Data Governance in Multimodal Behavioral Research
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI am wondering about the in-text citations used as the superscript. Is it a legitimate option for this journal only?
The steps in Figure 1 should be appropriately labeled, as it is currently very confusing where process 1/step 1 started.
It's important that section 2 is concise and provides a clear summary of the content.
Please write the complete HIPAA form once.
In section 3, there are a lot of heading and sun-heading issues regarding the bullet points.
It would be great if section 3.2 could be summarized in table form.
Similarly, section 5 also has a lot of heading and sub-heading issues.
The paper must end with a conclusion and future work.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors conducted multimodal behavioural research with the general primer for data governance. As a tutorial-type article, there are some key areas to be improved.
Comment 1. The paper title defines the scope as “a general primer”. Please justify how general it is.
Comment 2. Abstract: Please elaborate on the key research results and implications.
Comment 3. Keywords: More terms should be included to better reflect the scope of the paper.
Comment 4. Refer to the journal’s template for the in-text citation, in which bracket references should be used. In addition, the format of the references in the list of references should be aligned with the requirements.
Comment 5. Section 1 Introduction:
(a) The literature review is not clearly written. Please provide a concise summary of the methodologies, results, and limitations of the existing works.
(b) Besides the aims and objectives, the authors should emphasize on the research contributions.
(c) The caption of Figure 1 is not precise. In addition, the workflow should be well explained in the main text with some good examples.
Comment 6. Section 2 What is Data Governance in Multimodal Behavioural Research?:
(a) Considering Sections 1 and 2, the content covers about half of the content. It is expected the authors will focus more on new research content, i.e., elaboration and enhancement of the remaining sections.
(b) The authors bolded some words; however, some of them are not necessary.
Comment 7. Section 3 How Can Data Governance be Implemented in Multimodal Behavioural Research?
(a) Add an introductory paragraph before Subsection 3.1.
(b) The steps in Subsection 3.2. are incomplete. Please ensure they are step-by-step descriptions, as the article is review-type.
Comment 8. Section 4 Tradeoffs to Consider When Governing Data in Multimodal Behavioural Research:
(a) Based on the organization and content of this section, it is not related to tradeoffs.
(b) More references are needed to justify the content.
There are some typos.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors have enhanced the quality of the paper. There are some more areas to be improved:
Follow-up Comment 1: Please follow the journal’s template and choose a proper type: “Type of the Paper (Article, Review, Communication, etc.)”. “Research” is not one of the types.
Follow-up Comment 2: Only five keywords are included. In addition, four of them are single words. Please ensure that precise keywords are used; otherwise, the research work will not be easily found via search engines.
Follow-up Comment 3: The research contributions reported in the last paragraph of Section 1 are not precise. For example, “Our research contributes a practical framework, informed by real-world experiences, that enhances the scientific community's ability to manage and analyze multimodal data ethically and effectively.” and “This study's unique value lies in its demonstration of how proper governance fosters trust, promotes reproducibility, and accelerates scientific progress, ultimately benefiting societal well-being.” need to be quantified in later sections.
Follow-up Comment 4: Please refer to the journal’s template. In the list of references, carefully check the format; for example, doi is not required.
Follow-up Comment 5: Many works are cited in the revised paper; however, many of them are not recently published. Please focus mainly on recent 5-year research works to reflect the latest developments in the fields.
Follow-up Comment 6: “Table 1”, “7. Conclusion”, “Author Contributions”, “Institutional Review Board Statement”, “Informed Consent Statement”, “Acknowledgments”, and “Conflicts of Interest” are not in appropriate formats.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We are grateful for the opportunity to revise our manuscript and for the careful and insightful comments. We have taken each comment into consideration and have made substantial revisions to improve the quality and clarity of our work. Below, we provide a detailed response to each comments, with indications of the revisions' locations within the manuscript (2nd revisions are highlighted in green).
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
The authors have enhanced the quality of the paper. There are some more areas to be improved:
Follow-up Comment 1: Please follow the journal’s template and choose a proper type: “Type of the Paper (Article, Review, Communication, etc.)”. “Research” is not one of the types.
Response: We very much appreciate this suggestion. We apologize for the oversight and have corrected the type of our paper according to the journal’s template. Our submission is indeed intended to be a Review-type manuscript.
Follow-up Comment 2: Only five keywords are included. In addition, four of them are single words. Please ensure that precise keywords are used; otherwise, the research work will not be easily found via search engines.
Response: Thank you for pointing out the need for more precise keywords. We have expanded our list to include a total of nine keywords on Page 1, Line 24-25, using a combination of single words and phrases that better reflect the content and focus of our research. Here are nine keywords: Data Governance; Multimodal; Behavioural; Big Data; Analytics; Healthcare; Primer; Framework; Demonstrative.
Follow-up Comment 3: The research contributions reported in the last paragraph of Section 1 are not precise. For example, “Our research contributes a practical framework, informed by real-world experiences, that enhances the scientific community's ability to manage and analyze multimodal data ethically and effectively.” and “This study's unique value lies in its demonstration of how proper governance fosters trust, promotes reproducibility, and accelerates scientific progress, ultimately benefiting societal well-being.” need to be quantified in later sections.
Response: We extend our apologies for any previous ambiguity regarding the specificity of our research contributions. In fact, all the content of section 2 to section 4 elaborate on the sentence, “Our research contributes a practical framework, informed by real-world experiences, that enhances the scientific community's ability to manage and analyze multimodal data ethically and effectively”, as they (section 2 to section 4) provide detailed description on a practical framework.
The other sentence, “This study's unique value lies in its demonstration of how proper governance fosters trust, promotes reproducibility, and accelerates scientific progress, ultimately benefiting societal well-being.”, was supported and proved by section 5. A Demonstrative Case in Multimodal Behavioural Research. This case serves as a practical demonstration of how robust governance mechanisms can instill trust, enhance reproducibility, and stimulate scientific advancement, all of which contribute to societal well-being. To facilitate a better understanding of the case study's relevance and its connection to the research contributions, we have introduced an expanded description before this sentence on Page 3, Line 121-123. This addition aims to guide the reader more seamlessly through the logical progression of our arguments and the supporting evidence.
Our revisions can be found below.
“Our research contributes a practical framework, informed by real-world experiences, that enhances the scientific community's ability to manage and analyze multimodal data ethically and effectively. The study exemplifies the application of multimodal re-search methods, which is innovative in capturing a comprehensive view of complex human behaviors and experiences. This study's unique value lies in its demonstration of how proper governance fosters trust, promotes reproducibility, and accelerates scientific progress, ultimately benefiting societal well-being.”
Follow-up Comment 4: Please refer to the journal’s template. In the list of references, carefully check the format; for example, doi is not required.
Response: We thank you very much for pointing this out. We have carefully reviewed and adjusted the format of our references according to the journal’s template. The DOI has been removed where it was not required, and all references are now consistent with the journal’s guidelines.
Follow-up Comment 5: Many works are cited in the revised paper; however, many of them are not recently published. Please focus mainly on recent 5-year research works to reflect the latest developments in the fields.
Response: We have carefully reviewed our literature references in light of the reviewer's feedback. We have retained certain key works that hold significant value to our research and the field. These include but not limited to:
Classic literature that has stood the test of time and laid the foundation for our study (e.g., references 6 and 13).
Works published in prestigious journals closely related to our research topic (e.g., reference 27, published in Nature).
Updates and Removals: In addition to retaining important literature, we have also re-evaluated each reference to ensure its continued relevance and necessity:
References 44 and 45 have been removed as they did not contribute essential insights to our work.
Reference 12, which previously cited the DAMA-DMBOK, has been updated to the latest version to reflect the most current standards and practices in data management.
Reference 32, we have replaced reference 32, a conference paper published in 2015 (32. Michota, A.; Katsikas, S. Designing a Seamless Privacy Policy for Social Networks. Proceedings of the 19th Panhellenic Conference on Informatics, 2015, 139-143.) with a journal article (Michota, A.; Katsikas, S. Towards improving online social networks' privacy policies. Int. J. Inf. Priv. Sec. Integral. 2018, 3, 209-219.), from the same author with same content but on different date, to enhance the academic rigor of our references.
We also made necessary revisions in main body of the manuscript. These revisions demonstrate our commitment to maintaining a current, relevant, and high-quality literature base for our research. We believe these updates have significantly strengthened the academic integrity and contribution of our manuscript.
Follow-up Comment 6: “Table 1”, “7. Conclusion”, “Author Contributions”, “Institutional Review Board Statement”, “Informed Consent Statement”, “Acknowledgments”, and “Conflicts of Interest” are not in appropriate formats.
Response: Thanks for your careful comment.
For Table 1, we have noticed that there is a significant overlap between the information presented in Table 1 and the visual representation provided by Figure 2. Given that Figure 2 vividly illustrates the content of the seven steps in a more accessible format for our readers, we have decided to remove Table 1 from our manuscript. The essence of the information that was conveyed in Table 1 has been succinctly integrated into the main text of the manuscript on Page 8, Line 378-383, to ensure that no critical details are lost. We believe this adjustment not only addresses the redundancy but also improves the overall flow and readability of the paper, providing a clearer understanding of the seven steps discussed.
Besides, we have reviewed and reformatted all sections of the paper, including “7. Conclusion,” “Author Contributions,” “Institutional Review Board Statement,” “Informed Consent Statement,” “Acknowledgments,” and “Conflicts of Interest,” to comply fully with the journal’s template.
Thank you for your guidance and support throughout this process.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
