A Review of Europe’s Circular Economy in the Building Sector
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
As the title suggests, the paper provides a review of Europe's circular economy in the building sector. It is well-written and presents a relevant topic. Below are three remarks that should help improve the existing manuscript:
11) Introduction: related surveys, problem description and motivation. The paper would benefit from listing related surveys. These surveys should then be used in order to correctly identify the existing scientific gap and explain the motivation behind your research. Emphasis should be on a targeted literature review and a justification for the research that your paper is going to cover (i.e. what is the scientific gap?).
22) Materials and Methods: eligibility criteria. Specify the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the review and how studies were grouped for the syntheses.
33) Conclusion. The final chapter should be expanded, and practical implications of your research should be elaborated in more detail. It would be meaningful if you would discuss the results by suggesting how they are relevant to further sector development and how your research could be used in practice.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
As the title suggests, the paper provides a review of Europe's circular economy in the building sector. It is well-written and presents a relevant topic. Below are three remarks that should help improve the existing manuscript:
1) Introduction: related surveys, problem description and motivation. The paper would benefit from listing related surveys. These surveys should then be used in order to correctly identify the existing scientific gap and explain the motivation behind your research. Emphasis should be on a targeted literature review and a justification for the research that your paper is going to cover (i.e., what is the scientific gap?).
R: Reviewer #1 pointed out that the science gap is unclear to the reader. We agree and added the following new text highlighted connecting to the information survey that already existed in the first draft.
"A systematic literature review helps to map out the existing state of the literature in a comprehensive way by evaluating and synthesizing the current knowledge. It helps understand a large body of literature. As the reader will verify, areas such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW), End of Life (EoL), Design for Disassembly, and (DfD) Building Information Modelling (BIM), and legislation are underrepresented in current research.
The present review was carried out in Scopus and Web of Science databases, as detailed in Section 3. Papers were selected for a full reading and analysis, then structured and categorized following their content, and organized according to their relevance to enable the extraction of information. A relevant article is "A review of the circularity gap in the construction industry through scientometric analysis" [8]. It encompasses the construction industry's potential regarding the circular economy and provides an understanding of current research trends and applications. Compared to this work, the authors used the same database and methodology applied worldwide, analyzing 486 papers and using the scientometric technique.
2) Materials and Methods: eligibility criteria. Specify the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the review and how studies were grouped for the syntheses.
R: We have changed the original title of Section 3.2 Review Process by a detailer subtitle for section 3.2: The sorting, encoding, and reviewing processes. In this section, one surgically replaced the word review with the specific word of the executed process to make it more evident to the reader. These changes are highlighted in yellow in the manuscript.
3) Conclusion. The final chapter should be expanded, and practical implications of your research should be elaborated in more detail. It would be meaningful if you would discuss the results by suggesting how they are relevant to further sector development and how your research could be used in practice.
R: Reviewer #3 made the same comment. We have added a couple of paragraphs at the end of the conclusions:
"The lack of a clear definition of the circular economy hampers research development, something in which future scientometric studies may help. Nevertheless, one believes there is a misunderstanding of the CE concept and its application in the construction sector. The scientific community must persist in pedagogic and dissemination efforts for CE for the construction sector.
Furthermore, future research may apply this article’s proposed framework for the building sector, enabling stipulated goals for future CE research and implementation."
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The presented publication "A review of Europe's circular economy in the building sector", provides an interesting review research. Certainly, the number of publications on this topic will increase significantly in 2021 and 2022, which is why such publications are of great value on this subject.
In the reviewer's opinion, the most valuable material is section 4 results.Please try to refine the quality of the illustrations, tables and graphs. Some of them are significantly too big, e.g. 4-7. Strong breaks in the text make it difficult to read an interesting work. Please consider preparing additional analyses from the publication database with a breakdown similar to Tables 2 and 3. I think other authors of this topic may be pleased to use these analyses.
The publication fulfils the requirements of a scientific paper and is suitable for publication in a scientific journal.
Author Response
The presented publication "A review of Europe's circular economy in the building sector", provides an interesting review research. Certainly, the number of publications on this topic will increase significantly in 2021 and 2022, which is why such publications are of great value on this subject.
R: Thank you for your kind words.
In the reviewer's opinion, the most valuable material is section 4 results.
Please try to refine the quality of the illustrations, tables and graphs. Some of them are significantly too big, e.g. 4-7.
R: Done.
Strong breaks in the text make it difficult to read an interesting work.
R: We do agree that the information in some parts is dense.
Please consider preparing additional analyses from the publication database with a breakdown similar to Tables 2 and 3. I think other authors of this topic may be pleased to use these analyses.
Response: We are glad that our research raised interest. The database is already available as extra material for the scientific community. The publishers will provide the open-source link for access to the database in the published version of the manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors present an interesting work to promote the Circular Economy in the building sector. Review papers have added value due to their great ability to synthesize information and their usefulness for reference in other research papers. For this reason, the reviewer wants to congratulate the researchers, since the work presented is of great interest.
Here are just a few minor comments:
- As a possible idea for future work, a scientometric study could be carried out analyzing the different definitions of circular economy that appear in the literature, until a complete definition is proposed that includes the main keywords that are repeated in the different studies.
- Section 3. Change title to "3. Methodology"
- Table 3 is confusing and its information can be better clarified in a graph
- I think that adding some future lines of work in the conclusions could contribute to improving the review carried out
Author Response
The authors present an interesting work to promote the Circular Economy in the building sector. Review papers have added value due to their great ability to synthesize information and their usefulness for reference in other research papers. For this reason, the reviewer wants to congratulate the researchers, since the work presented is of great interest.
R: Thank you for your kind words.
Here are just a few minor comments:
- As a possible idea for future work, a scientometric study could be carried out analyzing the different definitions of circular economy that appear in the literature, until a complete definition is proposed that includes the main keywords that are repeated in the different studies.
R: Your suggestion is pertinent, and we have included it in the added paragraph in the conclusions and integrated it with the Reviewer's #1 critiques.
- Section 3. Change title to "3. Methodology"
R: Done.
- Table 3 is confusing and its information can be better clarified in a graph
R: We have split table 3 into two tables: 3(a) and 3(b). In our opinion, we tried to represent the information graphically as suggested, but the results were terrible. The graphic did not convey the information well to the readers.
- I think that adding some future lines of work in the conclusions could contribute to improving the review carried out
R: Reviewer #1 made the same comment. We have added a couple of paragraphs at the end of the conclusions:
"The lack of a clear definition of the circular economy hampers research development, something in which future scientometric studies may help. Nevertheless, one believes there is a misunderstanding of the CE concept and its application in the construction sector. The scientific community must persist in pedagogic and dissemination efforts for CE for the construction sector.
Furthermore, future research may apply this article’s proposed framework for the building sector, enabling stipulated goals for future CE research and implementation.”
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
