Bibliometric Analysis and Systematic Review of Indigenous Knowledge from a Comparative African Perspective: 1990–2020

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper claims to present a bibliometric analysis of the linkages between indigenous knowledge systems (IKS), ecosystem services (ES), and human well-being (HWB) from an African perspective—however, the paper in its current form fails to achieve this aim in a scientifically meaningful and rigorous manner.  The results and discussion barely provide any novel insights into the linkages between IKS, ES, and HWB.  In general, I found the research design inadequate to achieve its claimed aim, the interpretation of the bibliometric results shallow and superficial, and the presentation of the results unprofessional.  The English of the paper is easy to read, albeit with missing or wrong punctuations occasionally.  It may well sound mean to make the above notes, yet as a responsible reviewer, I do need to give the authors my honest feedback so that they realize the need to further improve to meet decent science standards for not just this paper but their following work.  Below are my comments for the authors to consider:

 

1. Most of the results is bibliometric analysis of papers identified by the topical query of indigenous knowledge (IK), which is sometimes presented comparatively by the whole/global dataset, African dataset, and South African dataset.  With such results, the paper would be better framed as a bibliometric review of IK from a comparative perspective and remove the limited results relevant to IK-ES (Figure 4 and Table 4) and IK-HWB (Figure 5 and Table 5).  In so doing, this study might be reframed with a new research question: How has the IK evolved over time and how the African research community has contributed to the research discourse.  Such a paper would appeal to a global audience.

 

2. Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus are both widely used in bibliometric reviews, with the former being more frequently applied for its longer history and wider subscription.  However, Scopus has been increasingly challenging the weak dominance of WoS, partially due to its more comprehensive coverage of journals, especially those in fields of social sciences and humanities.  Thus, for the fields to be reviewed that are interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary, Scopus is a better option.  Some review papers used WoS because the authors’ institutional has no subscription to Scopus, in which case, the potential sampling bias and the consequent caveats in making interpretations should be explicitly discussed before making any responsible conclusions.  The use of WoS in this paper may explain why the numbers of papers on IK&ES and IK&HWB are so few. 

 

3. Following the above comments, if the sample size of the identified papers is small, then bibliometric analysis will not be necessary, nor sufficient.  In this case, the traditional review based on full-texts reading is more appropriate, the interested scholars might even reconsider the need to do such a review for a field that has barely developed its form.

 

4. It is increasingly seen in review studies that combines bibliometric analysis with full-text synthesis.  In this regard, the software HistCite well fits the need by identifying the top papers most cited by the used bibliographic dataset such as WoS/Scopus and those most cited by the sampled papers: the so-called seminal and keystone papers.

 

5. Science is all about meaningful simplification to reveal the essence of real-world complexity, to which end the presentation of results should be selective and economical.  In this paper, Sections 3.4 and 3.5 are trivial results, and literally all the tables can be included as supplementary materials.  Relatedly, the VOSviewer output figures should be not directly used in a scientific publication.  The authors can export visualizations in the PDF format, and then use Adobe Illustrator to edit the files to remove the VOSviewer logo and add the keywords dismissed in VOSviewer due to overlapping of words (e.g., Figure 4).  Post-edits of the results are OK as long as they are transparent and reproducible, and not meant to manipulate results.

 

6. Now back to the paper’s original title and intended framing, to which end it should be sufficiently justified what new insights the African perspective might offer and how it is possible.  Besides, the current introduction gives inadequate words on existing reviews about IK, ES, and/or HWB, and on how IK might contribute to the research field of ES-HWB.  Only when the existing literature is sufficiently introduced can readers get convinced of the necessity of the present study and its importance/potential contributions.

 

7. Besides, I spent quite a bit time wondering what IKS stands for, because only the full phase of IK is provided.  I also wonder about the difference about IKS and IK since the authors seem to use the two interchangeably.  These key terms should be defined and sufficiently elaborated in Introduction.

 

This paper claims to present a bibliometric analysis of the linkages between indigenous

knowledge systems (IKS), ecosystem services (ES), and human well-being (HWB) from an African perspective—however, the paper in its current form fails to achieve this aim in a scientifically meaningful and rigorous manner.  The results and discussion barely provide any novel insights into the linkages between IKS, ES, and HWB.  In general, I found the research design inadequate to achieve its claimed aim, the interpretation of the bibliometric results shallow and superficial, and the presentation of the results unprofessional.  The English of the paper is easy to read, albeit with missing or wrong punctuations occasionally.  It may well sound mean to make the above notes, yet as a responsible reviewer, I do need to give the authors my honest feedback so that they realize the need to further improve to meet decent science standards for not just this paper but their following work.  Below are my comments for the authors to consider:

 

1. Most of the results is bibliometric analysis of papers identified by the topical query of indigenous knowledge (IK), which is sometimes presented comparatively by the whole/global dataset, African dataset, and South African dataset.  With such results, the paper would be better framed as a bibliometric review of IK from a comparative perspective and remove the limited results relevant to IK-ES (Figure 4 and Table 4) and IK-HWB (Figure 5 and Table 5).  In so doing, this study might be reframed with a new research question: How has the IK evolved over time and how the African research community has contributed to the research discourse.  Such a paper would appeal to a global audience.

 

2. Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus are both widely used in bibliometric reviews, with the former being more frequently applied for its longer history and wider subscription.  However, Scopus has been increasingly challenging the weak dominance of WoS, partially due to its more comprehensive coverage of journals, especially those in fields of social sciences and humanities.  Thus, for the fields to be reviewed that are interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary, Scopus is a better option.  Some review papers used WoS because the authors’ institutional has no subscription to Scopus, in which case, the potential sampling bias and the consequent caveats in making interpretations should be explicitly discussed before making any responsible conclusions.  The use of WoS in this paper may explain why the numbers of papers on IK&ES and IK&HWB are so few. 

 

3. Following the above comments, if the sample size of the identified papers is small, then bibliometric analysis will not be necessary, nor sufficient.  In this case, the traditional review based on full-texts reading is more appropriate, the interested scholars might even reconsider the need to do such a review for a field that has barely developed its form.

 

4. It is increasingly seen in review studies that combines bibliometric analysis with full-text synthesis.  In this regard, the software HistCite well fits the need by identifying the top papers most cited by the used bibliographic dataset such as WoS/Scopus and those most cited by the sampled papers: the so-called seminal and keystone papers.

 

5. Science is all about meaningful simplification to reveal the essence of real-world complexity, to which end the presentation of results should be selective and economical.  In this paper, Sections 3.4 and 3.5 are trivial results, and literally all the tables can be included as supplementary materials.  Relatedly, the VOSviewer output figures should be not directly used in a scientific publication.  The authors can export visualizations in the PDF format, and then use Adobe Illustrator to edit the files to remove the VOSviewer logo and add the keywords dismissed in VOSviewer due to overlapping of words (e.g., Figure 4).  Post-edits of the results are OK as long as they are transparent and reproducible, and not meant to manipulate results.

 

6. Now back to the paper’s original title and intended framing, to which end it should be sufficiently justified what new insights the African perspective might offer and how it is possible.  Besides, the current introduction gives inadequate words on existing reviews about IK, ES, and/or HWB, and on how IK might contribute to the research field of ES-HWB.  Only when the existing literature is sufficiently introduced can readers get convinced of the necessity of the present study and its importance/potential contributions.

 

7. Besides, I spent quite a bit time wondering what IKS stands for, because only the full phase of IK is provided.  I also wonder about the difference about IKS and IK since the authors seem to use the two interchangeably.  These key terms should be defined and sufficiently elaborated in Introduction.

 

Given the above-noted substantial flaws, the authors will need to do major revisions to the paper or even re-collection and reanalysis of data.  Since the authors know well about how to use bibliometric software such as VOSviewer (other options may include CiteSpace and the Bibliometrix R Package), the revisions will not be methodologically challenging.

Author Response

Good Day, 

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

a good paper well done

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you. 

Reviewer 3 Report

Bibliometric analysis of the linkages between indigenous 2 knowledge systems, ecosystem services, and human well-being 3 from 1990 to 2020: An African perspective

 Firstly, I have myself done a metadata analysis and found it an unrewarding methodology, so my inclination begins unfavourably. Rarely, there are strong and unexpected correlations that can be interesting, but usually there is little of value to be found in this kind of study. The only thing of interest here, is that indigenous knowledge is taken seriously, giving some substance to the finding that (p, 24) " Therefore, policy developers need to involve indigenous people from the earliest planning stages as well as in monitoring and evaluation processes."

Nevertheless, it seems to be a well written and amenable piece of writing and I imagine that Land often has data driven material so this approach may be well within the expectations of the journal. The structure is sound, the last paragraph before the conclusion, and the conclusion itself is of most value in the exercise. There is no ethical issues of such extent to demand a publisher's attention.

The relationship between an 'ecological services' approach and 'indigenous knowledge' sits very uncomfortably and it is not examined even slightly.

p.2 "Saharan Africa, South-Eastern Asia, and Latin America recorded the most significant for- 45 est loss of almost 16,000 hectares[4]." Is this per year, per country, per capita? Sure gross, over 10 years it is a vast underestimate.

I find the section on popular authors spurious and struggle to see why it is necessary . It has no content, simply mass, which gives zero analysis of the quality of anybody's articles, simply that they write a lot. Why is that in any way important? Bad enough that university research funding is based on quantity not quality without promoting the problem.

That said, perhaps other readers will find this kind of resource compelling. I am a philosopher I find the lack of content and concepts frustrating.

 

 

Author Response

Good Day, 

Please see the attachment 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Well, the revised manuscript seems to have been substantially improved in terms of research design and story framing, likely meeting the expectations of OA journals like Land.  As a responsible reviewer, however, I would like to point out that the manuscript now framed around IK does not well fit the scope of Land.  Maybe, another MDPI journal, Sustainability, would be a better publication outlet.

 

Besides, I have noted a few errors/typos in the attached PDF file, with relevant texts highlighted in yellow.  Particularly, the following two issues must be resolved:

1. The subfigures in Figure 4 (and Figure 6, which is now labeled as Figure 4 in error) must be incoporated into one figure using professional software like Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator.  Standard figure width & hight parameters should be followed.

2. How come the last and corresponding author, Verena Radinger-Peer, is also acknowledged in the Acknowledgments?  

 

Finally, I would like to say that reviewers are not nannies.  Co-authors with a Ph.D. degree should at least hold the responsibility of ensuring any co-authored submission to meet basic quality standards.  Careless typos and formatting errors should be avoided with authors' best efforts.  Mind that co-authoring papers without substantial intellectual contribution or co-authoring those papers with apparent/fundamental flaws would only bring bad reputation instead of academic credits. 

I wish the paper and the authors best luck.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx