Are We Talking about Green Skills or Sustainability Competences? A Scoping Review Using Scientometric Analysis of Two Apparently Similar Topics in the Field of Sustainability
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an interesting and well-written study that aims to clarify the differences between the terms "green skills" and "sustainability competences" in order to promote discussion among the various academic fields that deal with these issues and to aid in the design of effective sustainability education as a component of lifelong learning.
More specifically according to the authors, the purpose of this paper is to explore these two concepts to provide greater clarity for future research on sustainability and education for sustainability and to support policy and sustainable education and training. In fact, even though they do share some aspects, it is necessary to define them further and integrate them into education and learning agendas in order to shape alternative scenarios that encompass sustainable complexity.
Furthermore, and again according to the authors of the study, the main research questions that guided the research were: 1) What are the differences and similarities in the relevance and conceptual, social, and intellectual dimensions of “green skills” and “sustainability competences” in the field of sustainability? 2) What could be the primary definitions of these skills/competences in the field of sustainability and what patterns connect these two similar topics?
Given the above, the quantitative methodology chosen contributes little to the achievement of the aim and the answer to the research questions.
For example, I cannot understand how it helps to clarify concepts, data, or results such as those presented in the subsections: Annual scientific production, Countries, associated collaboration networks and production over time by country, Authors, and the related co-citation networks. I also believe that the same is more or less true for the subsection Research areas and related trends. All the above, I believe, are not related to the aim of the study or the research questions, except a small part of the second research question, which is” What patterns connect these two similar topics?”. This research sub-question is not related to the purpose of the research as formulated either.
Finally, what remains of the article that relates to the purpose and research questions, as well as the theoretical framework? Sub-section 4.5 Keywords and thematic maps. This subsection contributes but not effectively to the definition of the concepts (as I mentioned above the authors accept this and in addition, it is a limited part of the results as it constitutes 2 out of about 7 pages of the relevant section.
In conclusion, I believe that this work with these results should be radically revised in terms of its purpose, research questions, and the usefulness of the knowledge produced. The authors for example should help us to understand what it means that Spain is the first country in the WoS literature related to sustainability competences.
I have no comments about language, except on page 17, line 584 "... competences, It appears ...", a replacement of "It" with "it" is needed
Author Response
Thank you for your helpful comments and feedback, which made us think about how we can better structure the article and clarify our research questions and objectives. Our main aim is to promote discussion between the different academic fields that deal with the issue of defining sustainability competencies and green skills, and to support the design of sustainability education as a component of lifelong learning. This is to encourage future research to advance the state of the art, promote a clearer elaboration of these topics and foster more interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary endeavors, including, for instance, qualitative and case study research. In this way, it will be possible to better support the decisions of policy makers, an aspect we have tried to clarify in lines 142-146 (see the attachment).
As our study is a scoping review, the aim is exploratory, i.e. to introduce this topic and highlight the differences and similarities between the two topics based on annual scientific production, countries, associated collaboration networks and production over time by country, authors and their related co-citation networks etc. For this reason, we chose to formulate the research aim slightly differently to make it clearer and have rephrased the research questions as follows:
- What are the differences and similarities in annual scientific production, the most productive countries, associated collaboration networks and countries’ production over time, the research areas and associated trends, authors and their associated co-citation networks, and the thematic map of “green skills” and “sustainability competences” in the field of sustainability?
- What are the preliminary definitions of these sustainability skills/competences and what patterns connect these two similar topics?
We decided to remove the use of the terms “conceptual”, “social” and “intellectual dimensions” in the first question because in this article, we understand them according to the definition of Aria and Cuccurullo, who developed the software we used for data analysis. We know, however, that there are different definitions for these dimensions, and that they can only be partially analyzed by the quantitative method. Nevertheless, the quantitative approach is necessary to clearly highlight the differences and similarities between the two topics, an aspect we have tried to clarify in lines 206-216.
Finally, we have also provided further elucidation of our theoretical approach (see lines 59-65 and 86-101); however, since we propose a preliminary definition of the two topics and do not want to outline in detail a new theoretical framework, we have not substantially modified paragraph 4.5 on keywords and thematic maps. In the final paragraph, we emphasize the need for future research, which we found should consist of theoretical reviews, qualitative research and case studies to explore the differences between countries in more detail (see future research, from 745.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
Your paper seems to be an exciting, interesting and timely contribution related to the terminology "battles" in the sustainability discourse. In general, the paper makes a pretty significant contribution to the field and looks like well structured and relevant study in terms of a scoping review. Please, see the attached file with just a couple of comments and notes mainly on the technical and language issues. The paper needs just a minor revision before publication.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Please, make minor editing of the language.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, thank you for your useful and accurate feedback. As we focus on green skills and sustainability competencies as topics and not just as terms, we have clarified this in a revised version of the research questions. In the article, we understand sustainability as a field of study, though we know that it can be understood differently depending on discipline and approach used. Therefore, we have made this clearer in line 67 (see the attachment) and, as you suggest, integrated other models related to the study of sustainability and sustainable development in different disciplines (see lines 77-87).
In addition, we have added a theoretical part in the introduction, starting with the discussion on competences (see lines 59-65), and becoming more explicit in lines 86-101. This highlights more clearly the transdisciplinary perspective of our research. We have also made the criteria for the choice of authors explicit in the section on state of the art, although we realize that the "relevance" of authors is a controversial issue, as we emphasize in the section on data analysis, line 328 to line 347. In this paper, however, it was necessary to be able to compare whether the authors dealing with one topic were the same or differed from those dealing with the other topic.
We added a summary of the results because we found that before there was no homogeneity between sections 4.1 to 4.5. In addition, we have also taken into account your helpful feedback on the images, graphs and tables, while leaving the appendix before the references, as the journal itself suggests. Finally, we have requested a second revision of the English language article after the changes have been made.
We hope that in this way, and thanks to your comments, the article will be even clearer and more complete.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The article is focused on a significant topic, and the academic community needs to distinguish between green skills and sustainable competencies. The article is written well, and the results aim to fill a gap in the literature. A few minor corrections may improve it further.
1. It would have been better if data collection and analysis were separately written. I understand there is no standard format to write these, but writing in separate sections will help readers quickly understand the required information.
2. Further, in data collection, it is suggested to first report the database used to search the literature, followed by keywords used to search for the articles, exclusion and inclusion criteria, and then provide the exact amount of articles against each keyword.
Author Response
Thank you for your helpful feedback to make the article clearer. We have decided to split the paragraph on data collection and analysis to help readers quickly understand the required information, as you have suggested (see the attachment). We have also changed the structure of the paragraph on data collection and made the exclusion and inclusion criteria more explicit. In addition, we have added a summary table on the scoping review taken from PRISMA, as we think this will help readers.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Important and critical approach for sustainability competence. Paper is well-written and the structure is clear. Based on the analysis, conclusions are consistent. Figures are coherent but the colors are unclear and reader easily lost the main idea.
In the introduction is referred to taxonomy of sustainable development. There would but necessary to mention that recently the measurement for sustainability competences are development (e.g. GreenComp and Ratinen, I., & Linnanen, L. (2022). Exploring systems thinking competence of Finns in fostering sustainable transformation. World, 3(2), 287-298.; Ratinen, I., Linnanen, L., Claudelin, A., & Halonen, V. (2023). Toward sustainable development: Connecting systems thinking competency and carbon footprint knowledge. Sustainable Development, 31(3), 1593-1605.; Waltner, E. M., Rieß, W., & Mischo, C. (2019). Development and validation of an instrument for measuring student sustainability competencies. Sustainability, 11(6), 1717.; Redman, A., Wiek, A., & Barth, M. (2021). Current practice of assessing students’ sustainability competencies: A review of tools. Sustainability Science, 16, 117-135.; Redman, A., Wiek, A., & Barth, M. (2021). Current practice of assessing students’ sustainability competencies: A review of tools. Sustainability Science, 16, 117-135.
Rationalization of the study is justified but research questions would be better if the how format was used. E.g How conceptual, intellectual and social dimensions of “green skills” and “sustainability competences” differ in the field of sustainability? Scientometric analysis is well justified and broad sustainability is relevant to use in this study. The searching literature is some confusing and excluding of Scopus should justified. Also bring out why PRISMA method was not followed in the literature search. Instead the steps of analysis are well-illustrated.
Overall, the article highlights how green skills and sustainability competencies vary from region to region, etc. The results are particularly relevant when considering, for example, how to promote a sustainability transition based on strong sustainability. The article could have reflected more on how sustainability competences could be used to promote sustainability based on the research.
Author Response
Thank you for your meticulous feedback; we have integrated the references you suggested where we thought they were most appropriate and meaningful (see the introduction, the discussion and lines 175-176 in the attachment). Regarding the figures, we asked the journal editor for more information, so have modified them according to the publication guidelines, taking into account the problems you pointed out.
In addition, we have modified the research questions as follows to make them more precise and coherent with the aim of the research:
- What are the differences and similarities in annual scientific production, the most productive countries, associated collaboration networks and countries’ production over time, the research areas and associated trends, authors and their associated co-citation networks, and the thematic map of “green skills” and “sustainability competences” in the field of sustainability?
- What are the preliminary definitions of these sustainability skills/competences and what patterns connect these two similar topics?
Regarding the literature review, we felt that it was appropriate to explain the criteria for the choice of authors in the state of the art section. We also made clear why we did not use Scopus – we needed to compare different disciplines such as educational sciences, psychology and social sciences, but in Scopus, unlike WoS, these fields are included in a general social sciences section.
Concerning the use of PRISMA, we did not use it initially to avoid confusion as it is often used for systematic reviews; however, upon checking the literature closely on this point, we found that it is possible to use PRISMA for scoping reviews. Since we have followed the standard steps for writing scoping reviews, we have added a PRISMA flowchart. We believe that the PRISMA flowchart increases the clarity of the article. However, in doing so, we have slightly changed the title of the article and added our approach to avoid misunderstandings.
Finally, we have emphasized more how sustainability competencies and green skills can be used in promoting sustainability because we think it should be clear why our research is needed and what role these two competencies play in shaping future scenarios (see lines 721-739).
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a significantly more advanced version of the article than the original. Some of my initial worries remain, but the authors' comments and clarifications have alleviated most of them. As a result, I believe this version of the paper can be published.
