Analysis on the Knowledge Evolution Path of Public Acceptance of Reclaimed Water Research

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper reviews reclaimed water literature with a solid methodology based on bibliometric analyses. Some comments for improvements:

1. English should be revised, for example in abstract, "public acceptance of reclaimed water as a key influencing factor to promote the implementation of reclaimed water reuse projects has received attention from different scholars in the international community" is difficult to understand. Please try to break it down and use short sentences in the whole paper.

2. A separate discussion would be helpful on showing the trends of research and recommends future works. Even though 3.3 as part of Results show some trends, it is important to move a step deeper beyond the statistics to focus on the subject itself, rather than staying talking about the existing papers, authors, statistics, etc. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for allowing a resubmission of our manuscript, with an opportunity to address the reviewer’ comments.

We are uploading our point-by-point response to the comments. And any revisions made to the manuscript have been marked up using the “Track Changes”function of MS Word.

Best regards!

Xiaojun Liu et al.

Annex

Reviewer#1, Concern #1: English should be revised, for example in abstract, “public accept of reclaimed water as key influencing factor to promote the implementation of reclaimed water reuse projects has received attention from different scholars in the international community”. is difficult to understand. Please try to break it down and use short sentences in the whole paper.

Author response: Thank you for noticing. The manuscript has been undergone extensive English revisions with the help of the editing services listed at https://www.mdpi.com/authors/english.

Author action: We updated the manuscript by revising the extensive English. In particular, the corresponding modifications have been made for changing long difficult sentences into short sentences, for example in abstract, “public accept of reclaimed water as key influencing factor to promote the implementation of reclaimed water reuse projects has received attention from different scholars in the international community” was revised into”public acceptance of reclaimed water is a key factor influencing the implementation of reclaimed water reuse projects, so it has received attention from different scholars in the international community”. And any revisions made to the manuscript have been marked up using the “Track Changes”function of MS Word. 

Reviewer#1, Concern #2: A separate discussion would be helpful on showing the trends of research and recommends future works. Even though 3.3 as part of Results show some trends, it is important to move a step deeper beyond the statistics to focus on the subject itself, rather than staying talking about the existing papers, authors, statistics, etc.

Author response: Thank you for your valuable comment. The Discussion has been presented in the article as a separate chapter.

• The chapter 3. Results and Discussion has been reorganized into two chapters, 3. Results and 4. Discussion.
• Discussion shows the trends of research and recommends of future works.

Author action: The end of 3.3 Main Path Analysis “Thus, consistent with the predicted results in the co-word analysis, the main path analysis also suggests that how to improve the public's willingness to drink recycled water, as well as the influencing factors including risk perception, social trust and their internal relations will become the focus of future research.” was showed in 4. Discussion.

And we have updated the manuscript by adding a separate Discussion “As previously mentioned, the public’s acceptance of reclaimed water has attracted more and more research attention. On the one hand, the number of publications in this field is increasing significantly. On the other hand, the reclaimed water policies of various countries are gradually improving, and the voice of the international community for unified standards is gradually increasing. The countries with the largest number of publications are the United States, Australia and China. As previous studies have shown, the United States and Australia have experienced a large time span and rich experience in such studies. As a developing country, China has taken the lead in focusing on the potential influencing factors of public acceptance of reclaimed water. Therefore, authors and institutions that have made outstanding contributions in this field frequently appear in these three countries.Secondly, the scope of research continues to expand, because the reuse of reclaimed water has expanded from agricultural irrigation and aquaculture to industrial water, municipal miscellaneous use, household cleaning, and finally to drinking which has the closest contact with human body. Moreover, the research content is deepening, because the research on the influencing factors of public acceptance of reclaimed water has deepened from superficial factors (such as personal cognition and drought experience) to social psychological factors (such as risk perception, trust, environmental awareness and information disclosure), and discussed the relationship and mechanism of each influencing factor.

Based on the average year of keywords, it can be predicted that the future will follow the concept of sustainable development and pay more attention to the circular economic analysis of reclaimed water. At the same time, the predicted results in the co-word analysis and the new study in the main path suggest that how to improve the public's willingness to drink reclaimed water, as well as the influencing factors including risk perception, social trust and their internal relations will become the focus of future research. It is worth noting that the potable reuse of reclaimed water is a highly controversial reuse purpose. In order to make the potable reues enter the stage of public acceptance of reclaimed water research and truly enter the daily life of public, future research is suggested to formulate corresponding preventive measures for the potential risks of different reuse purposes. This helps to increase public trust in the authorities, reduce risk perceptions and thus improve public’s acceptance of reclaimed water. ”

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a well written, very interesting and unique publication.  The objective is very clear.  The paper length and figures are appropriate. There are very few changes that need to be made.   One might think about how the to highlight in the methods and in the results the independent and unbiased approach used.   This is because the author of this analysis has done quite a bit of work in this area and of course shows up in this evaluation of the literature as does the Journal WATER.

Other small issues

      For those who may not know early on the definition of horizontal (which has a temporal aspect to it) and vertical which is evolution of the fields might be explained better.

2.       The text line 184  mentions Arizona State University but the figure 2d shows University of Arizona.

3.       There is some redundancy in the text and conclusions that could be minimized.

4.       There is some inconsistency in the verb tense (eg Line 165 use of present tense when most of the article is past tense).

1

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for allowing a resubmission of our manuscript, with an opportunity to address the reviewer’ comments.

We are uploading our point-by-point response to the comments. And any revisions made to the manuscript have been marked up using the “Track Changes”function of MS Word, and the details are shown in the annex.

Best regards!

Xiaojun Liu et al.

Annex

Reviewer#2, Concern #1: For those who may not know early on the definition of horizontal (which has a temporal aspect to it) and vertical which is evolution of the fields might be explained better.

Author response: The word “horizontally” and “vertically” appear in the Abstract, Introduction ,and 2.2 Research Methodology of the paper, and the following revisions have been made to avoid misunderstandings for those who may not know early on the definition of horizontal and vertical:

Author action:

• In the Abstract, “horizontally”and “vertically” are deleted, but the original meaning has not been changed.
• In the Introduction, “horizontally”was replaced with “from the temporal aspect” , and “vertically” was replaced with “from the evolution of the field” .
•  

Reviewer#2, Concern #2: The text line 184 mentions Arizona State University but the figure 2d shows University of Arizona.

Author response:  Thank you for your valuable comment. After checking the initial data, it was found that the “University of Arizona” in figure 2d was correct, and the text line 184 mentions “Arizona State University” is result of omission between abbreviation and formal format.

Author action: We corrected “Arizona State University” in The text line 184 to “University of Arizona”. In the end, the picture and text are consistent.

Reviewer#2, Concern #3:There is some redundancy in the text and conclusions that could be minimized.

Author response:hank you for your valuable comment. We has minimized some redundancy in the text and conclusions.

Author action: We deleted the redundant content and marked it with green highlight. Additionally, those revisions have been marked up using the “Track Changes”function of MS Word.

Reviewer#2, Concern #4: There is some inconsistency in the verb tense (eg Line 165 use of present tense when most of the article is past tense).

Author response:The manuscript has been undergone extensive English revisions with the help of the editing services listed at https://www.mdpi.com/authors/english .

Author action: Any revisions made to the manuscript have been marked up using the “Track Changes”function of MS Word. In particular, the sentence tenses have been seriously revised.