R-Shiny as an Interface for Data Visualization and Data Analysis on the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (BDTD)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The use of data visualization tools to analyze large sets of documents such as the collection of theses and dissertations that the authors have done is interesting, novel, and exciting. 

The authors fully explain their processes and the tools used and demonstrate that meaningful insights can be derived from such analysis.

 

Author Response

We only would like to thank Reviewer 1 for his/her valuable comments.

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall, I liked this paper and I think it could be useful for organizations that want to implement something similar.  Also, the language is good; there are a handful of places where the phrasing is just a little awkward, though still understandable.  For example, in the translation of Figure 8, I would probably suggest the noun form "marriage" rather than the verb form "marry"; or in the first sentence of section 2, "Willing to make" is an odd way to phrase this in English, maybe just "To make."  None of the wording is particularly problematic, but it might benefit from minor copy-editing.

While the explanation is outlined well, I did think that it might be helpful to include a little more information about the processes and usage of the interface.  I realize these examples may not all be relevant or in scope, but here were some possible questions I had, that might add a little relevant detail:

• At the beginning of section 2, you mention procedures for cleaning and treatment of data values.  Do you have more details?  Does metadata need to meet a certain level of consistency for this to work?  Was there trial and error in the process?  Did you run into any roadblocks or challenges for importing/using the data?  Was this a one-time process, or does it have to happen periodically, or frequently?  How manual is the process and how much staff time does it require? 
• More generally, were there challenges in implementation?  How much knowledge of R and/or programming is required to implement these interfaces?  Any other challenges, limitations, or helpful hints that could assist institutions that want to use this process?
• In terms of the displays, are people using them?  Do users like them or is there any feedback?  Are they helpful for research and/or searching in practice?  How well does the system scale (so far) in terms of aggregation and also the number of users interacting with the system at one time?  Do you have use cases for the displays -- e.g., in my experience, word clouds look interesting but are rarely useful; have you found them to be helpful for particular kinds of searching?

Author Response

We would like to thank Reviewer 2 for his/her valuable comments. Our main idea was to encourage organizations to implement similar dashboards on the top of their repositories.

The changes in the text of the manuscript w.r.t. Reviewer 2 comments were:

• Correction of the English of the text according to the suggestions, fixing awkward sentences;
• Paragraphs of lines 50 to 58 were added for an explanation of the data treatment techniques and challenges;
• Paragraphs of lines 68 to 70, and 138 to 142 were added for an explanation of the display and user feedback;
• Paragraphs of lines 92-94 and 138 to 142 were added also for an explanation regarding the usefulness of the app and use cases pointed by Reviewer 2. We have used the app frequently to identify specialists in a certain research area as tests in assistive technologies, the oil spill in Brazil last year, and now for the theme of the pandemic COVID-19 and coronavirus.

Reviewer 3 Report

Overall a well-written paper on an interesting topic. The data analysis and figures presented clearly. The literature review could be beefed up a bit. Personally, I would have preferred a little more description about the Brazilian Digital Library for Theses and Dissertations (BDTD). In addition to its significance, the article indeed, likely to bring an impact in terms of encouraging other institutions to join the open access movement as claimed.

Author Response

We would like to thank Reviewer 3 for his/her comments.  We have added the two paragraphs of lines 19 to 32, to give a better context of BDTD.