Research Progress and Development Trend of Social Media Big Data (SMBD): Knowledge Mapping Analysis Based on CiteSpace

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article ‘Research Progress and Development Trend of Social Media Big Data (SMBD): Knowledge Mapping Analysis Based on CiteSpace’ takes into consideration the papers published between 2010 and 2020 (up to September) using the data obtained from WoS (Web of Science) and analyze them focusing on articles related to social media big data.

It’s interesting to get a first overview of the different trends and key players involved in this area. The results are clearly presented in multiple tables, showing the top journals, the top countries, the top authors, author collaboration, hot research topics etc.

However, though the authors present several key insights to the readers, I feel that they need to present a brief discussion or their observations/comments on each of their analyses. Take for example, currently lines 332-366 (Conclusion and Discuss) present an overall discussion on the obtained results. I feel the current discussion under each analysis needs to be further elaborated.

Line 92 states that the authors collected several information like ‘authors, institutions, keywords, abstract, date and other information’. It’s not very clear from the article how abstracts have been used or whether they have been used for the analysis. One may get an impression that they make use of keywords for tables 6 and 7. However it’s not very clear for Figure 5 since it contains longer phrases.

The authors also need to explain some of the algorithms like LLR and concepts like Sillhote value in the preliminary or introduction section. They may also give relevant links to existing works related to these in the article.

Figure 5 is not very clear. See my comment above. How are these clusters formed? Is there a possibility to use multiple colors for separating the clusters?

It’s also important why the authors made some of the analyses: why the focus on collaboration map, keyword burst analyses etc. The reader may get an impression that the authors have tested some or all features proposed by the tool and there is no relation among the different analyses.

Article needs some proofreading. E.g., Conclusion and Discuss (Line 332) -> Conclusion and Discussion

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript outlines a context of Social Media Big Data (SMBD) as a phenomenon that has aroused great interest in the society, as well as in the academic community.

The useful reference was made to previous studies including the definition, application, model, classification of SMBD.

As a result of the WOS resource query, a database of almost 2,500 literature (scientific articles) in the SMBD area was collected. The Mapping tool CiteSpace V was used to graphically present the results of the analysis.

The reported study can be called a “metadata” analysis, since authors used analyzed papers metadata (e.g. keywords) as an information about articles.

They were analyzed according to the time (2010-2020), research areas (numbers of articles), journals, countries, institutions and authors. Citations and keywords were also analyzed. All analyzes were supported by tabular summaries and their results were presented in the form of knowledge maps.

In my opinion the reported here study is a valuable input for a researchers trying to learn about the topic, searching for the already covered areas of research as well as when looking for other details concerning the already conduct research in the topic of SMBD.

However, there are some areas and aspects of the manuscript that can be modified in order to improve the clarity of the reported analysis. I sum up my remarks starting from major ones, and below I provide a minor notes including editing issue. 

Major remarks and suggestion:

• It is worth emphasizing in the abstract what this publication brings to the state of knowledge about SMBD. What conclusions does this review of SMBD articles lead to?
• The knowledge maps applied in the analysis are a useful way of data visualization, however they should be properly interpreted. Therefore, it would be also for readers to provide information about the methodology of knowledge maps. How they are generated? How to read and interpret them? For instance, is there some meaning in the colors applied in figures 2, 3 and 4.
• The figure 5 is not readable in the current shape: it is not informative the mix of lines that cannot be interpreted in any way by as reader. The only informative element are labels  that can be just listed without the graphics behind. Please, consider rebuilding the presentation in the Figure 5.
• The GEOinformation (connected with analysing countries) could be also visualized in a geographic map. It would be interesting to see how the SMBD research spreads around the world
• Please explain what is the reason of disagreement between the sum of the number of articles listed in Table 1 (when adding the numbers listed in column two there is 3156 articles) and the total number provided in the paragraph above (the first paragraph in section 3.1) – 2 493 articles. Moreover, the percentage provided in the column 3 in the table 1 is apparently calculated based on the 2 493 number as a total amount.

Minor remarks

• What does „centrality of the state” or „institutional colaboration” means? It could be interesting for readers to know how to measure these variables.
• It is worth taking care of the better quality of the figures. Higher resolution, greater contrast, labels less obscuring the nodes and connections - such graphic adjustments would certainly improve the quality and usability of the figures.
• Please avoid abbreviations in the table columns’ heads that are not essential, e.g. ‘cent’ in Table 3 can be easily written as a whole word ‘centrality’ (there is enough space for the whole word). Similarly ‘freq.’ in table 4, 5 can also be written as a whole word (as done in table 6).

Typos:

• Table 3 – Please correct: China instead of Cnina
• Table 5 – In the last column could be: The title of article
• References: BOLLEN – remove capital letters from the name
• There are some atypical commas in the text: ie. lines: 89, 125, 127, 128
• There are some unnecessary spaces in the text: ie. lines 125, 127, 128, 144
• There are some single characters at the end of lines: ie. 125, 127, 187·   Line 233 – the number of Table 6 is missed
• Line 205: I guess that Table 5 should be referred instead of Table 2
• Figure 1: please explain what do you mean in: “Number of proportion”  axis label? Try to rephrase it to be more precise and informative
• Figure 4 – I suggest to make labels  smaller, they are not readable in the current version
• Figures 6 & 7 are really really nice and very interesting!

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I would like to thank the authors for taking into account my review comments and providing with a new version of the article with significant changes. They have also provided necessary clarifications in their cover letter.

In the new version, they have corrected the grammatical errors and typos. Figure 1 now clearly presents their research framework. Figure 7 (Knowledge Map of Keyword Cluster in SMBD) is much clearer.

The section ‘Conclusions and Deficiencies’ has been slightly updated. But I think the authors missed my initial comment on the discussion of the other figures. They are giving a textual description of their results in figures, but the article can be further improved if they present their viewpoints on the possible reasons behind certain results.

However, before the submission of the final version, I would suggest the authors to proofread the newly added lines, since some minor errors have crept in. For example:

 

• Line 807: Haoran Xie and others has -> Haoran Xie and others have
• Line 808: gorgeous contributions-> significant contributions
• Line 813: results in the furture-> results in the future.
• Line 912: hot research focuse-> hot research focuses

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx