A Large-Scale Group Decision-Making Approach to Assess Water Resource Sustainability with Double-Level Linguistic Preference Relation
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)
This paper studies a large-scale group decision making approach to assess water resources sustainability with double level linguistic preference relation. It is interesting. I suggest major revision. Some comments are given for improve the quality of this paper.
The English writing should be improved with help of professionals. There are some typos and grammatical errors.
The review of literature is not overall. Some related and updated references on large-scale group decision making are overlooked. Please retrieve some international mainstream journals, such as Applied Soft Computing, 110 (2021) 107757; Expert Systems with Applications, Available online 15 June 2023, 120749 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2023.120749.
It is necessary to make an overall review to follows the state-of-the-art.
Eqs. (12) and (17) lack a symbol “=”.
Eq. (13) is used to adjust the preference matrix. It is necessary to prove the convergence mathematically. That is to say, prove” it is easier to reach the given consistency threshold”.
It would be better to give more explanations on the reasonability and rationality of the modified weight defined in Eq. (17).
For Eq. (17), it is needed to prove the convergence of the proposed CRP of this paper.
The English writing should be improved with help of professionals. There are some typos and grammatical errors.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
The proposed methodology has many parts that flowchart of methodology that illustrate a water resources problem should be added. figure 2 illustrates a general method.
The manuscript focuses on methodology, thus hydrologic data and the basis of water resources sustainability are not clear.
How experts are selected (line 646)? I think this methodology for verifying results, is an evaluation method not verifying. Enough number of experts, possible conflicts, and utility of stakeholders how considered?
What is E(p) in Eq. 18?
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
General comments: This paper is logical, clear structure, and has a certain innovation, it is recommended to accept after minor revisions.
Although the paper is interesting, I have some points to be considered from my viewpoint to make the paper beneficial to the reader.
1．Abstract should present research results, this article cannot show.
2．In the introduction, the author had a subjective opinion without reference when he said, “To achieve the sustainable usage of water resources, we must investigate the assessment method of water resources sustainability, and the sustainability evaluation of water resources becomes particularly crucial”.
3．When introducing the method, the reason for using “the clustering method, the weighting method, and the comprehensive adjustment factor determination method” should be more convincingly described.
4．In the conclusion, it is suggested to add the shortcomings of this study and the direction of future improvement.
5．English needs to be improved to improve some embarrassing expressions in this paper.
6．It is suggested to update reference list with the most recent and relevant literature, such as:
(2022) Optimum harnessing of solar energy with proper selection of phase changing material using integrated fuzzy-COPRAS Model, International Journal of Management Science and Engineering Management, 17:4, 269-278
(2022) Multi-phase matching mechanism for stable and optimal resource allocation in cloud manufacturing platforms Using IF-VIKOR method and deferred acceptance algorithm, International Journal of Management Science and Engineering Management, 17:2, 103-111
Ebrahim Forghani, Reza Sheikh & Shib Sankar Sana (2023) Extraction of rules related to marketing mix on customers’ buying behavior using Rough set theory and fuzzy 2-tuple approach, International Journal of Management Science and Engineering Management , 18:1, 16-25
Language needs to be improved to improve some embarrassing expressions in this paper.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
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Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
Authors have addressed all my comments. I only have some minor concerns:
1. Authors need to check expressions for the whole paper. Some sentences are too long to follow. Some wordy statements can be improved.
2. Figures are in low quality. It is necessary to use the original versions.
3. Section 6.1 has little insights. Managerial results driven from analysis are quite general and obvious.
Authors need to check expressions for the whole paper. Some sentences are too long to follow. Some wordy statements can be improved.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
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
The paper is more theory than application. In order to prove the validity of the presented formulas, some real-time tests & trials need to be presented.
The paper needs to have some scientific real-time graphs and diagrams to help the professional readers to better understand and appreciate what the authors are proposing.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript is highly peculiar to me. I do not recognise any societal necessity of reaching consensus among experts about water resource sustainability, which is the main goal of this exercise. I do not recognise the premise that outlier opinions need to be adjusted towards the view of the majority/herd. That is not a scientifically sound practice. Therefore, the manuscript must be rejected for publication.
In addition, many invented methodology names with long acronyms are used (as 'large-scale group water resources sustainability assessment (LGWRSA)', 'double-level linguistic preference relation (DLLPR)', 'hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set (HFLTS)', 'double hierarchy linguistic term set (DHLTS)', and many more), that seemingly intend to impress the reader but in fact their relevance seems small. Long and seemingly complex formulas are introduced that in fact describe obvious relations.
I do not recognise the logic of sentences like 'experienced experts should be assigned greater weight' (why??) and 'help experts change their opinions and find the direction they should follow' (why would you want to change expert opinions??). Why are individuals and groups that are unwilling to modify their preferences called 'non-cooperative' and left out of the further analysis?? The sentence 'As far as we know, leaders and experienced experts, such as experienced professors, are very experienced' is very awkward.
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper has applied a suit of statistical methods to build a decision-making model to assess the sustainability of water resources. The model considers non-cooperative behaviors and includes processes for decision making. The model has been successfully validated through a case study of water resources sustainability assessment. This study has theoretical, computational, and practical contributions to the body of knowledge and practice, and I do highly recommend it to be considered for publication in the journal of Water. Since the paper has introduced a lot of abbreviations, I would suggest having a list of abbreviations at the beginning of paper to help readers better navigate through the paper.
