A Systematic Review of Architecture Stimulating Attention through the Six Senses of Humans

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The topic of the manuscript is relevant, and its content may be of interest to potential readers. The authors showed a wide knowledge of the researched issues. At the same time, I have certain doubts and comments regarding some aspects of the research carried out by the authors:

1. The Introduction contains almost ninety references to sources of information. I doubt the need to provide such a large number of references in the Introduction itself. The authors repeatedly provide links to three or more sources at the same time. Better to avoid it. It would be a good idea to devote at least one sentence or phrase to each source you refer to.

2. At the same time, in Section 3, which presents the results of bibliographic analysis, there are no references to sources.

3. Since Section 3 lacks references to literature sources, it is difficult to understand what results are presented in each of the selected articles. Accordingly, the authors' review is not critical enough. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the selected articles? What questions were left out of consideration by the authors of these articles? Are the data given in these publications about architecture stimulating attention through the six senses of humans sufficiently convincing and substantiated?

4. If you provide answers to the questions listed above, then you can clearly justify the directions of further research. At least, in my opinion, the description of these directions, which is given in chapter 4, needs to be expanded and substantiated in more detail. The authors of this manuscript mainly focused on the need for further improvement of the bibliographic analysis, but it is also worth considering the directions of further research on the subject of the selected articles.

5. As it follows from the material given in Section 2, the authors of this manuscript had several assistants, some of whom also acted as experts. It would be worthwhile to describe in more detail the procedure for selecting assistants and coordinating the results of the expert survey.

6. In general, the topic under consideration involves at least two areas of research, namely: perception of architecture through the six senses of humans and architecture stimulating attention through the six senses of humans. Do all the publications selected by the authors relate to the second line of research? Studying the material given in subsections 3.1-3.6 does not allow to get an unequivocal answer to this question.

7. If the articles selected by the authors refer specifically to architecture stimulating attention through the six senses of humans, then it is worth briefly describing how this issue was investigated in these articles. That is, it is worth describing the research methods used in the selected articles. Perhaps these methods need improvement and this can be considered as one of the directions of further research?

8. The material in lines 233-286 should be issued as a separate subsection of Section 3.

9. In Section 4, brief conclusions should be made regarding the material presented in lines 233-286.

10. The design of the manuscript needs some improvement. In particular, the design of References does not quite meet the requirements of this journal.

I think it is appropriate to acquaint the authors with these comments, suggestions and questions. I hope that such an acquaintance helps to improve the quality of the manuscript, which is expected to be published in such a high-ranking journal as "Sustainability".

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Grammar needs improvement. Some sentences could be worded better.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

First of all, we would like to thank you for your valuable suggestions. After carefully reviewing your guidance on improving our article, we have decided to revise and edit the manuscript as follows:

Comment 2: At the same time, in Section 3, which presents the results of bibliographic analysis, there are no references to sources.

1. The content in section 3, Results, has been updated to include all the references.

 

Comment 3: Since Section 3 lacks references to literature sources, it is difficult to understand what results are presented in each of the selected articles. Accordingly, the authors' review is not critical enough. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the selected articles? What questions were left out of consideration by the authors of these articles? Are the data given in these publications about architecture stimulating attention through the six senses of humans sufficiently convincing and substantiated?

2. In section 4, Conclusions & Discussion, all references have also been added.

 

Comment 4: If you provide answers to the questions listed above, then you can clearly justify the directions of further research. At least, in my opinion, the description of these directions, which is given in chapter 4, needs to be expanded and substantiated in more detail. The authors of this manuscript mainly focused on the need for further improvement of the bibliographic analysis, but it is also worth considering the directions of further research on the subject of the selected articles.

3. We have added the limitations of this research and recommendations for future studies in lines 427-433, 455-457, 478-481, and 482-488.

 

Comment 5: As it follows from the material given in Section 2, the authors of this manuscript had several assistants, some of whom also acted as experts. It would be worthwhile to describe in more detail the procedure for selecting assistants and coordinating the results of the expert survey.

4. We have specified the reasons for selecting the researcher's roles at each stage in lines 190-195, 200-201, 202-206, 227-229, and 235-238.

 

Comment 7: If the articles selected by the authors refer specifically to architecture stimulating attention through the six senses of humans, then it is worth briefly describing how this issue was investigated in these articles. That is, it is worth describing the research methods used in the selected articles. Perhaps these methods need improvement and this can be considered as one of the directions of further research?

5. We have refined the explanation for the exclusion of each article by specifying the reasons in lines 195-196, 198-199, 206-208, and 209-212.

 

Comment 8: The material in lines 233-286 should be issued as a separate subsection of Section 3.

6. We have successfully separated the results of the systematic review into section 3.1.

 

Comment 9: In Section 4, brief conclusions should be made regarding the material presented in lines 233-286.

7. We have summarized the conclusion of the systematic review in section 4.1.

 

Comment 10: The design of the manuscript needs some improvement. In particular, the design of References does not quite meet the requirements of this journal.

8. We hope the content improvements made in this instance will adequately respond to your recommendations.

 

In addition, there are a few other minor issues that we need to address further.

Comment 1: The Introduction contains almost ninety references to sources of information. I doubt the need to provide such a large number of references in the Introduction itself. The authors repeatedly provide links to three or more sources at the same time. Better to avoid it. It would be a good idea to devote at least one sentence or phrase to each source you refer to.

1. I understand that my introduction is quite lengthy and contains numerous references. However, we have decided to combine the introduction with the literature review in the structure of this article, as we believe it is suitable for leading into the research questions at the end.

Comment 6: In general, the topic under consideration involves at least two areas of research, namely: perception of architecture through the six senses of humans and architecture stimulating attention through the six senses of humans. Do all the publications selected by the authors relate to the second line of research? Studying the material given in subsections 3.1-3.6 does not allow to get an unequivocal answer to this question.

2. The results of this study were derived from decoding the architecture promoting attention from previous research. The relationship with all six senses was considered by us. The point that no proof was conducted in this review serves as a limitation, which we have already specified.

 

Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

While the topic of the systematic review is interesting, combining Architecture and Attention via The Six Senses of Humans, the research components and methodologies lack new conceptualizations.

The reviewer can see limited technical contributions, only very basic and established approaches are used for the synthesis of data from previous research studies. Overall, the current submission is more like a preliminary lab report, with a significant gap towards a journal article. 

The limitations of the study are not conveyed and discussed.  

For example, why select 32 articles?  Not clear. All the methodologies mentioned must be justified. The authors only described what/how they did, but without explaining why and the impact/limitations linking the conclusions.

The majority of the results are qualitative and subjective statements without quantitative evidence to support them.  

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Moderate editing is required. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

First of all, we would like to thank you for your valuable suggestions. After carefully reviewing your guidance on improving our article, we have decided to revise and edit the manuscript as follows:

 

Comment 1: The reviewer can see limited technical contributions, only very basic and established approaches are used for the synthesis of data from previous research studies. Overall, the current submission is more like a preliminary lab report, with a significant gap towards a journal article. 

And: The majority of the results are qualitative and subjective statements without quantitative evidence to support them.  

 

Response 1: The results of this study were derived from decoding the architecture promoting attention from previous research. The relationship with all six senses was considered by us. We have added the rationale in lines 240-244. The point that no proof was conducted in this review serves as a limitation, which we have already specified.

Comment 2: The limitations of the study are not conveyed and discussed.  

Response 2: We have added the limitations of this research and recommendations for future studies in lines 427-433, 455-457, 478-481, and 482-488.

Comment 3: For example, why select 32 articles?  Not clear. All the methodologies mentioned must be justified. The authors only described what/how they did, but without explaining why and the impact/limitations linking the conclusions.

Response 3: We have refined the explanation for the inclusion and exclusion of each article by specifying the reasons in lines 195-196, 198-199, 206-208, and 209-212. We have specified the reasons for selecting the researcher's roles at each stage in lines 190-195, 200-201, 202-206, 227-229, and 235-238.

We hope the content improvements made in this instance will adequately respond to your recommendations.

 

Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Well written article with proper scientific structure. It investigated, how architecture influence human sensing. Study adhered to the PRISMA guidelines and was quite interesting. From my point of view, will contribute to the literature. Suitable for publication when authors correct following issues:

 

Lines 131 and 132 – lack of appropriate citation. Please ensure proper references. 

Figures 3 and 4 should have form of vertical bar chart. In the present form, columns are a bit congested and difficult to read. Please correct. 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

 

First of all, we would like to thank you for your valuable suggestions. After carefully reviewing your guidance on improving our article, we have decided to revise and edit the manuscript as follows:

 

Comment 1: Lines 131 and 132 – lack of appropriate citation. Please ensure proper references.

Response 1: We have successfully revised all references throughout the volume.

Comment 2: Figures 3 and 4 should have form of vertical bar chart. In the present form, columns are a bit congested and difficult to read. Please correct. 
Response 2: We have also corrected the alphabetical arrangement in each figure accordingly.

We hope the content improvements made in this instance will adequately respond to your recommendations.

 

Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In my opinion, the text of the manuscript has improved. The authors took into account most of my comments.  At the same time, the text of the manuscript still has certain shortcomings (mostly of a technical nature) and some debatable points, namely:

1. According to the title of this manuscript, the authors should conduct a systematic review. However, in sections 3 and 4, the authors distinguish two areas of research (according to the names of the respective subsections): systematic review and data analysis. Therefore, one gets the impression that the content of the manuscript is wider than its name. Perhaps it is worth adjusting the titles of subsections or the name of the manuscript?

2. In subsection 3.2, phrases like "in the section on architecture stimulating" are often used. But it is worth first describing how these sections were formed. At least I cannot find this description in the text of the manuscript.

3. Perhaps the authors should not have left the crossed out text fragments in the new version of the manuscript. This complicates the manuscript review process a bit. In particular, this applies to tables. For example, it is not clear to me what data the first row of the table on page 16 contains.

4. In general, I ask the authors to pay attention to the need to improve the design of the tables. In particular, table names must be placed before tables. No need to place tables inside paragraphs. Column names should also be given in each table.

5. It seems to me that the design of References needs to be improved according to the requirements of this journal. For example, journal titles should be italicized.

6. Grammar can still be improved. Some sentences and phrases could be worded better. For example, in the text of the Abstract, the following sentences and phrases can be improved: " Attention is a pivotal pathway to healing ourselves and the world, as it is a sensory that improves mental health and sustainable behavior " (lines 14-15, it might be better to write something like this : "One of the important means of improving mental health is to increase attention"); "a wide research gap" (line 16, maybe it's better to write "a wide gap in the research of this potential"); “investigate the architecture” (line 17, perhaps it is better to write “perform a systematic review of scientific works devoted to architecture…”). Could it be better to use the phrase "review of research devoted to architecture" instead of the phrase "review of architecture" (after all, the authors review scientific articles)? I leave this question to the discretion of the authors. However, I recommend that authors perform a final grammar check throughout the manuscript.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Grammar can still be improved. Some sentences and phrases could be worded better. I recommend that authors perform a final grammar check throughout the manuscript.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

 

First and foremost, we are grateful for your valuable advice. Based on your feedback, we have revised our manuscript as outlined in the following list.

 

1. We have revised the subheadings in Section 3 to better convey to the readers that all results stem from a systematic literature review. Therefore, we did not change the article title to align with the requirements of the PRISMA guidelines.
2. The architectural features that capture attention in the results section stem from the data analysis in section 2.3. To enhance clarity for readers, we have revised section 2.3 and referred to it again before discussing the results in section 3.3.
3. My sincere apologies. We closed the editing mode before submitting it this time.
4. We have completed the revisions to all tables.
5. We have successfully corrected the reference section.
6. We have thoroughly checked the grammar of English and the clarity of each sentence throughout the entire volume.

 

We hope that these revisions will make our article suitable for publication in the journal Sustainability. We look forward to hearing good news from you soon.

 

With highest regards.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Line 159-160 needs attention - RQ: Architectural design that stimulates attention through all six senses of human exhibits what characteristics?  - why putting this here? What is RQ? 

Similar problems apply to other parts of the manuscript, which look more like a perspective report, not a proper journal article.

 

The added Table 2 is informative and important but extremely long - spanning a few pages, making it difficult for readers to follow without losing the flow of the article. 

Furthermore, is this table more oriented as a results or methodology explanation? The authors need to consider carefully where to put it. Another suggestion is to put it in the appendix. 

The scientific rigour and value are still significantly lacking from the current submission. The authors must clarify and address this concern with more quantitative evidence, instead of only qualitative descriptions.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Moderate editing is required. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

 

First and foremost, we are grateful for your valuable advice. Based on your feedback, we have revised our manuscript as outlined in the following list.

 

1. We have successfully revised the positioning of the research questions.
2. We have revised the subheadings in Section 3 to better convey to the readers that all results stem from a systematic literature review. Table 2 remains inserted in its original position within the content, but it has been re-categorized to minimize disruption to readability.
3. Finally, we wholeheartedly agree to incorporate quantitative discussion methods into our approach. We have successfully increased the number and percentage of articles in each section. We have focused on providing detailed descriptions alongside summaries indicating the highest findings, second findings, or near absence of findings to ensure readers are informed both quantitatively and qualitatively.

 

We hope that these revisions will make our article suitable for publication in the journal Sustainability. We look forward to hearing good news from you soon.

 

With highest regards.

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have revised substantially. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Many grammatical problems were observed.