Farmers’ Profitability through Online Sales of Organic Vegetables and Fruits during the COVID-19 Pandemic—An Empirical Study
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
Dear authors, the research made is of interest, but some aspects must be improved:
-in results part an introductive phrase must be formulated.
-as far as concerning the conclusions must be extended.
-the same comment I have for references…it is not enough!
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
I have made corrections and uploaded the same.
Thanks
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
Dear authors,
It is well written manuscript. I enjoyed reading it.
However, i have a few comments on the methodology section:
can you highlgiht the indicators?
Can you provided the basis for this sample size?
Also rationale for choosing this study cite and how did you dsign it? was it random sampling or?
Also,
Results/conclusion: you are dealing with smallholders and i presume most of them have access to mobile devices, can you add more how or if they use mobile devices for marketing? or similar points.
can you plesae add a bit more into manuscript that increases the interest of international reader?
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
I have corrected and uploaded the manuscript.
Thanks
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
Dear Authors
The article describes the study of the profitability of farms depending on the farmers' knowledge of online sales of organic fruit and vegetables. It is relevant and interesting topic, nevertheless, the paper needs improvement.
The major comments to be resolved are below:
The structure of the article does not comply with the Instructions for Authors.
The research hypotheses were included in the literature review. Why? Hypotheses should be included in the research methodology.
Do not place literature review in the methods section. Provide the necessary information in the introduction.
Please see the requirements in the Research Manuscript Sections (Guide for Authors)
Subchapters 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6 contain one sentence each, they should be combined, the description concerns similar issues: selection of the sample for research and respondents
How the authors selected the sample for the study, they did not provide a description of how they made the draw, only 271 respondents were selected - why? There are no table titles, Literature 28 items only (not many), incorrect (technically) citation in the text. Inappropriate style was used in the Bibliography
In the literature review there is a discussion. This is incorrect. The Results and Discussion chapter starts with a table, it should be explained before the table what it contains. Discussion needs to be improved as well, it should unambiguously express a comparison of the achieved results with the previous knowledge of the topic. It must make clear what is completely new in the presented results and where these results differ from the findings of other authors, and in what they coincide with the published opinions. Discussion should emphasise the significance of the results and draw attention to the newly opened issues and the need for their solution. Currently, it is too weak.
The cited literature is insufficient. References must be numbered in order of appearance in the text.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
All comments has been rectified. Thanks for guidance.
Thanks
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
Dear authors,
This time you did a good job.
Well done!
Author Response
Thank you!
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
I accept all corrections,
Author Response
Thank you!
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
Comments for author File: 
Comments.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The study focusses on Farmer’s profitability through online sales of organic vegetables and fruits during covid19. It has business policy implications, but authors need to address the following points.
General Comments:
Authors didn’t follow the instructions and didn’t prepare the manuscript properly, therefore, authors need to follow the instructions of journal. There is no page number nor line numbers are inserted which made difficulty to give comments for the specific lines / paragraph / page. This article need extensive English language editing before publish and other corrections mentioned specifically against the each heading as following.
Title: Fine.
Abstract:
Need to revise and improve the grammar of English language. Further, author(s) need to explain the methodology shortly in the abstract.
Introduction:
Need to revise to improve the English language proficiency.
Paragraph 2, first sentence, is not very clear, need to revise and correct grammar mistakes, also the sentence is too long, it maybe divided into 2 sentences.
The sentence “The current research …….. through online sales” need to revise and need to correct spell of the word (thje).
Literature Review & Conceptual Model Development:
Need to revise to improve the English language proficiency.
The first paragraph, the first sentence “author wang …., it would be better if change the word author to researcher or scholar.
Second paragraph, the first sentence, “Similarlyauthors Butu et al., (2020) studied …decision and selling platform” need to give space between similarly and authors, further it is also suggested that use scholars or researcher instead of author, but it would be better not use scholar / author / researcher when you are using name of scholar.
The meaning of the sentence “They observed that …… farm product ‘Producers” is not clear, need to revise.
The sentence, “However the Covid-19 … pricing.” The word used opt for what? please explain.
The connection of the existing literature with hypothesis is not connected well, need to improve the background of existing literature.
Conceptual Framework and Hypothesis:
Authors also presented hypothesis in the previous section, i.e., literature review and conceptual model development, so it would better remove the words “and Hypothesis” from this heading.
Materials and Methods:
Authors need to explain methodology more clearly particularly regression model.
Furthermore, it needs to revise and improve.
Results and Discussion:
This section needs to improve, particularly discussion is very poor.
Conclusion:
Need to improve. Not matching well with the hypothesis and objectives, particularly policies need to suggest well according to the results.
References:
Need to cite latest reference 5 to 10 references.
Hence, I recommend for major revision.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors, the research made is of interest, but some aspects must be improved:
-regarding data collection, must be specified the period in which the data were collected.
-in results part an introductive phrase must be formulated.
-as far as concerning the conclusions must be extended.
-the same comment I have for references…it is not enough!
-some work must be done also at the design of the research.
