Long-Term Strategies for Multimodal Transportation of Block Rubber in Thailand

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This work proposes a multimodal transportation of block rubber transportation problem in Thailand. It develops a system dynamics model. While the model is interesting, I am afraid it slightly lacks innovativeness. Meanwhile, hoping to assist the authors in their research efforts, I provide several suggestions for improving the presented work:

1.      The abstract should be supplemented with the main findings, conclusions, and interpretations of the results. The main contributions of the paper should also be pointed out more clearly.

2.      The introduction needs to be seriously rewritten. In first aspect, the authors should point out more clearly the main aim of the paper in the introduction. The introduction should also be supplemented with the main results and contributions of the paper. On the other side, the authors should identify research gaps in the literature review, that they are trying to cover in their study. This is one of the main purposes of the literature review. Most of the introduction is devoted to the information of the rubber, so I propose to reduce its content and extend the literature review with the work on multimodal transportation simulation.

3.      The Results part is not sufficiently discussed. The authors did not discuss how the results can be interpreted from the perspective of previous studies. Discussion should clearly and concisely explain the significance of the obtained results to demonstrate the actual contribution of the article to this field of research, when compared with the existing and studied literature.

4.      English language should be revised. Certain spelling, grammar, syntax, and style issues need to be resolved.

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the referee for their solid comments and suggestions. Please see the responses to the referees’ report in attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is comprehensive and well-organized. Some minor issues should be considered in the revised manuscript. In the following, I report my specific comments.

- I would suggest that the authors include some study contributions (In literature and practical point of view). However, it might add value to the research to mention some primary contributions of this study in general terms.

- The introduction part needs to be improved, what other studies were lacking that you have tried to address? It fails to identify the need for research.

- The conclusion part also needs to be revised; what is the paper's value/originality/contribution? I strongly recommend the authors provide a more comprehensive discussion. It would be more interesting if the authors focused more on the significance of their findings regarding the importance of the interrelationship between the obtained results.

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the referee for solid comments and suggestions. Please see the responses to the referees’ report in attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

1.    The Limitations of the proposed study need to be discussed before the conclusion.

2.    Check the mathematical notation of the whole paper.

3.    Identified research gaps and contributions of the proposed study should be elaborated.

4.    What assumptions authors made during the simulation phase of this research work?

5.    Provide a critique on this aspect.

6.    Authors are suggested to update the introduction and the related work sections by including more of the recent publications in the work domain.

7.    Authors need to confirm that all acronyms are defined before being used for the first time.

8.    Authors are suggested to proofread the manuscript after addressing all comments to avoid any typos, grammatical, and lingual mistakes and errors.

9.    Page 4, Fig 2 can be replaced through a paragraph to represent the workflow.

10. Authors need to explain the numeric value in Eq.3, Page 14, and Eq.8

11. I personally recommend using small variable names for equations and other explanations.

12. Eq 14 is confusing due to such variable names. Recommended to change

13. The technical aspects of the paper are required to be strengthened.

14. The literature review section can be enhanced.

a.     Recommended references.

·       H. Mohapatra, "Socio-technical Challenges in the Implementation of Smart City," 2021 International Conference on Innovation and Intelligence for Informatics, Computing, and Technologies (3ICT), 2021, pp. 57-62, doi: 10.1109/3ICT53449.2021.9581905.

·       Hitesh Mohapatra and Amiya Kumar Rath, An IoT based efficient multi-objective real-time smart parking system,International Journal of Sensor Networks 2021 37:4, 219-232, https://doi.org/10.1504/IJSNET.2021.119483.

 

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the referee for solid comments and suggestions. Please see the responses to the referees’ report in attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

 

Please attachments

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the referee for solid comments and suggestions. Please see the responses to the referees’ report in attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have made solid effort to improve the paper. It is acceptable for publishing as it is. 

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper can be accepted in its present form.