Sustainable Design for Geotourism Interpretation Centres: Enhancing the Santa Elena Peninsula Geopark Project Experience

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors, thanks for allowing me the chance to review your paper. The topic you proposed is exciting and the approach is full of good intentions.

Unfortunately, at this point, I am not able to recommend the acceptance of your manuscript in the 'heritage' journal due to the following reasons:

- Your proposal is not the right fit for this journal. The 'heritage' component in your proposal is minimal. Your article would be more fitting for sustainability-focused journals.

- Your proposal is not an academic article with proper literature review, methodological approaches, and in-depth analysis, but a well-written report of an experience, or more than an experience, a compilation of well-intentioned wishes for a future experience to be. There is no data or statistics that support your claim that this GIC you imagine will attract more visitors, and there is not enough evidence to support your claims.

- Your literature review is inexistent. Beyond the initial necessary definitions and a couple of on-the-surface examples at the top of page 10, there is no benchmarking or engaging with both theoretical and practical cases.

- Your methodology is weak and is not designed to engage in proper desk and in-the-field research that can garner you enough data to support your claims.

- Your discussion section is very weak and doesn't add anything to what you outlined in the previous sections.

In general, your submission misses research and data and in-depth analysis of an academic article, which was particularly disappointing that up to 9 people were included as authors in the submission.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English language is fine in this article, certainly not the cause of the rejection.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, we appreciate every one of your provided observations. They allowed us to improve our article. Attached, we send the response letter for each observation. The sent paper is tracked for changes for better tracking.

 

Kind regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see attached the manuscript review report.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript is well written and need minor English corrections.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, we appreciate every one of your provided observations. They allowed us to improve our article. Attached, we send the response letter for each observation. The sent paper is tracked for changes for better tracking.

 

Kind regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper could be of international importance if the aim and scope were reoriented to attract international visitors to this region.  Also, in this context, the paper needs a map showing location on the areas.

While the overall paper deals with design of geotourism interpretation centres for the Santa Elena Peninsula Geopark, there appears little to suggest that the proposed designs are eco-friendly.  For many readers, ‘eco-friendly’ carries implication that the proposed infrastructures will be developed with little or no impact on the local ecosystems (e.g., not impacting on groundwater).  However, the term ‘eco-friendly’ by the authors refers only to the use of eco-friendly materials in the area and taking advantage of the local climate.  The authors should expand on this issue and clearly separate what they mean.

I will leave it to the Editor to accept or reject this paper, because as it stands at present it is not a paper worthy of international readership.  The structure and material design of interpretation centres are well established globally in many places around the Globe and, as such, this paper has only national or parochial applicability.  It does not contribute to increased understanding of design of geopark infrastructures appropriate to their geological setting, as many geoparks around the World (e.g., China, the UK, Korea, Japan, etc.) have advanced the design of infrastructures.

Many of the problems with the paper is the misuse of words and I have listed them below.

Line 24: delete ‘for strategies’

Line 29: delete ‘methodology’

Line 36: what does ‘mimicry with the environment’ mean?

Line 47: substitute ‘values’ for ‘wealth’

Line 51: use the word geology’ -it does not have to be ‘geoheritage’; in fact, sites of geoheritage significance should not be used for geotourism, or should be used in a very managed way

Line 73 and beyond: e.g., should be italicised as follows e.g.,

Line 78: substitute ‘has’ for ‘enjoys’ – an does not enjoy anything

Line 81: delete ‘project’

Line 21: ‘….. will not cause significant geological, physical or aesthetic alterations in the Geosites or to the surrounding ecosystem and environment

Line 145: in row of ‘San Rafael Mines’, replace ‘geological wealth’ with ‘geology’

Line 157: replace ‘zone’ with ‘zone,’

Line 169: replace ‘the rest of visitors to the shelter from solar radiation’ with ‘the rest of visitors, and shelter from solar radiation’

Line 175: replace ‘geoheritage’ with ‘geology’

Line 222: ‘geo-heritage’ should be ‘geoheritage’

Line 224: replace [27] with ‘Tomić [27]’

Line 240: delete hyphen in An-con

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Dear reviewer, we appreciate every one of your provided observations. They allowed us to improve our article. Attached, we send the response letter for each observation. The sent paper is tracked for changes for better tracking.

 

Kind regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In general the manuscript is interesting for publication in Resources international journal, but it requires minor revisions. Below I send my comments, suggestions and others aspects:

 Title

 ok

Abstract

Is ok

Keywords

Is ok

1. Introduction

Well done.

2.  Material and methods

As Heritage is an international journal, I believe that in this section there should be one dedicated to the area of study.

3. Results

3.1 Selected Geosites

Is ok

3.1 Proposed Design of Geotourism Interpretation Centres

I like very much the figures

4. Disscusion

Is ok, but I think that, in addition to the examples you point out, I think you should introduce some other examples of geoparks with geoheritage similar to the St Helena project and observe as design the visitor geotourism centres.

5. Conclusions

ok.

References

ok

Author Response

Dear reviewer, we appreciate every one of your provided observations. They allowed us to improve our article. Attached, we send the response letter for each observation. The sent paper is tracked for changes for better tracking.

 

Kind regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

Thanks for the revised version of your article Eco-friendly Design of Geotourism Interpretation Centres for the Santa Elena Peninsula Geopark Project.

I appreciate your changes to the article, starting from the title, which is more precise and communicates better, and the approach you took to describe your findings. It helps to make it more straightforward. I particularly welcome the strengthening of some sections, the rewriting for clarity of others, and the addition of some materials. Thank you.

While your text is clearer than a few weeks ago, I still find that two or three aspects need to be strenghtened:

- While you have added some arguments to support or strengthen your position, the arguments that help you conclude that these interpretation centres are needed and will be successful (the basic foundation of starting a project like this) are weak. As mentioned before, you don't furnish enough data or clear conclusions based on field work research other than observation (e.g., interviews, statistics, surveys, etc.) that allows you to say that these interpretation centres are needed, wanted, or indeed will be visited. Beyond your intuition and the fact that you add that they are two significant touristic centres in the same region (which, by the way, will also need substantiation, how many people visit them? How often? Which part of the year? How long do visitors stay? How much do they spend? What is their profile? - e.g., a person going to the beach for a tan and a swim might not have any interest whatsoever in some former mines or a historical heritage trail).

- Your international literature review needs to be revised and strengthened. You have made some efforts with it, but you only superficially addressed this. As your groundwork research is insufficient and there is not much, it seems, you can do about it, you should at least make an effort to see how other cases around the world have fared and use them, explain them properly and use them to inform and guide you, especially if they are successful, to help you build your case and substantiate your intuition, based on what has been done successfully elsewhere. That would help to substantiate this appreciated yet vague claim you make: "Considering that the province of Santa Elena has The Chocolatera cliff (geosite) and Montañita beach (tourist site) as the two most visited destinations on the Ecuadorian coast [31,36,69], the proposed geotourism interpretation centres will allow the addition of tourist value to four sites with outstanding geological, cultural, and natural wealth values within the same province" (sic).

- As mentioned before, your discussion and conclusion are weak and need strengthening. Little has been done about it.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, we appreciate every one of your provided observations. They allowed us to improve our article. Attached, we send the response letter for each observation. The sent paper is tracked for changes for better tracking.

 

Kind regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors

Many thanks for adding all of my comments and suggestions in the new version of the manuscript. Now the manuscript is very good and more appropriate for publication in the Heritage International Journal.

All the best

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

No further comments.