Undergraduate Internship on Yamuna River Exploration: Raising Awareness about SDG6

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for inviting me to review this interesting manuscript entitled “Undergraduate Internship on Yamuna River Exploration: Raising Awareness about SDG6.” The manuscript has been written well, however, I have a few comments to improve the quality of this study.

 

There should have a theoretical/conceptual framework to combine students’ internship and the scientific findings in the literature review section, so that at the conclusion the authors can show the contribution from this study. Moreover, how the board concept ‘citizen science’ and ‘science communication’ and ‘sustainability science’ has been linked to this study in order to contribute towards achieving SDG6? Why there are no standard deviations of the physicochemical parameters in the Table 1? The discussion and conclusion section should be rewritten including findings after adding the theoretical contributions. 

Author Response

Thank you for the comments.

1. The internship aligned with the FiNE framework which has been elaborated in section 3.7.2 and the success of the project has been elaborated in section 3.8 as the assessment. The conclusions are broader therefore, the framework doesn't need to be added to it. It wasn't a citizen Science internship, it was an internship that was focused on a specific group of students with specific skills.
2. Mean values and Standard deviations have been added to Table 1.
3. The theoretical contributions have been added to the results section. The discussion section usually compares other studies with the current and we have already done so with reference to the results. The conclusion also aptly describe the results of the study. 
4.  

Reviewer 2 Report

Review report

 

In this article, authors designed an internship for undergraduate students at the University of Delhi, India. They trained 30 students from all over the university to carry out 12 field exploration activities on the river Yamuna flowing in Delhi.

The study is fruitful and the results are believable. But there are some flaws which should be improved by revising the manuscript under the following comments:

 

1.     Abstract should be precised.

2.     There are many abbreviations which are directly defined in the abstract and other sections. Authors should first define the abbreviation then use it.

3.     In line 31, replace god(s) with God(s).

4.     In lines 40 and 41, what is MLD and NCT? Authors should define these abbreviations first then use them.

5.     In lines 29-37, authors discuss some reasons of pollution in Yamuna. I think they should hammer on industrial waste first because, this is the main cause of water pollution in Yamuna and other Indian rivers these days. Then they should discuss other religious practices. Otherwise, it would be good if you support this fact with the data which you can easily get from pollution department of Delhi.

6.     Rephrase the sentence “On checking the effectiveness of the YAP plans [14] it is suggested that 47 although, some improvement [15,16] and success [17-19] has been seen but pollution lev-48 els in Yamuna River are rising relentlessly [20,21].”

7.     In line 88, there should be space in “[29]and”.

8.     In line 90, replace “figure 1b, c” with “Figure 1. (b), (c)”.

9.     In lines 239-240, authors forgot to mention Delhi gate cite.

10.  In lines 426 and 428, the references are cited with name only like Franziska et al. and Djonko et al. . Follow a uniform citation style. Also, check the entire manuscript regarding this issue.

11.  The authors should check the entire manuscript very carefully for typos and grammatical errors.

 

 

 

Minor editing of English language required.

 

Author Response

Thank you for the comments, please find our responses as follows:

1. Abstract builds beautifully on the precise program and the gains thereof. It hasn't been changed.
2. The abbreviations have been elaborated.
3. Industrial wastes and religious sources of pollution have been added in lines 32 to 35.
4. Comment 6: rephrased.
5. Citations have been amended.
6. Typos have been fixed.

Reviewer 3 Report

Paper presents semiprofesional analyses of water enivironment, where student learning in field and play an important role in popularization of ecological idea among the others students and family. Manuscript can be accepted for publication     

Author Response

Thank you!