Date Fruit Production and Consumption: A Perspective on Global Trends and Drivers from a Multidimensional Footprint Assessment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Abstract

Please revise your abstract, unclear, too much explain about problem, but lack to explain your methodology

 

Introduction:

Line 77, ref issue

Paragraph structure, less sentences but you make it as paragraph. please combine.

idea of each paragraph is unclear, please rechech all paragraph

 

Method:

if you use software to calculate and make graph, so for what you write the formula in the paper?

Please make a flow diagram of your methodology of this research paper.

 

Result:

The figure you use is too complex, if you just want to show the number of water consumption can you make it simple or easy to understand?

Dont make a complex paragraph, too long and difficult to get the idea.

Discussion:

Need to argue, not only to make descriptive explanation from your result, compare with existing study is a must in the discussion. please improve.

Dont make a complex paragraph, too long and difficult to get the idea. 

Conclusion:

Need to clearly state your finding, contribution to practice and knowledge is still blur. please improve

 

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Abstract

• Please revise your abstract, unclear, too much explain about problem, but lack to explain your methodology

Thanks for pointing out the lack of clarity in the abstract. We re-wrote the whole abstract in order to ensure clarity and provide information on the methodology adopted (lines 11-23)

Introduction:

• Line 77, ref issue

Thanks for indicating the issue with such reference. We have fixed the reference (line 76).

• Paragraph structure, less sentences but you make it as paragraph. please combine idea of each paragraph is unclear, please recheck all paragraph

Following the helpful reviewer’s suggestion, we have thoroughly revised the subdivision of the introduction in paragraphs significantly improving the quality of the manuscript (see introduction).

Method:

• if you use software to calculate and make graph, so for what you write the formula in the paper?

We understand the concern expressed by the reviewer. However, no specific software was used for the calculation. Accordingly, the formulas were made explicit in order to allow the maximum possible reproducibility of the study to for the broadest pool of readers.

• Please make a flow diagram of your methodology of this research paper.

Following the helpful reviewer’s suggestion we added a figure to maximum possible reproducibility of the study to for the broadest pool of readers (see figure 1).

Result:

• The figure you use is too complex, if you just want to show the number of water consumption can you make it simple or easy to understand?

Following the helpful reviewer’s suggestion we simplified the representation of the results in figure 4 and 5. Moreover, the previous figures have been included into the supplementary material as a reference for a more comprehensive (though more complex) representation (fig. S3, S4).

• Dont make a complex paragraph, too long and difficult to get the idea.

Thanks for highlighting the complexity of the results section. We have thoroughly revised the text to ensure an increased clarity of the results (see results).

Discussion:

• Need to argue, not only to make descriptive explanation from your result, compare with existing study is a must in the discussion. please improve.

Following the helpful reviewer’s suggestion we improved the significance of the discussion including a comparison with the literature (lines 461-468).

• Don't make a complex paragraph, too long and difficult to get the idea. 

The discussion section has been carefully revised to improve the intelligibility of the text (see discussion).

Conclusion:

• Need to clearly state your finding, contribution to practice and knowledge is still blur. please improve

We agree with the reviewer that the conclusions section required to be more significant. We re-wrote the whole conclusions section in order to clearly state our findings (see conclusions).

Reviewer 2 Report

Title: “Date fruit production and consumption: a perspective on global 2 trends and drivers from a multidimensional footprint assess- 3 ment” I have read this Paper thoroughly and have some observations:

 

1.      Conclusion presentation is very poor. Please add future research direction in conclusion section with elaboration.

2.      Please highlight main contribution of the research in Abstract section.  

3.      Please add discussion section.

4.      Comparative analysis presentation in the revised paper.

5.      Paper has some grammatical errors please re-check all grammatical mistake in the revised version.

6.      What is the physical significant of Fig. 1.

7.      Introduction section has much non related citation. Please add some related citation.

 

Pricing strategy of competing retailers in a two layer supply chain under nonlinear stochastic demand, International Journal of Mathematics in Operational Research 23 (4), 528-544

Author Response

Title: “Date fruit production and consumption: a perspective on global 2 trends and drivers from a multidimensional footprint assess- 3 ment” I have read this Paper thoroughly and have some observations:

 

1. Conclusion presentation is very poor. Please add future research direction in conclusion section with elaboration.

We agree with the reviewer that the conclusions needed careful revision. We rewrote the whole conclusions section in order to improve its quality (see conclusions).

2. Please highlight main contribution of the research in Abstract section.

Thanks for pointing this out. We re-wrote the whole abstract in order to ensure that it highlights the main contribution of the research (lines 11-23)

3. Please add discussion section.

Please, notice that section 4 is the discussion section (see lines 374-468).

4. Comparative analysis presentation in the revised paper.

We included a comparative analysis in the discussion, considering the existing literature (lines 461-468).

5. Paper has some grammatical errors please re-check all grammatical mistake in the revised version.

Following the reviewer’s suggestion, the manuscript has been carefully revised to fix the grammatical errors.

6. What is the physical significant of Fig. 1.

We improved the quality of figure 1 (now figure 2) to ensure that the physical significance is clear. We ensured the same for figure 2 (now figure 3).

7. Introduction section has much non related citation. Please add some related citation.

Pricing strategy of competing retailers in a two-layer supply chain under nonlinear stochastic demand, International Journal of Mathematics in Operational Research 23 (4), 528-544

The choice of references is the result of careful bibliographic research of contributions from experts in the field. We double-checked the references provided in the introduction section and we believe that no non-related work was cited. Besides, after carefully checking the article suggested by the reviewer we decided to not include it among the cited work as it is not related to our analysis.

Reviewer 3 Report

1.       The abstract section is only a description of the phenomenon and lacks research results, this section should be a condensed summary of the article.

2.       Why is the water footprint formula not used directly for calculation? Please give an explanation.

3.       The analysis of the results is rather superficial and does not go deeper, and does not reflect the "global trends" mentioned in the title.

4.       The information conveyed in Figure 3 and Figure 4 is not intuitive and the authors are advised to change the presentation.

5.       The conclusion does not correspond to the results of the previous study, and the conclusion is not brief enough. It seems to exist separately from the article.

6.       In line 20, the author mentions "capturing the effect of various factors" but the article does not reflect this.

7.       In line 25, "production and consumption" do not seem to be suitable as keyword.

8.       In line 88, the author also mentions "drivers", but this is not reflected in the article.

9.       Lines 117 and 118 are repetitive with lines 126 and 127.

10.    Line 128, "the adopted method allowed to distinguish between green and blue water..." should be described in detail here how the method distinguishes blue and green water footprints, only from the formula (1)(2) does not seem to achieve this operation.

11.    Line 135, "maintain the country-specific approach" section please elaborate.

12.    Line 187, "we applied data treatment approach..." should describe the specific data treatment approach.

13.    In line 202, "when the growth restarted, mainly driven by Iraq", the following reasons could be properly analyzed here

14.    Line 231, "from 3% of the global footprint in 2000 to 9%..." should explain how the 3% and 9% were obtained.

15.    Lines 238 and 240, "blue water footprint", but the figure referenced is fig.2b (green water).

16.    Line 315, the table format is different from the traditional format, suggest the author to check.

17.    Line 316, the analysis of the table should be enriched.

18.    In line 321, 322, 334, etc., "~" appears in many places, please check.

19.    There are problems with the format of some references, such as lines 452 and 534, please ask the authors to check carefully.

Author Response

1. The abstract section is only a description of the phenomenon and lacks research results, this section should be a condensed summary of the article.

We agree with the reviewer’s suggestion. Accordingly, we rewrote the whole abstract in order to ensure that the abstract is now a concise summary of the article (lines 11-23).

2. Why is the water footprint formula not used directly for calculation? Please give an explanation.

We agree with the reviewer that this needs an explanation. Accordingly, we provided a justification supporting our methodological choice (lines 151-158)

3. The analysis of the results is rather superficial and does not go deeper, and does not reflect the "global trends" mentioned in the title.

Due to the large amount of information provided in our paper, we opted for a net separation between a pure description of the results obtained and the analysis/discussion of such results. The former is concentrated in a concise way in the results section, while the latter is presented in the discussion section. However, following the reviewer’s suggestion, we included some brief analysis of the results within the results section, partly anticipating the more in-depth discussion presented in the discussion section (lines 249-251, 281-284, 306-314, 367-373).

4. The information conveyed in Figure 3 and Figure 4 is not intuitive and the authors are advised to change the presentation.

We agree with the reviewer that those figures needed to be simplified. We simplified the representation of the results in Figures 4 and 5. Moreover, the previous figures have been included in the supplementary material as a reference for a more comprehensive (though more complex) representation (fig. S3, S4).

5. The conclusion does not correspond to the results of the previous study, and the conclusion is not brief enough. It seems to exist separately from the article.

We agree with the reviewer that the conclusions section required a thorough revision. We re-wrote the whole conclusions section in order to briefly summarize the findings (see conclusions).

6. In line 20, the author mentions "capturing the effect of various factors" but the article does not reflect this.

We agree with the reviewer’s suggestion. Accordingly, we rewrote the whole abstract in order to ensure that the abstract is now a concise summary of the article (lines 11-23).

7. In line 25, "production and consumption" do not seem to be suitable as keyword.

As suggested by the reviewer, we revised the keyword substituting it with a more suitable one (see keywords).

8. In line 88, the author also mentions "drivers", but this is not reflected in the article.

We believe that our analysis identifies and studies multiple drivers characterizing the trends in environmental footprints from both the producer and the consumer perspective. We have revised the discussion in order to ensure that the identified drivers are properly highlighted and discussed in the relative section and summarized in the conclusions (see discussion).

9. Lines 117 and 118 are repetitive with lines 126 and 127.

We acknowledge that there is a repetition. However, we believe that for the sake of clarity, it would be better to make explicit each symbol used in each formula.

10. Line 128, "the adopted method allowed to distinguish between green and blue water..." should be described in detail here how the method distinguishes blue and green water footprints, only from the formula (1)(2) does not seem to achieve this operation.

We acknowledge that this requires clarification. Accordingly, we explained how it is possible to derive the data for both green and blue water (lines 126, 136-139).

11. Line 135, "maintain the country-specific approach" section please elaborate.

We agree with the reviewer that this requires further explanation. Accordingly, we explained how we keep the country-specificity by excluding the greywater analysis (lines 144-146).

12. Line 187, "we applied data treatment approach..." should describe the specific data treatment approach.

We agree with the reviewer that the data treatment should be described. Accordingly, we described the rationale underpinning the procedure adopted and referred to the methodological paper that originally introduced the method (lines 206-212).

13. In line 202, "when the growth restarted, mainly driven by Iraq", the following reasons could be properly analyzed here

We provided a brief explanation in the results section (lines 228-231) together with a more detailed discussion in the discussion section (lines 397-413).

14. Line 231, "from 3% of the global footprint in 2000 to 9%..." should explain how the 3% and 9% were obtained.

As suggested by the reviewer, we made explicit the figures on which we based the percentage values to clarify (lines 264-265).

15. Lines 238 and 240, "blue water footprint", but the figure referenced is fig.2b (green water).

We thank the reviewer for pointing out the incorrect reference. We ensured that the reference is now correct (line 272).

16. Line 315, the table format is different from the traditional format, suggest the author to check.

We revised the table format to ensure a better presentation of the results (see table 1).

17. Line 316, the analysis of the table should be enriched.

We expanded the results section referring to the table (lines 412-418).

18. In line 321, 322, 334, etc., "~" appears in many places, please check.

We carefully revised the whole manuscript in order to ensure that the symbol does not appear no more.

19. There are problems with the format of some references, such as lines 452 and 534, please ask the authors to check carefully.

We thank the reviewer for carefully check the bibliography. We carefully revised the references section and fixed the encountered typos and format mistakes.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Ok now is much better, the graph is better