A Survey on Digital Agriculture in Five West African Countries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Major problems:

Abstract:  The authors should indicate briefly the novelty of the paper here.

 2.1 Bibliometric survey on digital agriculture.

This section has a general problem. It claims to reveal  which country deals with which type of digital agriculture – but bibliometric analysis can reveal only which authors (nationalities) WRITE about which type of digital agriculture, and it does not necessarily mean that the country itself focuses on the same types of digitization. The authors should clearly explain the reasons why they conclude that the writers’ interest corresponds to the country’s specialisation. Is there any proof of the correlation?

2.2 Survey on technologies used in digital agriculture

This section should be a proper literature survey, but it fails to be so. In each of the analysed years, 2019-2020-2021-2022 only one or maximum 2-3 publications are mentioned that describe the mentioned types of digitization. This is certainly not enough, a lot more reference should be cited here, especially, that the authors use bibliometric analysis, therefore they should be aware of the abundance of relevant literature. The cited references seem to be ad hoc samples from the literature, and instead of a proper literature review only the detailed description of these selected papers is given

 There is a conceptual problem in this section, too. Writing about the application of digitization (i.e. literature review of the application of digitization in agriculture) is not the same as writing about who publishes about the application of digitization in agriculture (bibliometric analysis of the published research on agricultural digitization). The authors should clearly state their objective, and their chosen method, and the two things should be consistent – the present version is not so.

 

The authors apply bibliometric analysis, but there is no reference about the application of this method, no review of the methodology, and no justification why the authors followed the methodology according to their description. The methodology section is very weak therefore.  It is also not clear why the nationality of the authors was used to categorise the papers to different countries . There are referred papers that claim to deal with several countries of West Africa,  and it is not obvious why these papers  would be allocated only to one country.

 

3. Results

The authors present their results by  publication year, by author nationality, author organisation, co-occurrence, word cloud.

The nationality and organisation: the paper claims that the topics (technologies) discussed int he papers are the same as the digitization techniques applied by the countries of the authors – however, there is no evidence that an author publishes only about the important technologies applied in their country!.

The word cloud is absolutely no scientific interest. The occurrence of keywords should rather be published as a frequency table, and its importance is explained (the occurrence of a word in a text may be in a positive, negative and neutral context, and the frequency does not distinguish between these!).

3.2 Digital technologies survey….

It is not clear how this section is based on the bibliometric analysis – though it claims to be so. The text says that the papers found by the bibliometric analysis are read – i.e their titles and abstracts are read. This is what we do in an „ordinary” literature review, without any bibliometric analysis. Thus bibliometrics was only used for selecting a number of papers  to review. This is not enough  justification for the bibliometric analysis.

Table 1 presents 25 items of literature – but the purpose of this table is not clear, it is simply a list of papers grouped by author nationality (and not by the country of which the paper discusses). The explanations in this section are very short

4. Discussions

4.1 Lessons learned : This section does not rely on the results of the bibliometric analysis, but rather on some of the analysed papers, dealing with the applications of digitization in agriculture. Results are not related to the discussions.

 

5. Conclusions

This section is very brief, no connection to earlier similar research is mentioned.  There are statements that are not justified by the research (i.e. „Nigeria is the most advanced of the five countries in adopting digital agriculture technologies”. How does it follow from your bibliometric analysis?).

There is a sentence: „This study highlights not only the level of progress  in digital agriculture in five countires….” Actually, this study does not highlight that. It just highlights who published about these topics in the past few years, and what is their nationalities and organisations – but not the progress of the field.

A very important weakness of the paper is that neither the literature review section, nor the analysis itself, nor the discussions, nor the conclusions compare the present analysis to any further similar research results.

Minor problems:

Language: although the language of the paper is good, there are many errors, regarding missing spaces between words (at least 4-5 cases per page throughout the whole text from Abstracts to the end!), and the usage of capital and small-case letters. Also, in some cases  short forms of words (e.g. tech instead of technology) are used, and sometimes the verbs are omitted from sentences, or instead of verb forms the noun forms are used.

Page 2: margins are not correct in line 1-2

Figures: 

Figure 1: The title of Figure1 is not under the figure, but one paragraph below. The authors should indicate if the figure is a copy of the referred sources (int hat case the original page number should be indicated), or adapted and modified by the authors.

Figures 4-5-6: the figures should be provided in a clearer form, with larger resolution, some of the texts in the figures are not readable in the present format.

Figure 7: Word cloud – this figure should be deleted, a word cloud is not a scientific presentation of results, but something more proper in social media. There is no relevant information content that could not be presented in a more scientific way.

P2, 2.Approaches  and Methods, 1st paragrap: The first sentence dies not say anything important, just a very general sentence. The second sentence does not have a verb, i.e. there is no meaning, either.

Overall opinion: the paper lacks the conceptual foundations, the theoretical framework for the analysis. It does not describe the methodological background, the previous similar research, and confuses the survey of the field (agricultural digitization) with the survey of the authors/ nationalities/ keywords of the related papers  published recently (i.e. the bibliometric data of papers  with the research results of these papers). The authors should carefully re-consider their research plan, define clear research questions, and set up a methodology that leads to scientifically sound results  related to the research questions. This means, that the paper should be completely restructured, before it can be submitted for publication again.

 

Although the language of the paper is good, there are many errors, regarding missing spaces between words (at least 4-5 cases per page throughout the whole text from Abstracts to the end!), and the usage of capital and small-case letters. Also, in some cases  short forms of words (e.g. tech instead of technology) are used, and sometimes the verbs are omitted from sentences, or instead of verb forms the noun forms are used.

Author Response

 

Commentary Review	Application of the revision	No Page
Review 1
Abstract:  The authors should indicate briefly the novelty of the paper here.	Abstract has been revised	1
2.1 Bibliometric survey on digital agriculture. This section has a general problem. It claims to reveal which country deals with which type of digital agriculture – but bibliometric analysis can reveal only which authors (nationalities) WRITE about which type of digital agriculture, and it does not necessarily mean that the country itself focuses on the same types of digitization. The authors should clearly explain the reasons why they conclude that the writers’ interest corresponds to the country’s specialisation. Is there any proof of the correlation?	We have revised the methodology and bibliometrics section in this sense	2-7
2.2 Survey on technologies used in digital agriculture This section should be a proper literature survey, but it fails to be so. In each of the analysed years, 2019-2020-2021-2022 only one or maximum 2-3 publications are mentioned that describe the mentioned types of digitization. This is certainly not enough, a lot more reference should be cited here, especially, that the authors use bibliometric analysis, therefore they should be aware of the abundance of relevant literature. The cited references seem to be ad hoc samples from the literature, and instead of a proper literature review only the detailed description of these selected papers is given	6 articles were added	12-13
There is a conceptual problem in this section, too. Writing about the application of digitization (i.e. literature review of the application of digitization in agriculture) is not the same as writing about who publishes about the application of digitization in agriculture (bibliometric analysis of the published research on agricultural digitization). The authors should clearly state their objective, and their chosen method, and the two things should be consistent – the present version is not so.	See methodology	6
The authors apply bibliometric analysis, but there is no reference about the application of this method, no review of the methodology, and no justification why the authors followed the methodology according to their description. The methodology section is very weak therefore.  It is also not clear why the nationality of the authors was used to categorise the papers to different countries . There are referred papers that claim to deal with several countries of West Africa,  and it is not obvious why these papers  would be allocated only to one country.	We have added references on page 6: ref 24 the methodology has been strengthened on page 6 too	6
The nationality and organisation: the paper claims that the topics (technologies) discussed int he papers are the same as the digitization techniques applied by the countries of the authors – however, there is no evidence that an author publishes only about the important technologies applied in their country.   The word cloud is absolutely no scientific interest.  The occurrence of keywords should rather be published as a frequency table, and its importance is explained (the occurrence of a word in a text may be in a positive, negative and neutral context, and the frequency does not distinguish between these!).	- We have reviewed this throughout the document and removed elements such as the Word cloud - For the occurrences of the keywords, we preferred to keep it in this form because we want to have a view on the technological keywords while their occurrence is low.  If we put it in table form, the table would be long to show all its occurrences	11
3.2 Digital technologies survey…. It is not clear how this section is based on the bibliometric analysis – though it claims to be so. The text says that the papers found by the bibliometric analysis are read – i.e their titles and abstracts are read. This is what we do in an „ordinary” literature review, without any bibliometric analysis. Thus bibliometrics was only used for selecting a number of papers to review. This is not enough  justification for the bibliometric analysis.	this has been reviewed and clarified in the methodology	6
Table 1 presents 25 items of literature – but the purpose of this table is not clear, it is simply a list of papers grouped by author nationality (and not by the country of which the paper discusses). The explanations in this section are very short	We have added references to the table	11
4. Discussions 4.1 Lessons learned : This section does not rely on the results of the bibliometric analysis, but rather on some of the analysed papers, dealing with the applications of digitization in agriculture. Results are not related to the discussions.	We have reviewed this session	14
5. Conclusions This section is very brief, no connection to earlier similar research is mentioned.  There are statements that are not justified by the research (i.e. „Nigeria is the most advanced of the five countries in adopting digital agriculture technologies”. How does it follow from your bibliometric analysis?).	The conclusion has been reviewed	14
There is a sentence: „This study highlights not only the level of progress  in digital agriculture in five countires….” Actually, this study does not highlight that. It just highlights who published about these topics in the past few years, and what is their nationalities and organisations – but not the progress of the field.	A check has been made throughout the document	15
Language: although the language of the paper is good, there are many errors, regarding missing spaces between words (at least 4-5 cases per page throughout the whole text from Abstracts to the end!), and the usage of capital and small-case letters. Also, in some cases short forms of words (e.g. tech instead of technology) are used, and sometimes the verbs are omitted from sentences, or instead of verb forms the noun forms are used.	This has been reviewed	1-17
Page 2: margins are not correct in line 1-2	reviewed	2
Figure 1: The title of Figure1 is not under the figure, but one paragraph below. The authors should indicate if the figure is a copy of the referred sources (int hat case the original page number should be indicated), or adapted and modified by the authors.	This has been reviewed	4
Figures 4-5-6: the figures should be provided in a clearer form, with larger resolution, some of the texts in the figures are not readable in the present format.	Reviewed	8-10
Figure 7: Word cloud – this figure should be deleted, a word cloud is not a scientific presentation of results, but something more proper in social media. There is no relevant information content that could not be presented in a more scientific way.	deleted	11
P2, 2.Approaches  and Methods, 1st paragrap: The first sentence dies not say anything important, just a very general sentence. The second sentence does not have a verb, i.e. there is no meaning, either.	The sentence has been deleted	6
Overall opinion: the paper lacks the conceptual foundations, the theoretical framework for the analysis. It does not describe the methodological background, the previous similar research, and confuses the survey of the field (agricultural digitization) with the survey of the authors/ nationalities/ keywords of the related papers  published recently (i.e. the bibliometric data of papers  with the research results of these papers). The authors should carefully re-consider their research plan, define clear research questions, and set up a methodology that leads to scientifically sound results  related to the research questions. This means, that the paper should be completely restructured, before it can be submitted for publication again.	Paper has been reviewed	1-17
Comments on the Quality of English Language Although the language of the paper is good, there are many errors, regarding missing spaces between words (at least 4-5 cases per page throughout the whole text from Abstracts to the end!), and the usage of capital and small-case letters. Also, in some cases  short forms of words (e.g. tech instead of technology) are used, and sometimes the verbs are omitted from sentences, or instead of verb forms the noun forms are used.	Language check has been done	1-17

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper is neat, clear logic, detailed content, is a good review of the paper. It has certain guiding significance to the constructive development of digital agriculture in West Africa.

 

However, there are still some format specification problems in this paper, which are summarized as follows:

 

1. The format of the three-level headings is consistent, with some indented and some not.

 

2. Paragraph 1 of section 3.1 does not indent the first line.

 

3. Paragraph 1 of section 4.1 does not indent the first line.

 

4. The conclusion of the last section does not indent the first line.

 

It is recommended to check each paragraph for partial formatting errors as described above.

Author Response

Article revision

 

Commentary Review	Application of the revision	No Page
Review 2
1. The format of the three-level headings is consistent, with some indented and some not.	Corrected	6-14
2. Paragraph 1 of section 3.1 does not indent the first line.	Corrected	7
3. Paragraph 1 of section 4.1 does not indent the first line.	Corrected	14
4. The conclusion of the last section does not indent the first line.	The conclusion has been revised	15
It is recommended to check each paragraph for partial formatting errors as described above.	We have removed the recommendations	14

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Keywords: avoid using the same words from title.

Page 2: "problemsanalogue" should be "problems analogue"

Page 2: cite references form "Much research"

Page 2: "researchesdiscuss" should be "researches discuss"

Page 2: "otherspresent" should be "others present" (review for all text)

Page 3: cite the reference for definition of precision agriculture

Page 5: the legend of Fig. 1 should be together the figure

Page 8: "Figure." should be "Figure" (review for all text)

Page 9: data sources of what?

Page 12: "AI produces bananas"?

Page 16: "recommendations" based on what?

Conclusion: focus on answering your goals.

General comments: some phrases are incomplete, and a review of English language is strongly recommended.

A review of English language is strongly recommended.

Author Response

Article revision

 

Commentary Review	Application of the revision	No Page
Review 3
Keywords: avoid using the same words from title.	Corrected
Page 2: cite references form "Much research"	We have brought in a reference
Page 2: "problemsanalogue" should be "problems analogue" Page 2: "researchesdiscuss" should be "researches discuss" Page 2: "otherspresent" should be "others present" (review for all text) Page 3: cite the reference for definition of precision agriculture	Corrected	2-3
Page 5: the legend of Fig. 1 should be together the figure Page 8: "Figure." should be "Figure" (review for all text)	Corrected	4-10
Page 9: data sources of what?	Reviewed	8
Page 16: "recommendations" based on what?	Removed	14
Conclusion: focus on answering your goals.	Reviewed	14
General comments: some phrases are incomplete, and a review of English language is strongly recommended. A review of English language is strongly recommended.	Reviewed	1-17

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Second version review:

The authors have properly handled the issues that the reviewer had raised.

The abstract was completely revised and now it refers to the new findings that the authors achieved by their research

2.1 The Bibliometric survey was also revised - although the reviewer would prefer a somewhat more detailed handling of this section, the improvements that the authors carried out are sufficient, although somewhat terse.

2.2 Survey on technologies used in digital agriculture: This section was also expanded a little - with 6 new references added. Again, I would have welcomed a somewhat more extensive improvement, but still, the added references make this section also acceptable.

The conceptual issues were also properly handled  - with a clear explanation of the objectives and research questions, and a revised, more precise version of the methodology.

The discussion and the conclusions sections have also been improved - again, I repeat that a more detailed, more thorough revision could be even better, but the improvements made are acceptable still.

The language and spelling has been corrected, as well as the formatting issues, including the quality of figures and other minor issues (margins, missing spaces, etc.).

Overall opinion: Although the paper is still only of average quality, the novel aspect of dealing with the topic in the West-African context makes it reasonable to publish. Therefore I consider the present revised version is suitable for publication.