How to Successfully Orchestrate Content for Digital Agriecosystems

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Reviewer

 

Dear Authors,

 

The submitted manuscript addresses a very important topic that focus on the last advance in the field of agronomy field research and which is currently considered as on of the most topic to resolve food security issues in world. The present research paper target to adopt a new methodology for the evaluation of digital agri-ecosystem services enabling providers to optimize their existing offering and to prioritize new services prior to implementation. This methodology is basicly performed on two different application focuses (DairyChainEnergy – Data agri-ecosystem on energy management for dairy farmers, and NEVONEX – IoT agri-ecosystem 18 comprising digital services for agri-machinery). The manuscript is well developed in the major section however there are some section that need more clarification and improvement in particular Introduction and results section with some minor revision. So, please find in below our proposed revision that we request to be completed before the publication of the present article.

 

Comment 1 (C1): I think that title need to be more clarified and author could specific more the tile as that we propose the following title “How To design and evaluate the Digital Agri-Ecosystems”

C2: L9 , in the end of this sentence I think that the word is incomplete , what do you mean AGRITHECH? Please correct and complete the word in the ()

C3: The abstract section is well developed however the first section (background) is very long. Please make it shorter.

C4: L12, what do you mean by “root cause analysis” may be you could choose more simple description of the concept because we are in abstract section.

C5: In abstract section author could add the conclusion of the abstract to better follow and conclude the main result in work , may be also one sentence as perspective.

C6: Please remove agriculture from the key word section and add agri or agroecosystem, and also correct the styl of key word (put the key word on majuscule for the first letter of each word).

C7: L49 : Why you consider that Facebook, Amazon….as ecosystem?? Please clary this ?

C8: On of the main weakness’ of the introduction section is that it was poorly developed with statistica data. As example author need to give some statistical data on : the historical dates of the development of markets are already substantially dominated by such digital ecosys-tems

C9: We can not said NODULATING PLANT, replace it by nodulation; some quantification of current available digital farming platform….etc. Please add some statistical data to better justify the work background.

C10: Please try to justify each cited information (paragraph) by its corresponding references (e.g L26-31) because we detected more than cited literature that was only referenced only by 1 reference.  

C11: In the end of introduction section, author gives only the main and general objective of the study, it is mandatory to give more details by citing the specific objectives of the study. This is very important please give the feedback of  this request.

C12: Please give more details on the used Insights from literature and also the corresponding source. This may be performed in Figure 2 or just before.

C13: After well reading the mat and material method we noted that the applied, developed and new created methodology is really poorly described in this section. Please you are invited to clarify and to describe well the figure 2, this is an important requested revision. (explain each step and also make more link between material, method and results that were cited in figure 2.

C14 : L100, please try to check if the style of given reference is correct and fit well within the guideline of the agriculture journal.

C15: L111-115: please check and clarify the idea of this paragraph? The position of startup is not clear as compared to cited example.

C16:  The result relative to 3.1 is not linked with the presented result? Please try to check chronology of results interpretation in particular the first presented result and also interpret well as compared to results that you inspired from the literature.

C17: Why you choose more particularly to take only steps II.1 to II.6 from Figure 2 for the developpement of te methodology that was linked with RCA? Please clarify this?

C18: L105-106 L143-146: If you adopted an participative approach? What is the link with focus group and how you collected data from these approaches? Please give more details.

C19: L155-157: Can you give an example about on “no-profit digital farming”, it not clear?

C20: Please rephrase the title of figure 3, we can not said OUR?

C21:In figure 3 (3f) what do you mean EVALUATE RESILIENCE PER DIGITAL SERVICE? Please clarify well all step and method given in figure 3 in the corresponding result section.

C22: The Digital crop farming service (DCFS) are poorly described in table 1. Please improve the description.

C23: 208-2010. This sentence needs to be removed in discussion section.

C24:Fihure 4 is not clear , no indicator was given in this result, please define the calculated indicator by which both DCFS and DEMS were assessed.

C25: Please improve also the resolution of figure 4.

C26: Discussion section was well developed in terms of chronology and suggestion by author however it was poorly augmented by the literature, so please make it more rich in terms of comparison and discussion as compared to previous and recent references from the literature.

C27: For the conclusion: Author could develop more conclusion section, the current conclusion is not representative to the content of the paper in particular for the main results and the major findings on the developed methodology. Please improve conclusion section.

C28: For the given appendix in table 2 I propose to remove it and to consider it as supplementary material

C29: Please try also to check all reference formats and to add the DOI in each cited reference.

 

 

The manuscript need some minor lecture 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

 

Thank you very much for your comprehensive feedback on our manuscript.

Please find below a summary on how we implemented your suggestions:

 

• The Title was clarified and made more specific (C1)
• Requested adjustments on the abstract (C2-C5) have been implemented, e.g., the length of the background section was shortened, the description of methods was simplified, and additional conclusions were added.
• The keyword section has been adjusted (C6).
• The term “Digital Ecosystem” is now backed by a defining source earlier in the text and we clarified why we consider Facebook, Amazon etc. as ecosystems based on this source (C7)
• In L31-33 and L39-44, we added information about the historical development of digital ecosystems and market overview information about the digital agri-platform market (C8-C9).
• Several more references have been added an existing references were double checked if they were located at the right position in the text (paragraphs) in the introduction section to justify each cited information by its corresponding references (C10)
• In L86-91, specific objectives of the study were added at the end of introduction section (C11)
• In the "Materials and Methods" section of our manuscript, we added references from the literature that were used as input for the two methods applied in the context of this study (C12). In addition, we described the applied methods more comprehensively (C13). Please note the steps of the newly developed methodology are a result of our study and hence described in section 3.2. (C13)
• When citing references, if appropiate, the style was changed to “ref. [21]” to comply with the guidelines of the agriculture journal (C14).
• The idea and the following paragraph were clarified in L113-118 ff (C15)
• 3.1. and 3.2. are now more clearly linked together and chronology of presented results is improved so that the reader should be better able to follow the line of argument throughout those paragraphs (C16)
• In line 209, we added the information that steps II.7 to II.10 were applied during the testing of our newly developed methodology (C17).
• More details about the Root cause analysis (L140-151) wich is part of the method described in Figure2 have been added. Further details were added about the focus group workshops for digital service exploration in (L173-178) which are part of the methodology in Figure 3 and the differentiation is now more clear (C18)
• In line 186, we added an example for a use case of a "non-profit" digital farming solution (C19).
• We described all steps of the newly introduced three-phase content orchestration methodology more comprehensively (section 3.2) and edited the title of Figure 3 (C20-21).
• The description of the Digital crop farming services (DCFS) in table 1 have been clarified, expanded and backed with references (C22)
• (C23) the sentence has been moved to the discussion section (L249-251)
• The calculated indicator by which the DEMS and DCFS figure 4 is now defined in the text (L239-242) (C24)
• The included figures are now resized based on the MDPI agriculture guidelines and the resolution is improved. (C25)
• We enriched the discussion section with more references to the literature (C26).
• The conclusion was updated and now includes major findings on the developed methodology and is overall more specific to the main results and findings of the paper (C27).
• Based on all reviewers’ feedback, we decided to remove Table 2 from the Appendix in order to reduce the share of Figures/Tables in the manuscript (C28).
• DOIs or ISBNs were added to the reference section, where possible (C29). Please note that not all cited references (e.g., conference papers or online articles) do not have a DOI or a ISBN.
• We improved the quality of the English writing style in our manuscript by leveraging the assistance of a proof-reading service.

Reviewer 2 Report

In this paper the authors  introduce a methodology for the evaluation of digital agri-ecosystem services enabling providers to optimize their existing offering and to prioritize new services prior to implementation. 

 

The motivation of the paper is the failure analysis of some digital ecosystems.

The existence of different digital ecosystems affect and change whole markets (e.g. Facebook, Airbnb or Uber).  In the agricultural sector the proposed digital platform solutions in the agri-market  have already failed. 

 

 The authors apply the proposed  methodogy to digital agri-ecosystems with two different application focuses (i) agri-ecosystem on energy management for dairy farmers, and (ii) agri-ecosystem comprising digital services for agri-machinery) and show the  its applicability of the proposed method. 

 

The authors show the benefit of  the providers of digital  agri-ecosystems by  using  this new methodology. The proposed methodology allows to  structure the decision-making process by tacking into account the most relevant success criteria : customer benefit, technical feasibility, and resilience. 

 

The paper is well written and the provided  analysis is relevant. The introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references.  The results are clearly presented  and the conclusions of the paper are supported by the results.  Is suggest to the authors to properly reduce the dimensions of included Figures and Tables.

For all these reasons I propose to accept the paper after minor revision.

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

 

Thank you very much for your comprehensive feedback on our manuscript.

Please find below a summary on how we implemented your suggestions:

 

Point 1: Are the methods adequately described? – can be improved

 

Response 1: Description of the utilized methods and the newly introduced methodology for content orchestration in digital ecosystems have been improved.

 

Point 2: I suggest to the authors to properly reduce the dimensions of included Figures and Tables.

 

Response 2: The included figures are now resized based on the MDPI agriculture guidelines and the resolution is improved. On top of that, based on all reviewers’ feedback, we decided to remove Table 2 from the Appendix in order to reduce the share of Figures/Tables in the manuscript.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The most of requested revision was done by authors. Thanks for this improvement. However the developped literature need just some added references to better justify the important of modelling in agriculture and agroecosystem.

So- we propose for author to add these following reference in lines from 49 to 73 and in duscission

 

Kherif et al. 2021. Agroecological modelling journal

Latati et al., 2019. AGRONOMY RESEARCH journal