Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Yellow River Basin: Its Spatial–Temporal Distribution Characteristics and Differentiation Causes
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript is acceptable as it is.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for acknowledging our manuscript entitled "Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Yellow River Basin: Its Spatial and Temporal Distribution Characteristics and Causes of Differentiation" (Manuscript No.: sustainability-1780522). We thank you for taking the time to review this article.
best wishes!
Sincerely,
Qili
Reviewer 2 Report
sustainability-1780522-peer-review-v1.
The paper focuses on the spatial distribution of intangible cultural heritage items in China's Yellow River Basin and then uses this distribution to understand the influencing factors for the management of intangible cultural heritage preservation.
As research methods, the authors employ the standard deviation ellipse, nearest point index, nuclear density analysis, spatial correlation factor, and geological detector. The methods are clearly explained in the text. Section 3.2, which explains the distribution of intangible cultural heritage time characteristics in the Yellow River Basin, is poorly written and confusing. The text discusses how different epochs formed intangible cultural heritage items. First and foremost, a timeline in this section detailing the appearance of intangible cultural heritage items throughout history would be beneficial. Second, how the analyses were done backward in time (i.e. what assumptions were made) should be clarified.
The terminology used throughout the text should be consistent, and definitions for each should be provided separately.
Because there is also a section about the history of the emergence of intangible cultural heritage during various eras, the conclusions should state whether they are about the past or present time of the intangible cultural heritage item.
The first section of the manuscript has a very nationalistic tone; the authors should bring a more global tone to the paper.
I've also made some notes on the text in the attached document. I believe the introduction, conclusion, and section 3.2 should be completely rewritten before publication.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Yellow River Basin Spatial-temporal distribution characteristics and its differentiation causes’ (Manuscript ID: sustainability-1780522). We have carefully considered every comment, and have tried our best to improve the manuscript. We believe that these comments were all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as providing significant guidance to our future research.
We are grateful for the time you spent reviewing the paper and providing valuable comments. We hope that the revised manuscript will now be suitable for publication, but we will be happy to work with you to resolve any remaining issues. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the comments please see the attachment.
Best Wishes!
Sincerely,
QiLi
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper investigated 891 national intangible cultural heritages along the Yellow River Basin and further quantitatively analyzed their spatial and temporal distribution characteristics and causes. This is an interesting study but the following concerns should be addressed.
1) The structure of the current discussion is more like 'limitations and future works, I would recommend the authors reorganize the whole structure to increase the readability.
2) For the detection results of intangible cultural heritage factors, there are only 7 factors categorized into 3 groups. You need to justify why you only choose these factors.
3) Still in those factors, the climate seems like a very broad concept and how do you define this part. Also, policy support contributes most according to your findings, but how do you quantify these non-numberic factors. Please give details of how to measure these factors in the main text.
4) General communications are not good, there are many obvious spelling and formatting errors throughout the whole paper. The authors should check everything when resubmitting.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Yellow River Basin: Its spatial–temporal distribution characteristics and differentiation causes’ (Manuscript ID: sustainability-1780522). We have carefully considered every comment, and have tried our best to improve the manuscript. We believe that these comments were all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as providing significant guidance to our future research.
We are grateful for the time you spent reviewing the paper and providing valuable comments. We hope that the revised manuscript will now be suitable for publication, but we will be happy to work with you to resolve any remaining issues. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the comments please see the attachment.
Best Wishes!
Sincerely,
QiLi
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
1. First of all, the literature review is incomplete, for example there are no references to the methods used at work.
2. In Figure 1, the symbols used to present point data are indistinguishable.
3. The discussion section does not refer to other studies on the topic, there is a lot of work on the topic of the given keywords of the article on Google Scholar. Additionally, the discussion section should be much more elaborate than just 15 lines of text.
4. The topic is not original, the same studies with very similar results are at published work Li, W., Jiao, J., Qi, J., & Ma, Y. (2022). The spatial and temporal differentiation characteristics of cultural heritage in the Yellow River Basin. PloS one, 17(6), e0268921.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Yellow River Basin: Its spatial–temporal distribution characteristics and differentiation causes’ (Manuscript ID: sustainability-1780522). We have carefully considered every comment, and have tried our best to improve the manuscript. We believe that these comments were all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as providing significant guidance to our future research.
We are grateful for the time you spent reviewing the paper and providing valuable comments. We hope that the revised manuscript will now be suitable for publication, but we will be happy to work with you to resolve any remaining issues. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the comments please see the attachment.
Best Wishes!
Sincerely,
QiLi
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors attempted to address the points I raised.
This new version of the manuscript is unquestionably superior. In the research methods, the authors should explain how they quantified the cultural heritage items to be inserted into their statistical methods.
I still believe the text should be edited, and the suggestions of a native speaker should be considered for the task.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for your recognition and support for our title "Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Yellow River Basin: Its spatial–temporal distribution characteristics and differentiation causes" (Manuscript No.: sustainability-1780522).
best wishes!
Sincerely,
Qili
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have improved the paper significantly but there are still some problems that need to be revised before publication. Such as Figure 2 and Table 2 are not correctly formatted, and some figures leave too much space.
Also, 6 Discussion seems to be the conclusion which is repeated with 5 Discussion, please check. I would also recommend shrinking the conclusion into maybe 3 points for readability.
Lastly, 5.2 is a bit weak, the last paragraph is just part of the limitation and the future works, I would recommend expanding the discussion on the causes of non-inherited differentiation.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Yellow River Basin: Its spatial–temporal distribution characteristics and differentiation causes’ (Manuscript ID: sustainability-1780522). We have carefully considered every comment, and have tried our best to improve the manuscript. We believe that these comments were all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as providing significant guidance to our future research.
We are grateful for the time you spent reviewing the paper and providing valuable comments. We hope that the revised manuscript will now be suitable for publication, but we will be happy to work with you to resolve any remaining issues. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the comments please see the attachment.
Best Wishes!
Sincerely,
QiLi
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Thank you for the improvement and explanation of the twin similar work. I accept the article for publication
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for your recognition and support for our title "Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Yellow River Basin: Its spatial–temporal distribution characteristics and differentiation causes" (Manuscript No.: sustainability-1780522).
best wishes!
Sincerely,
Qili
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
I would like to thank you for your efforts during the reviewing process. I believe your paper is stronger in this new version and ready to be published...
Best
