Exploring Life in Concentration Camps through a Visual Analysis of Prisoners’ Diaries
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors present an interesting approach that uses a visualization-based approach to analyze Prisoners’ Diaries.
For me, the authors only put distinct visualizations in the same process to propose a new tool. Therefore, the authors should clarify the main contribution of the proposed approach besides the application. Firstly, please, improve the introduction section, compared to the previous version of the manuscript, by presenting at least one paragraph to:
- Background to introduce main concepts and topics---ok!
- Short literature review and trendings in the area
- Gap description
- Motivation for this work and goals---ok!
- Methodology to reach the goals---ok!
- Results and contributions
The authors have already written some of them, but others have to be clearer. Take a lot of attention when describing the goals, methodology to reach such goals, and the contribution.
Author Response
Thank you for your time and effort to review, R1.
We would like to emphasize that there are no (ongoing) projects dealing with the visualization of text/diary data from the concentration camp legacy. Now, we explicitly state this also in the Introduction (46f), before going over the nearest related projects in the Related Work section. Next, we described the gap and need for the tool (43ff).
Also, we emphasized our contributions again in the paragraph following line 48.
Reviewer 2 Report
I still consider that the article looks too much like a user's manual, and is therefore too long. And this aspect may limit the article's chances of being cited.
I think that a different approach, showing the full potential of the developed software can be interesting, but without the information on how each task is to be performed.
Author Response
Thank you -- again -- for taking your time to review the updated version, R2.
I would like to cite the Special Issue Information: "In addition to application-driven contributions, this Special Issue also welcomes submissions with extensive reflections on interdisciplinary collaborations between textual scholars and visualization experts. These papers will act as a guide for researchers working on the intersection of digital humanities and visualization, and will be useful for scholars who follow participatory design approaches involving experts from various research domains."
Dropping the technical/theoretical side would neglect the visualization-side of the project. For a design study paper interesting for visualization experts, it would lack these kinds of information to even be considered relevant. A mere story of use cases (aka only the results without talking about the tasks and limitations) would reduce the value of the publication on the above mentioned intersection.
Nevertheless, we decided to shorten the paper and have dropped some content down to 18 1/2 pages (without references).
Reviewer 3 Report
In this paper, the authors show how to use a visualization tool to learn more about the collection (the diary corpus), the Bergen-Belsen memorial's diary collection which is made up of dozens of diaries written by concentration camp prisoners. Different modes provide access to quantitative and sentiment analysis. The authors show examples of use cases for researchers and how the tool is used by visitors to the site.
I provide my observations as under:
- To make the language clearer, you should make one more (thorough) edit. Some sentences are hard to understand. Like, "helping in qualitative analysis on e.g., events," (line 83), lines 87 and 88, lines 437, 620, line 757, and so on.
- It is possible to remove the short forms from the paper, such as SS, PR. It is best to use only full forms.
- Study limitations may be given.
Author Response
Thank you for your time to review this paper, R3.
For this revision, we did an additional check of the whole paper, after integrating changes proposed by you and the other reviewers. This includes a dedicated limitations section, enhanced version of the introduction (gap, contributions, and related works) and shortening on the paper.
We also removed the "PR", but decided to keep the "SS" abbreviation, as it is the common form of the "Schutz-Staffel" and the German/long form is more unknown.
Finally, we changed many long and convoluted sentences throughout the paper.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
I thank the efforts made by the authors. I have no objection to the publication of the article.
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 authors present an interesting approach that uses a visualization-based approach to analyze Prisoners’ Diaries.
For me, the employed techniques are not novel, and the authors only put it all in the same process. Therefore, the authors should clarify the main contribution of the proposed approach besides the application. The first step is to improve the introduction section that should present at least one paragraph related to each of the following:
- Background to introduce main concepts and topics
- Short literature review and trendings in the area
- Gap description
- Motivation for this work and goals
- Methodology to reach the goals
- Results and contributions
The authors have already written some of them, but others have to be clearer. Take a lot of attention when describing the goals, methodology to reach such goals and the contribution.
Review the title of Section 3 because it is more related to the dataset and preprocessing.
Cite this paper [1] (see below) when talking about pre-processing.
The authors could present a diagram with a general overview of the pipeline and sequences of tasks the user could do with the proposed visualization approach. For instance, this diagram could highlight Shneiderman's mantra. Thus, the authors have some support to aid explanations of each visualization and transitions between them.
For further works, consider using a line chart link that used by google ngram viewer
https://books.google.com/ngrams/
Would it be useful for historians to analyze the usage of some keywords over time?
Also, would it be interesting to analyze the similarity between parts of diaries with a similarity-based visualization for further works? For instance, those projection-based visualizations that are presented in:
[1] DM Eler, D Grosa, I Pola, R Garcia, R Correia, J Teixeira. Analysis of Document Pre-Processing Effects in Text and Opinion Mining. Information 9 (4), 100
https://doi.org/10.3390/info9040100
Author Response
Thank you, R1, for the time and effort you have taken to review this paper. I would like to respond to your comments:
We present a design study paper (as defined by Munzner [1]: "Design study papers make a case that a new visual representation is a suitable solution for a particular domain problem."). Thus, we are fully aware that we are not providing new techniques or visualizations, but we are content (and demonstrate in our use cases) that we are providing a useful tool needed by historians in the field.
Nonetheless, we have placed more emphasis on the contributions of the tool in the introduction.
As for the list of paragraphs to be included in the introduction, we have included all items except the literature review, which was included as a separate section immediately following the introduction (as usual in our field).
We have also changed the naming of Section 3, which actually focuses more on the technical data and description of preprocessing. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
We have also added an illustration of the preprocessing pipeline and the interactions available when viewing the tool.
In our opinion, the linked paper [2] does not fit our paper. While both papers deal with preprocessing, the paper by Eler et al. deals specifically with mining the texts. While we also include some basics of these algorithms (e.g., for the tag cloud), we do not use deep linguistic approaches and structuring of texts, but focus more on visual representation.
A line graph in the sense of a ThemeRiver view is not currently planned. Such a visualization would be well suited to show quantitatively continuous data, mainly found in the evolution of term frequencies between different months/years, as described in 4.1.2. (which also allows an analysis of the use of keywords over time that you mentioned).
A similarity analysis between diaries (at a global level or in a specific time frame) would of course be interesting, although the metrics for similarity calculation might be difficult. A simple vector distance-based similarity analysis (based on the words used) could reveal interesting similarities. However, we do not specialize in linguistics, and I would like to discuss this with a linguist before trying it.
Finally, we would like to emphasize that this is a visualization study design paper that follows the state of the art in the field. Examples of peer-reviewed papers from top conferences in this area can be found, for example, in [3] and [4]. More information on design studies can also be found in [1].
[1] Munzner, T. (2008). Process and pitfalls in writing information visualization research papers. In Information visualization (pp. 134-153). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
[2] DM Eler, D Grosa, I Pola, R Garcia, R Correia, J Teixeira. Analysis of Document Pre-Processing Effects in Text and Opinion Mining. Information 9 (4), 100
[3] Khulusi, R., Kusnick, J., Focht, J., & Jänicke, S. (2019, April). An interactive chart of biography. In 2019 IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium (PacificVis) (pp. 257-266). IEEE.
[4] Jänicke, S., Focht, J., & Scheuermann, G. (2015). Interactive visual profiling of musicians. IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics, 22(1), 200-209.
Reviewer 2 Report
I am pleased to have the opportunity to review this research paper. This study attempted to explore Life in Concentration Camps through a Visual Analysis of Prisoners’ Diaries. Although the topic of this research study is interesting, I think authors should modify the article following the comments indicated below to increase the quality of research justification, contributions and findings.
First of all, paper research gap. Please improve this part in introduction section. Introduction is very general and lacked alignment to the research findings, no discussion was provided to derive the implication from. Theoretical and pragmatics implication are vague and need to be better aligned with this paper theoretical underpinnings and proposed process. Furthermore, there is insufficient support and weak arguments in support of the objective that is proposed as well as the model developed. In the final part of introduction the objetives proposed, originality and gap that would be better covered. Also how the author will perform the methodology.
What is the originality of this research? Paper research gap and originality should be better presented at the end of introduction section. Please use this paper and make a citation to solve this task: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jik.2020.08.001. Please make notes about the manuscript structure.
Please consider this structure for manuscript final part:
Discussion
Conclusion
Managerial Implication
Practical/Social Implications
Limitations and future research
Discussion section should be improved. This needs to be a coherent and cohesive set of arguments that take us beyond this study in particular, and help us see the relevance of what authors have proposed. Author need to contextualise the findings in the literature, and need to be explicit about the added value of your study towards that literature. Also other studies should be cited to increase the theoretical background of each of the method used. Findings should be contextualised in the literature and should be explicit about the added value of the study towards the literature. Please use this citation to copy the style and make a citation: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2021.102331
Questions to be answered:
What practical/professional and academic consequences will this study have for the future of scientific literature (theoretical contributions)?
Why is this study necessary? Again, the authors should make clear arguments to explain what is the originality and value of the proposed model. This should be stated in the final paragraphs of introduction and conclusion sections.
I would also urge the authors to read the articles listed below before completing the manuscript revision. The author will understand that the article structure can be improved as well as the methodology and literature review section:
Introduction
Saura, J.R., Palacios-Marqués, D. & Iturricha-Fernández, A. (2021). Ethical Design in Social Media: Assessing the main performance measurements of user online behavior modification. Journal of Business Research, 129, May 2021, 271-281. doi: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.03.001
Conclusions
Ribeiro-Navarrete, S., Saura, J. R., & Palacios-Marqués, D. (2021). Towards a new era of mass data collection: Assessing pandemic surveillance technologies to preserve user privacy. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 167, 120681. doi: 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120681
Author Response
We would like to thank you, R2, for your time and work on this review.
We have revised the introduction to further explain the research gap and thus the usefulness of the tool. We have also provided a brief reference to the use cases, which will be shown later.
Regarding your other points, I would like to note that this is a visualization study design paper that follows the current state of the art in the field.
This justifies the structure used. In terms of content, we already have included the criticized parts in the work. For example, social implications are summarized in the conclusion, limitations in the discussion, and future work as a separate subsection in the discussion.
Examples of peer-reviewed papers from top conferences in this area can be found in [2] and [3], among others, showing the correctness of the used structure for this field. More information on design studies papers can also be found in [1].
Also, both of your papers are not relevant to this publication. Neither of them has anything to do with the domain or visualization or even the design study paper type.
Answer to your further questions:
"What practical/professional and academic implications will this study have for the future of scientific literature (theoretical contributions)?"
"Why is this study necessary? Again, the authors should provide clear arguments to explain what the originality and value of the proposed model is. This should be stated in the last paragraphs of the Introduction and Conclusion sections."
-> As a design study [3], this work is not on a theoretical level, but on a practical one. The use case section shows the usability of the work and the gain obtained by it.
[1] Munzner, T. (2008). Process and pitfalls in writing information visualization research papers. In Information visualization (pp. 134-153). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
[2] Khulusi, R., Kusnick, J., Focht, J., & Jänicke, S. (2019, April). An interactive chart of biography. In 2019 IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium (PacificVis) (pp. 257-266). IEEE.
[3] Jänicke, S., Focht, J., & Scheuermann, G. (2015). Interactive visual profiling of musicians. IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics, 22(1), 200-209.
Reviewer 3 Report
The article presents a software tool, which although it is said that it can be used in other cases, absolutely nothing is specified about its implementation or how it could be used in other cases.. Instead, it is presented in detail how the tool is used in the implementation carried out. That is why I consider that the information included in the article is not relevant.
Besides, the article is too long, as I said it is information about the use (interface design) and not about the design of the tool. The fact that the data contained in the tool presented are obviously very relevant (concentration camps IIWW), does not make the article relevant.
The article requires a different approach or to be submitted to a journal with other topics.
Author Response
Thank you R3 for your review.
For a new implementation with a different data source, no complex adaptation is required. It is sufficient to put the text data into the trivial structure as seen in the examples included in the source code (the most important part of the structure is covered in 3.1.).
Only a change of the source language would require a minor adaptation of the linguistic processing.
The length of the article conforms to the constraints imposed by the journal. Also, we are a bit confused about your next comment, as we have both information about the design (4.) and application examples of the tool (5.).
Finally, the paper was submitted for the special issue "Visual Text Analysis in Digital Humanities" and follows the approaches appropriate in this field.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have not applied most of my comments. The study needs additional changes. The theoretical background is weak and the structure of the article need additional work.
Reviewer 3 Report
I would like to apologize to the authors for not having reviewed the SI to which the article was submitted. However, I still consider that the article looks too much like a user's manual, and is therefore too long. And this aspect may limit the article's chances of being cited.
