Sustainability Factors of Self-Help Groups in Disaster-Affected Communities
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1. Please modify the abstract to clearly present the proposed approach and the results obtained.
2. Please improve the state of the art overview, to clearly show the progress beyond the state of the art. The lack of proper justification creates the wrong impression that the authors are unaware of the recent developments.
3. The manuscript lacks graphs/tables and detailed discussion of the results obtained.
4. Improve the results and discussion section. The results are very weak.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper should not be written in the first person. You should rewrite it.
Abstract. The authors should clearly state the objective of this research.
Introduction. The authors briefly present the importance of the research topic, but the structure of the paper should be described. The research questions should be clearly defined.
An update of theoretical background is needed. Lack of recent articles. The authors should cite further current and relevant references.
Data and methodology. The research methodology is not correctly described by the authors. It should be improved. The authors address the elaboration of interviews but we have no further information. How were they analysed? What questions were asked? What results were obtained? A questionnaire was implemented. This should be submitted as an appendix. Was the same questionnaire applied to the different categories of respondents? The indicators, derived from the literature review, should be indicated that are going to be used in the research and the reasons. What are the variables used in this research?
Results. Authors should present more clearly and textually the results Explanation of results should be improved.
Conclusions should be related with literature review, and it should be presented a comment to the objective. If the objective was achieved or not. The conclusions should be supported by the results presented.
The authors should present theoretical and practical implications. Limitations and future research directions should be included.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper describes is to identify the social, economic, political, technological, and managerial factors which help a social enterprise, especially self-help groups, become sustainable. The literature review of sustainability measurement indicators has been instrumental in understanding and identifying the variables for further investigation. The article has an applied regional character. Mathematical models are described. The choice of the proposed methods is justified. The work of this paper has practical application.
1. Surveys of 143 members of SHGs cannot be the basis of relevant conclusions. A minimum of 300 respondents.
2. To study the effectiveness of artificial intelligence methods.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The authors present a principal component analysis to identify the sustainability factors of self-help groups in disaster-affected communities in the Sundarbans delta and drought-prone region of West Bengal. The manuscript overall is written and organized well. But I have the following concerns:
- Why the authors dropped out the variables with factor loadings less than 0.6? I didn't find a reasonable explanation for this practice.
- Please provide the biplot of the (scaled) first two principal components.
- I missed a discussion about the variances of the principal components. A common rule of thumb is that axes with eigenvalues > 1 are worth interpreting. But, in this case, why components 2-4 are relevant? What percentage of the total change is explained by these three components?
- Please present a discussion interpreting the first four principal components.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have addressed the questions of the reviewer.
Reviewer 2 Report
Well done!
