A Comprehensive Review on Food Waste Reduction Based on IoT and Big Data Technologies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

A marked improvement on your earlier draft BUT there is still significant room for improvement. Please - have the manuscript read by a competent English language editor - reviewing it among yourselves is not appropriate where it appears that english is a second language for all or most of you. There are too many errors re tense, plural and singular, spelling and grammar and far too many instances where you can collapse three or four sentences into one.... regrettably, your writing style - for a review article - is weak

I have published in Sustainability [and other MDPI publications]. Where you say In [13] - it is much better to say - In Chalak et al [13] - and indeed that is how I have referenced others work in my papers...

You also use ... as described in [14] far too often. By improving your writing style you dont need to say this - and you can simply conclude the sentence with the reference

There are also a number of instances where sentences are incomplete

A couple of other issues... for the figures that you use - where these are not your own - do you have permission to use them???? Referencing them alone is not enough

At the end of the introduction when you describe the structure of the paper - no need to go backwards - describe whats about to come

What is agriculture 4 - it appears a couple of times but its not adequately described

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

The manuscript sustainability-2065156, "A Comprehensive Review on Food Waste Reduction Based on IoT and Big Data Technologies", was aimed at adding more layers to the literature dedicated to the relation between IoT, big data technologies and food waste reduction (FWR) with a review of the benefits of the IoT, big-data-system-based applications in the FWR direction.

 

I propose the authors improve their manuscript by considering the following suggestions:

(1) Please revise the use of acronym throughout the manuscript. For example, "IoT" was used in line 14, but later, in line 22, it was not used ("Internet of Things" was used instead). Please be consistent.

(2) The relation between FWR, IoT and big data technologies is incorrectly highlighted in line 59-60. Previous statements from lines 44-58 do not support the fact that "this literature supports the motivation for this study on food waste reduction based on IoT and big data technologies". Reading this part of the introduction feels rushed and more attention should be paid to the 'flow' of the manuscript.

(3) The authors claimed in the abstract that "there has been an unprecedented increase in food waste, which has had a negative impact on economic growth in many countries" (line 17), but this was never discussed in the body of the paper.

(4) From a methodological perspective, it is not clear how the article review selection process was carried out. More detailed explanations are required in this regard.

(5) Table 3 needs to be transformed from picture to an actual editable table.

(6) Little reflexivity was shown throughout the manuscript regarding the benefits of IoT and big data technologies on FWR. For example, the authors could consider that there is also a body of literature arguing that mobile based application can, in some cases, negatively contribute to the food waste phenomena. Few references to consider in this regard:

(a) Sharma, R., Dhir, A., Talwar, S., Kaur, P. (2021), "Over-ordering and food waste: The use of food delivery apps during a pandemic", International Journal of Hospitality Management, Vol. 96, p.102977. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2021.102977.

(b) Petrariu, R., Sacala, M.-D., Pistalu, M, Dinu, M., Deaconu, M.E., Constantin, M. (2022), “A Comprehensive Food Consumption and Waste Analysis Based on eCommerce Behaviour in the Case of the AFER Community”, Transformations in Business & Economics, Vol.21, No 3(57), http://www.transformations.knf.vu.lt/57.

(c) Talwar, S., Kaur, P., Ahmed, U., Bilgihan, A., & Dhir, A. (2022). "The dark side of convenience: how to reduce food waste induced by food delivery apps". British Food Journal, https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-02-2021-0204.

Author Response

Please see the attachment,

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Lack of novelty and content regarding the Food Waste Reduction Based on 2 IoT and Big Data Technologies. Author would have discussed more survey information with the result achievements in the survey section. Also author might be include some visualization results in the result section. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Significantly improved....

From my perspective, minor changes required as outlined:

L46  author [13]

L52  author [16]

L86/87  author

L127  [TA2]????

L134  authors [23][24]

relocate Table 1 - move it as close as you can to where you first talk about

Similarly, relocate Figure 1

L182  author

L183  author

L191  author

L192  delete first sentence - you introduce Figure 2 in the next paragraph

relocate Figure 2

relocate Figure 3

L206  Figure 3 [new paragraph]

L207  Authors [43] reviews...

L229  author

relocate Figure 4

L280  delete Also,

L291  authors

L316  authors

L342-344 and 352-354 both talk about Figure 4. Delete one of them.

L378  delete As mentioned in Figure 1 and. With respect to....

relocate Table 5

L471 [reference number not year]

L477-478  ????

L479-481  ????

L494  delete existed which

L515  delete of

L527  author

L533  delete the

Author Response

Many thanks for the comments. "Please see the attachment". 

Thank you

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

The authors have improved the quality of the manuscript according to the suggestions. However, I suggest moving Table 1 from the body of the paper to the Appendix section. The purpose of the second column from Table 3 is unclear.

Author Response

Many thanks for the comments. "Please see the attachment."

Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Author can include some visualization results(Graphs) in the result section.

Author Response

Many thanks for the comments. "Please see the attachment."

Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

the paper is well structured and scientifically written. The topic is interesting

There a lot of typos all over the text which must be corrected, please revise, with a mother tongue English person if necessary.

The references in different cases are not complete, as this is a review it is important to give the right bibliographic references.

In Section 5 (Application of ML algorithms in reducing food wastage) the application of ML to food wastage is explained only in the table (4), while it should be explained also in the text as this is the objective of this review.

This is found in the overall paper: the technologies are well described in general while the advantages and criticalities in applications for FWR are less explained/reported in chapter 6.

As the author cite different papers where the use of IoT and Big data in the waste management I don’t realize why they didn’t critically analyze in which aspects of waste management these are useful/applicable (type of waste, shelf life assessment, environment, type of industries/agricultural context, etc.).

The discussion on FWR is mainly afforded in the part on the REAMIT project which is still on-going.

I recommend to reduce the explanation of the technologies which is sometimes quite long-explained and to explain more deeply the part on the advantages of using IoT and big data in FWR as described in the paper title (e.g. in chapter 8).

Fig. 1 could be omitted in my opinion as this type of data framework system is widely known

 

Best regards

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Author presented the article on "A Comprehensive Review on Food Waste Reduction Based on IoT and Big Data Technologies". Here we can find major flaws in the manuscript. Lack of abstract content, i can not find the strong survey discussion in the introduction section, diagrams are poorly used , its look like copy and paste. Moreover i can not find any innovative in the manuscript as well as author did not discussed any existing outcome. Author need to work more and need to modify the manuscript. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

A complete re-write of this paper is required. Structurally, its weak and grammatically its weak with far too many typographic errors.

Lets start with the basic premise - urbanisation and changes in food consumption is resulting in more food waste. The impacts of this are considerable in terms of wasted resources, environmental pollution, ghg emissions > need to reduce food waste. New technologies like IoT offer a way of potentially reducing food waste in the value chain > motivation for the paper. A brief review of IoT should then follow

Now comes the missing bit.... reviews are not uncommon - but there is an established methodology for undertaking them. Which search engines did you use? Which key words/phrases? How many papers did you find? How many papers were then dropped/deleted because they were irrelevant or failed to adequately the topic

How then are we going to do this review? You state that you have four major headings: sensing - measurement - processing - data transmission. So now proceed - but in so doing - look at how the various technologies have been used in reducing food waste. This is the critical bit - Im NOT interested in a review of the different technologies - its HOW these technologies have been used to reduce food waste. In its current form you fail to adress what you set out to achieve

In revising your paper, please ensure that you have it proof read by a competent English language editor [I appreciate that English is probably a second language for you - but manuscripts of this quality are not acceptable]

Ensure that when citing references they meet MDPI guidelines

When citing an author in the text, rather than simply giving a number, state the authors name. Heres an example: rather than saying In [12] ...... write it as In Yildirim et al [12]....

Line numbers are required. Within the first page I wanted to make a large number of corrections but couldnt do so as line numbers are missing from the draft

A clear structure will avoid the excessive repetition that emerges throughout the paper in its current form and provide your readers - like myself - with a clear pathway

Avoid unnecessary words like Recently or Nowadays 

Where and when you do use abbreviations, make sure that your readers know what they are. Take ML as an example or even IoT. Spell it full the first time you use it.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf