Usage Experience and Capabilities of the VEGA-Science System
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper described a web system called Vega-Science developed for large distributed satellite data processing and analysis. The authors gave detailed background information regarding the changes and presented the details of the system from purpose, design, capabilities, technologies in the backend, to sample usage and applications. I enjoyed reading the paper and only have one comment that the authors might want to address in the revisions:
- there are a few detailed flow charts of certain scenario and algorithms, are these algorithms integrated into the system as a pre-defined ones? are they configurable? or the users have to develop their own algorithms to use the tool? It would be better to discuss this a little bit more.
Besides this, there are some minor language issues need to be addressed, for example, line 132-133, it's better to "...tool for the users, through which they can access...."
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
thank you very much for your review and suggestions.
Speaking of possible customisation of tools and algorithms within the system - I've added a piece ot text in the 3.2 section to make the matter more clear:
"Here, the general purpose tools can act as configurable, tunable building blocks for a desired processing sequence. If the actual toolset is sufficient for that, new processing algorithms can be implemented and used directly by users. In some cases, nevertheless, the system lacks something necessary for processing implementation, e.g. results databases of specific structure or some processing blocks, and then the users have to cooperate with the system developers to add that features."
Speaking about language issues and errors - I've tried to do my best to check and correct them.
Thank you!
Reviewer 2 Report
Paper describes purpose, capabilities and technical aspects of Vega-Science system, which could increase the uptake of RS in Russia. Authors provide research based examples of application of this system in different fields. Such paper might be interesting and useful for readers of this special issue.
General concept comments
The paper is well written and easy to read. The main concern I have is that paper by its content is closer to the review report than a research paper thus; I would recommend considering the change to recommended structure for Remote Sensing review papers. It would fit paper better. Current Materials and Methods sections provide the description of Vega-Science system purpose and capabilities, while the Results section provides information on system architecture, and review of research projects. The review part is the largest.
Specific comments
Line 52-55 and elsewhere. I would recommend using the appropriate stile of citation to provide references to webpages instead of putting long url.
Line 58 and in other occurrences. Please provide the full names whan you use the acronym for the first time.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
thank you very much for your responce and review.
I understand your suggestion to change the paper type to a Review, but I have some concerns about that. Typically the review should highlight some research area and a set of results in it, not a single item, although a complex one, like our paper does. The initial intention was to submit the paper as a Technical note but we obviously failed to fit it into 18 pages, so Ms. Chen has recommended us to make the paper type an Article. It seems to me that the paper won't fit perfectly into any type of publication, unfortunately, so I would ask you whether it is possible to keep the paper structure as it is now.
I've changed all the in-text URLs to proper references.
I've given full names to all the acronyms in the text except the most common ones, like ESA.
Thank you very much!
Reviewer 3 Report
More references to other international similar achievements would be useful.
English is fluent, but grammar accuracy needs to be improved.
Some editting mistakes
- Russain remote sensing satellites
- types, as, for example
- diagram of the of arable land
- which is has both scientific
- . . .
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
thank you for your review and suggestions.
I've added several references for both open access and commercial systems of similiar purpose into the Introduction section.
I've checked the mistakes and editing errors and did my best to clean them up.
