Analysis of Social Acceptance for the Use of Digital Identities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The research question is well defined and is highly relevant to the current research field. It would have been interesting however to not have limited the scope of the digital identity approaches to blockchain based ones, as there are numerous other approaches, even ones that are considered to be Self-Sovereign Identity. 

The introduction would benefit from some revisions on the technical aspects and more domain specific points on SSI. Some points include:

- SSI using DLT for data security is a controversial statement

- Internet was not created in 1990

- Bundesdruckerei translated as Federal Press

- The issuer issuing a DID is not the typical SSI way

- DIDs are not neccessarily hosted on the Blockchain (did:web, did:key etc.)

The study itself seems well conducted with very solid methodology behind it.

The results are interesting and well presented.

We recommend the acceptance of the paper with the aformentioned revisions.

Author Response

Dear First-Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your helpful comments. We re-worked and comment them below:

The research question is well defined and is highly relevant to the current research field. It would have been interesting however to not have limited the scope of the digital identity approaches to blockchain based ones, as there are numerous other approaches, even ones that are considered to be Self-Sovereign Identity. We agree with you and added an additional sentence to express, that there are various ways of digitizing identities. However, we do not want to go into detail because it would be too technical and complex for the reader, who expects a paper on SSI. 

- SSI using DLT for data security is a controversial statement: We are aware of the ongoing debate in academic literature and especially in the blockchain industry. We decided to build our reserach on the data security aspect, thereby contributing to a possible positive awareness.

- Internet was not created in 1990: Thank you, we adjusted that part.

- Bundesdruckerei translated as Federal Press: Thank you, we adjusted that part.

- The issuer issuing a DID is not the typical SSI way: We are aware of that and we also know the framework of W3C on DIDs. SSI can have many appearances and since our focus is focused on Germany, we chose the "German way of implementation". We included additional explanations within the text to pay justice to your valid point.

- DIDs are not neccessarily hosted on the Blockchain (did:web, did:key etc.): We also paid justice to your valid point by including an additional explanation in the text.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents a statistical study about the usage of digital ID, for specific population.

The results are important. However, we have some remarks:

1- Use linking words to link the sense of sentences

2- The title of all tables is too long, if there are explanations or notes please put them after in the bottom of the table

3- Please change " Chapter 1... Chapter 2.." by "Section 1 ...Section 2" in the last paragraph of introduction

4- To prove that this paper is suitable to be published in this journal, please cite some related works published by this journal

Author Response

Dear Second-Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your helpful comments. We re-worked them and comment below:

 1- Use linking words to link the sense of sentences. Thank you, we did the adjustments.

2- The title of all tables is too long, if there are explanations or notes please put them after in the bottom of the table: Thank you, we did the adustment by using footnotes for the additional explanation.

3- Please change " Chapter 1... Chapter 2.." by "Section 1 ...Section 2" in the last paragraph of introduction. Thank you, we did the adustment.

4- To prove that this paper is suitable to be published in this journal, please cite some related works published by this journal: Thank you, we cited six further articles of which two are from Computers.