Partnership Structure and Partner Outcomes: A Comparative Study of Large Community Sustainability Cross-Sector Partnerships in Montreal, Barcelona and Gwangju
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to rate the article.
I suggest that the abstract be redone in the standard structure, objectives, method, results and conclusion, highlighting the uniqueness of the findings.
In the introduction, I suggest reviewing the research problem or its general objective and presenting the relevance of the topic to science.
The theoretical framework is well written, the method is very detailed and could be improved, but I refer my considerations to the results, in which I have some questions that refer to the method:
Data analysis: In Table 3, Cronbach's alpha is presented and calculated from the indices, but my question remains: for example, human capital (4 units) what would these 4 units be? Soon these indices and units should be in the method and especially how these indices were created and what their limits (scale).
As for ANOVA, I have a question here: How are the authors going to use ANOVA if the assumptions (data normality) were not calculated and if there is a significant difference, what test for minimal differences will be used? Another detail that should be in the method is the construction of the indices, they will vary from X to Y. to understand the formation of the average.
As for Table 4, I suggest that in addition to the mean, the standard deviation is expressed, as well as the normality test, if it is not normalized, as a statistician I think that there will be a great chance that these data are not normal, I suggest that the test be used Kruskal-Wallis and if there is a significant difference, a test for least significant differences is used (Dunn's test), for example in this table on community capital whose p-value was significant, the authors should have used a tukey test to see who differs from who.
The rest of the content of the article is well prepared, but these details were analyzed and that includes the statistics of the findings and that refers to the method.
Congratulations to the authors.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments, which we have addressed to the best of our knowledge. Please find below and attached our response to your comments and changes to our manuscript.
Comment: I suggest that the abstract be redone in the standard structure, objectives, method, results and conclusion, highlighting the uniqueness of the findings.
Response: Thank you for this observation but we have followed the instructions provided by the journal, so we leave this to the editor.
Comment: In the introduction, I suggest reviewing the research problem or its general objective and presenting the relevance of the topic to science.
Response: We have emphasised the relevance of this research in the abstract as well as in the introduction, as seen in the new manuscript.
Comments: The theoretical framework is well written, the method is very detailed and could be improved, but I refer my considerations to the results, in which I have some questions that refer to the method.
Data analysis: In Table 3, Cronbach's alpha is presented and calculated from the indices, but my question remains: for example, human capital (4 units) what would these 4 units be? Soon these indices and units should be in the method and especially how these indices were created and what their limits (scale).
Response: Thank you very much for helping us improve this section. The items for each index have been included in a revised Table 3 and the scale has been explained in section 3.3.2.
As for ANOVA, I have a question here: How are the authors going to use ANOVA if the assumptions (data normality) were not calculated and if there is a significant difference, what test for minimal differences will be used? Another detail that should be in the method is the construction of the indices, they will vary from X to Y. to understand the formation of the average.
As for Table 4, I suggest that in addition to the mean, the standard deviation is expressed, as well as the normality test, if it is not normalized, as a statistician I think that there will be a great chance that these data are not normal, I suggest that the test be used Kruskal-Wallis and if there is a significant difference, a test for least significant differences is used (Dunn's test), for example in this table on community capital whose p-value was significant, the authors should have used a tukey test to see who differs from who.
Response: Standard deviation has been included in a revised Table 4. The data did not have a normal distribution, so analyses have been redone. The ANOVA tests were replaced by Kruskal-Wallis tests as suggested and for the significant values (community and physical capital) Dunn's tests were performed. Thanks very much for these suggestions.
Comment: The rest of the content of the article is well prepared, but these details were analyzed and that includes the statistics of the findings and that refers to the method.
Congratulations to the authors.
Response: Thank you very much for your revision.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript “Partnership structure and partner outcomes: A comparative study of large community sustainability cross-sector partner- ships in Montreal, Barcelona and Gwangju” presents a topic of interest to this Journal. The manuscript is well-structured. The research gap is clear, and the objective has been well outlined. The combination of qualitative and quantitative approach methods is suitable for the proposed study. The presentation of the results has been detailed, which facilitated the understanding of the analyses.
Despite the interesting findings described in the paper, this study presents a weakness concerning the temporal aspect. The references used are outdated. Just over 10% of the fifty-seven references were published in the last five years. Furthermore, over 60% of the references (thirty-five articles) were published over ten years ago. This indicates a theoretical foundation that is distant from the current time. I recommend including recent citations on the topic to demonstrate the relevance of the subject matter. Additionally, the field research also demonstrates a time lag. Data collection took place between 2017 and 2019. The presented results might have been influenced by the societal changes caused by Covid-19. I recommend considering an analysis of both the 2019 scenarios and the current situation.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your revision and the suggested changes, which we believe have significantly improved the manuscript.
Please find below and highlighted in the document our responses to your comments and those of the second reviewer.
Comment: The manuscript “Partnership structure and partner outcomes: A comparative study of large community sustainability cross-sector partner- ships in Montreal, Barcelona and Gwangju” presents a topic of interest to this Journal. The manuscript is well-structured. The research gap is clear, and the objective has been well outlined. The combination of qualitative and quantitative approach methods is suitable for the proposed study. The presentation of the results has been detailed, which facilitated the understanding of the analyses.
Response: Thank you very much for your constructive feedback.
Comment: Despite the interesting findings described in the paper, this study presents a weakness concerning the temporal aspect. The references used are outdated. Just over 10% of the fifty-seven references were published in the last five years. Furthermore, over 60% of the references (thirty-five articles) were published over ten years ago. This indicates a theoretical foundation that is distant from the current time. I recommend including recent citations on the topic to demonstrate the relevance of the subject matter.
Response: Thank you for encouraging us to improve our references. We have reviewed them all and have increased the number of references from nine to thirty-three (+226%) within the last five years, and reduced those from before 2018 by 43%, from 47 to 30 references. We believe that this improvement reflects a current theoretical foundation.
Comment: Additionally, the field research also demonstrates a time lag. Data collection took place between 2017 and 2019. The presented results might have been influenced by the societal changes caused by Covid-19. I recommend considering an analysis of both the 2019 scenarios and the current situation.
Response: The data were actually collected between 2016 and 2018, not during the pandemic.
Thank you very much for your revision and the provided suggestions.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for re-uploading the article. Analyzing the details and the care that the researchers took in re-editing the text. my adjustment requests.
For my part, adjustments were made.
Congratulations to the authors.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors of the manuscript have addressed the points highlighted in the review report, demonstrating their commitment to improving the quality of their work. I wish success in the publication process.
