for further development. 2. & 3. They were completed and resolved in the new form of the article 4. The completion has been done. 5. The list of keywords has been completed. 6. They were completed and resolved in the new form of the article
7. Figure 8, associated with Table 3 has been introduced in the article and the identified problem has been solved. 8. This has been corrected.   As mentioned in the article under 4.3 Perspectives and limitations of the study, VOSviewer allows the processing of data exported from the main article indexing platforms (Scopus and Web of Science) but does not allow the merging of two or more files for import. This is one of the reasons why we limited our research to articles found in Scopus and did not include the books you mentioned.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Unfortunately, I am unable to identify the authors' responses to the comments made in the review.

 

The literature on the subject has still not been developed.

 

Talking about the phenomenon of smart villages without considering all the publications that exist in the academic space is not sufficient. Even if the authors intentionally limit the scope of the analysed literature it is necessary to pay attention to functioning books. It is usually in these that an in-depth analysis of the subject under consideration is included.

Author Response

We note that the selection of scientific articles was made taking into account the analyzed period (11 years) using the existing availabilities in the Scopus database. Specialists in such analyzes consider it inconsistent and unreliable to include Books and book chapters in Scopus, so we have excluded them. Partial conclusions were introduced at the level of each cluster, the literature was supplemented with citations.

Reviewer 4 Report

The author has revised some problems, but some problems are not revised or not fully revised.

1. The manuscript mainly lists a number of literature and the research content, but comments are not enough. The manuscript does not analysis the deficiencies of the research based on the existing research, and put forward the corresponding research prospects.

2. Part of the noun or phrase abbreviations not noted in first appeared, such as SV in the abstract. Their full name needs to be supplemented.

3. Line 400:  “Cluster 5 (purple): "Governance and planning in the SV" is the fourth largest group.”  The title is the fifth cluster, but content writing for the fourth cluster.

Author Response

1. We note that the manuscript currently has literature completed with papers according to the criteria described in the research methodology, and the content has been completed with comments marked in green colour according to your requirements. The cited references are relevant to this research and have been completed according to the bibliometric study.

2.3. I have completed the requested additions. This paper aims to map the SV research front to identify the main themes and further research directions. The study wanted to answer the predetermined objectives with the help of bibliometrics, namely: defining the SV research field; identification and analysis of its main specific themes; identifying the current directions of development as well as its future ones. These were doubled with research questions in the introduction. The study achieved its goal, considering the analyzed period and the novelty of the field.

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

I accept paper