Autonomous Innovations in the Rural Communities of Developing Countries I—A Narrative Analysis of Innovations and Synergies for Integrated Natural Resource Management

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

The research manuscript needs revision 

 

The research article under the title “Autonomous Innovations in Rural Communities of Developing Countries I. Narrative Analysis of Innovations and Synergies for Integrated Natural Resource Management.  It is an interesting and an innovative topic, however, I see the authors sometimes loose focus and divert into excessive description in the introduction and divided a single section in many parts which is unnecessary.

 

1. Authors list address no 3. SDGs is stand for?  Author should put complete address instead of SDGs.

2. Introduction section is too long, and authors try to make it short.

3. Page 2, First sentence. I could not understand, authors should double check it.

4.  During the Results and Discussion the authors described tables in different way than usual which is boring to the readers. Try make it simple   

5. Table. 5-A. I see some column and row are empties nothing mentioned which is not easy to readers. For instance, 2, 3, 5 and so on.  

6. Spread the acronyms throughout the entire review in the text. For instance, OECD, QOL etc.

7. The conclusion section is lengthy. Authors should take key information through the entire research manuscript and put it in the conclusion. 

8. With regards to the abstract, author should take the concrete evidence mention in the abstract because researchers always quick pass-through article title then abstract first.  

9. Acknowledgments: It is more than 10 lines which is unnecessary.

10. No consistency in the references.  I would suggest use EndNote, Zotero etc. to make sure all references at the same format and bring into better shape.  For instance, some reference showing up page no and year at the end in bold letter, but some of it did not.

 

11: I would recommend this research manuscript pass through software for textual similarity test as I passed through it some of text looks copied and pasted. Thanks 

Author Response

 Author's Notes to Reviewer

The research article under the title “Autonomous Innovations in Rural Communities of Developing Countries I. Narrative Analysis of Innovations and Synergies for Integrated Natural Resource Management.  It is an interesting and an innovative topic, however, I see the authors sometimes loose focus and divert into excessive description in the introduction and divided a single section in many parts which is unnecessary.

     Thank you for the valuable comments.

1. Authors list address no 3. SDGs is stand for? Author should put complete address instead of SDGs.

     The “SDGs Promotion Office" is the official title of the devision of the University directly under the president.

2. Introduction section is too long, and authors try to make it short.

     We made it shorter by reducing redundant parts.

3. Page 2, First sentence. I could not understand, authors should double check it.

     English was corrected.

4. During the Results and Discussion the authors described tables in different way than usual which is boring to the readers. Try make it simple

    Tables 2, 3, 4 and 5 are structured into "A" and "B". For each table, "A" represents the overall summaries of all innovations, and "B" represents analytical results. "A" may be a bit boring for general readers, but thse are absolutely important for the readers with particular interests on specific innovations and their communities. These readers also obtain more detailed information about each innovation by referring to the Supplementary Materials. Therefore we decided to keep all these tables as the present formats.

5. Table. 5-A. I see some column and row are empties nothing mentioned which is not easy to readers. For instance, 2, 3, 5 and so on.

     The empty lines are deleted, and the captions are modified.

6. Spread the acronyms throughout the entire review in the text. For instance, OECD, QOL etc.

     All acronyms are spelled out at the first appearance in the text, or in the captions of the table.

7. The conclusion section is lengthy. Authors should take key information through the entire research manuscript and put it in the conclusion.

     The conclusion is reduced to incrude key information. A few sentences are added following the comments of another reviewer.

8. With regards to the abstract, author should take the concrete evidence mention in the abstract because researchers always quick pass-through article title then abstract first.

     We added the concrete evidences as a form of indices used in the analyses.

9. Acknowledgments: It is more than 10 lines which is unnecessary.

     Most of the names in the Acknowledgements represent the autonomous innovators in the communities involved in this research. Their names are absolutely necessary to express our respect and gratitude to creative innovators in the communities who made truly significant contributions to this study.

10. No consistency in the references. I would suggest use EndNote, Zotero etc. to make sure all references at the same format and bring into better shape. For instance, some reference showing up page no and year at the end in bold letter, but some of it did not.

     We checked them and made them consistent.

11: I would recommend this research manuscript pass through software for textual similarity test as I passed through it some of text looks copied and pasted. Thanks

     We went through the plagiarism check and carefully added quotation marks or rephrased the relevant parts.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for the opportunity to read an interesting article.

This interesting and valuable research focuses on the qualitative analysis of twenty autonomous innovations from six countries. The response of the innovation is measured in a binary form in the sense of whether the innovation has brought an improvement in selected indicators of human well-being. Specifically, the indicators were basic materials for a good life, improvement of resilience, and good social relations, etc.

Three research questions are formulated in the methodology (page 4, first five lines). If "autonomous innovations" and "synergy emergence in the innovation" are understood as positive phenomena (considering the contribution to innovations in rural communities), then a slight contradiction is possible between questions (2) and (3). I understand the term "autonomy" as independent, spontaneous, and willful. I understand the term "integrated" as cumulating multiple functions or something unified. Thus, autonomous innovation cannot be a goal if it is implemented within the integrated resource management system. But this innovation must be causally subject to some goal (e.g. global sustainability in using non-renewables).

 Table.2-A Summary of outcomes of autonomous innovations evaluates the contribution of innovations to various areas of human well-being. Here, a positive effect is expressed by the symbol "✓" or the absence of an effect (by omitting this symbol). The possibility that an antagonistic effect of innovation may also arise, e.g. in categories other than those under observation, is ignored here.

In terms of methodology, I have a comment. Of course, it is possible to use qualitative research. Still, a binary evaluation in the sense of a positive influence "yes-no" does not allow determining this influence's strength. Furthermore, it does not allow determining the reliability of the resulting response, i.e. the transferability of the innovation to other regions with a similar result. Furthermore, this does not make it possible to determine whether the positive response was just a coincidence or whether the innovation was not a mediator of some third factor (e.g. social changes, government subsidies, etc.). For further research (and a follow-up article), I recommend using a more sophisticated methodological apparatus (e.g. categorical data processing).

Before publishing, I recommend adding to the conclusion of the article a consideration of the risk and uncertainty involved in transferring innovations to other regions. And also about the possibility that innovation can bring more harm than good or the possibility of an antagonistic innovation (interaction).

Good luck.

With kind regards,

reviewer

Author Response

* Author's Notes to Reviewer

Dear Authors,

Thank you for the opportunity to read an interesting article.

Thank you very much for your valuable comments.

 

This interesting and valuable research focuses on the qualitative analysis of twenty autonomous innovations from six countries. The response of the innovation is measured in a binary form in the sense of whether the innovation has brought an improvement in selected indicators of human well-being. Specifically, the indicators were basic materials for a good life, improvement of resilience, and good social relations, etc.

Three research questions are formulated in the methodology (page 4, first five lines). If "autonomous innovations" and "synergy emergence in the innovation" are understood as positive phenomena (considering the contribution to innovations in rural communities), then a slight contradiction is possible between questions (2) and (3). I understand the term "autonomy" as independent, spontaneous, and willful. I understand the term "integrated" as cumulating multiple functions or something unified. Thus, autonomous innovation cannot be a goal if it is implemented within the integrated resource management system. But this innovation must be causally subject to some goal (e.g. global sustainability in using non-renewables).

We agree with the possibility of contradiction between the question 2 and 3. When integrated natural resource management is realized, the autonomous innovation itself is not the goal. We assumed that synergies emerging from the collective actions in the innovations promote the integration of different resource management practices. Therefore, we addresse factors of synergy emergence in the question 3. We analyzed the mechanisms that the autonomous innovation can produce positive impacts to multiple natural resources through the synergies. This assumption is reflected in the definitions of “single type” and “integrated type” of innovations in the section 2.6. We did not address the contribution of the integrated type innovation on the much broader, sometimes global targets, as this is beyond the scope of this paper. We rather concentrated on the positive impacts at the community level.

 Table.2-A Summary of outcomes of autonomous innovations evaluates the contribution of innovations to various areas of human well-being. Here, a positive effect is expressed by the symbol "✓" or the absence of an effect (by omitting this symbol). The possibility that an antagonistic effect of innovation may also arise, e.g. in categories other than those under observation, is ignored here.

We assumed the antagonistic effects, if any, are represented in the remaining challenges summarized in Table 3. For example, organizational strengthening, consideration for the vulnerable, and conflict resoluion may be such examples of antagonistic impacts.

In terms of methodology, I have a comment. Of course, it is possible to use qualitative research. Still, a binary evaluation in the sense of a positive influence "yes-no" does not allow determining this influence's strength. Furthermore, it does not allow determining the reliability of the resulting response, i.e. the transferability of the innovation to other regions with a similar result. Furthermore, this does not make it possible to determine whether the positive response was just a coincidence or whether the innovation was not a mediator of some third factor (e.g. social changes, government subsidies, etc.). For further research (and a follow-up article), I recommend using a more sophisticated methodological apparatus (e.g. categorical data processing).

This paper is the first among a series of 3 papers submitted to the same special issue simultaneously. This paper aimes to elucidate the general characteristics of autonomous innovations through the qualitative analyses. The second paper applied graph theory and network analyses to develop the new definitions of leverage points to propose a new analytical method of the emergence mechanisms of autonomous innovations. The third paper use this analytical method to conduct comparative studies of autonomous innovations to produce generalized guiding principles to apply the research results to other regions. We hope the reviewer will enjoy the three papers as a series.

Before publishing, I recommend adding to the conclusion of the article a consideration of the risk and uncertainty involved in transferring innovations to other regions. And also about the possibility that innovation can bring more harm than good or the possibility of an antagonistic innovation (interaction).

 We added brief discussions on these two points in the conclusion.

Good luck.

With kind regards,

reviewer

                   Thanks.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Page 13 and table 5-A. Double check the table caption.  

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. We checked and modified the caption of Table 5-A on page 13 to make it clear for readers to understand the structures of the table.