Systematic Stakeholder Inclusion in Digital Agriculture: A Framework and Application to Canada
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
GENERAL COMMENT
It is an interesting paper proposing a general framework for stakeholder inclusion in digital agriculture.
The paper is rather easy in lecture, however quite disordered and too long. Consequently, I cannot find clear paragraphs or single statements on:
- justification the need of preparation of such a framework (I think it is broadly discussed, bu the reason for such an inclusion disappears within so many text);
- more clear description of methodology of preparation and validation of this framework;
- information on a broader context of such a framework, outside of Canada. Such short information, at the end of conclusions is necessary to justify the publication of the paper in open-access scientific journal of global range.
I have also some smaller, although still general notes:
- more than 20 references from the list placed at the end, were not mentioned in the text ant they should be removed;
- some statements or even paragraphs fit better to other sections of the paper;
- Results section is so short that it should be merged with Discussion section, although subdivided in many subsections;
- Conclusions section should be shorter, more general and rather without citation of particular references;
- the authors should note and mention more clearly, that some categories of stakeholders make an impact at different levels. E.g. the NGOs category is very broad, some NGOs, act on global (macro?) level) and other only at local (micro?) level, depending on their size. If we consider historical sources we can note, that findings of some scientists (Liebig, Thaer, Borlaugh) made an global impact which is important even nowadays and also for digital agriculture;
- quite confunding designation of appendices, I found appendix A, B, 1 and 2), the authors should improve it and consider citing in the text;
- if the tables do not fit to a single page the table headers should appear at each page to facilitate interpretation;
- I suggest to add information (column) regarding assessed impact level) to Appendix A (1?) and B (2?)
DETAILED COMMENTS
Introduction
Lines 221-230 fit more to the Methodology section
The authors should answer clearly on two questions:
Why digital agriculture should be promoted (lines 702-703)? It should be added rather at the beginning of Introduction.
Why stakeholders should be included to this framework? It should be provided at the end of Introduction
Methodology
Please, rewrite this section, because it is difficult to follow the methodology used in the paper.
Particularly, I could not find even a approximated definition of the levels (micro, mezo and macro) of impact applied in this study. How do these levels correspond local-, regional (within a state), national or global impact? I could see also more comprehesive description, or graphical representation of the stages of preparation of network proposal (e. g. definition of impact levels, general framework creation; stakeholder inclusion to the framework using literature review and Factiva database, framework validation or something similar, corresponding to the authors' idea) - i.e. description of the model.
Please, add some more information and a reference regarding Factiva database.
Lines 235-263 fit better to Introduction section;
Conclusions
Major part of Conclusions - Lines 644-682, 695-697 and 711-714 fit better to Discussion (Results and Discussion), as it's last subsection (e.g. 4.4. General discussion) than to COnclusions section.
Lines 702-70r fit more to Discussion, or even Introduction.
In my opinion, the actual Conclusions section starts from the line 683.
As I stated before, it is important to show a broader, potentially global meaning of this study - in form of one or two statements at the end of Conclusions section. How such a framework may be used in the future?
REFERENCES
The list of references wihich were not mentioned in the text of the manuscript:
Addicott 2016
Bendre et al. 2015,
Braun et al. 2018,
Brennen & Kreiss 2014,
Bronson 2015,
Clasen 2016,
Colquhoun et al. 2014,
Daudt et al. 2013,
De Clercq et al. 2018,
Denner et al 2018,
Dicks 2013,
Gobble 2018,
I-scoop 2016,
Jovanovic et al. 2018
Kamilaris et al. 2017,
Legner et al. 2017,
Levac et al. 2010,
Li et al. 2012,
Macnaghten 2015,
Matt et al. 2015,
Owen et al. 2013,
Paustian & Theuvsen 2017,
Reznik et al. 2016,
Schut et al. 2015,
Zambon et al. 2019
Author Response
Dear Reviewer1,
Thank you very much for your thoughtful and thorough comments. We much appreciate the opportunity to improve the paper and have aimed to address all of your comments. Please note that in response to your comments we have made major revisions and moved a number of sections within the document. As such, some of your comments may not apply to the same extent to the new version. In the following, we respond to each of your comments, marked in blue below.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
In general, the paper seems fine but it needs some modifications.
1) Please include some smart farming paper methods in Europe. Recommended papers are, please cite them if you find them relevant.
- https://www.mdpi.com/2624-7402/1/2/13
- Das V., Jithin; Sharma, Shubham; Kaushik, Abhishek. 2019. "Views of Irish Farmers on Smart Farming Technologies: An Observational Study" AgriEngineering 1, no. 2: 164-187. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering1020013
- Mallett A, Jegen M, Philion XD, Reiber R, Rosenbloom D. Smart grid framing through coverage in the Canadian media: Technologies coupled with experiences. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 2018 Feb 1;82:1952-60.
2) Appendix contain a lot of types and error which is not expected by scientific standards
3) Table 2 contain typo error, please correct it " Table developed by.." Please correct all the typos present in the paper.
4) In the discussion section, an overview of each introductory subsection is missing in context to the framework and literature review
5) Please provide some statistical evidence of your Framework, at least similar studies
6) Please change the title of the paper, make it more specific, currently, it seems very confusing
7) Conclusion title should change to conclusion and future work and please include the future directions.
Thanks
Author Response
Dear Reviewer2,
Thank you very much for your thoughtful and thorough comments. We much appreciate the opportunity to improve the paper and have aimed to address all of your comments. Please note that in response to your comments we have made major revisions and moved a number of sections within the document. As such, some of your comments may not apply to the same extent to the new version. In the following, we respond to each of your comments, marked in blue below.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I think the paper improved considerably and it may be published after some minor and mostly editoral amendments which I suggested below.
Check the numbering of particular sections: in my pdf, the section 2. Responsible Research and Innovation and stakeholder inclusion (line 86) is followed directly by section 4. Framework and discussion (line 223). If the section 3 (Methods?) is not needed here, it may be necessary to replace number 4 by 3.
In my opinion, the section: Application: Digital Agriculture Stakeholder in Canada (beginning at line 559) may be also numbered (with 4 or 5, depending of arrangement of previous sections)
Line 663-663, fits rather to Introduction, as it mentions and justifies the need for more sistematc approach.
Tables 1, 2 and 3: Please, check if arranging each of them in horizontal mode, and fitting the columns' width will save some space and make the tebles more comprehensive.
REFERENCES:
I could not find:
Braun et al. 2018,
House of Lords
Li et al. 2014
GOC 2017 - in the text, it is referred as Government of Canada. I hope that after adjusting the paper to the MDPI citation style, the issue will be amended
Author Response
The response is attached.
Sincerely
Hassan Ebrahimi
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
