Circularity for Electric and Electronic Equipment (EEE), the Edge and Distributed Ledger (Edge&DL) Model

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

There are major concerns that need to be addressed by the authors, mainly related to the methodology (e.g. how the conceptual model developed), results, and grammatical errors:

1. The idea of this paper is interesting and novel, although it is lacking scientific rigour. This is perhaps because the methodology has not been described very well. What data (e.g. literature) are collected and used to backup your claims? What's the procedure to collect data?
2. In my opinion, the background is unnecessarily long, especially in explaining the concept of circular economy and EPR which doesn't add much values to the results section which focuses on developing edge&DL system. Making these parts more concise will give the opportunity for the authors to elaborate more on the methodology section.
3. Abstract, Line 17-18: "To achieve this a manufacturer must include EPR as part of..." I don’t think the focus is for a manufacture to include EPR since it is a regulation/directive, but rather they should incorporate information management strategies to comply with the WEEE/EPR directive?
4. The model proposed did not discuss the potential barriers where manufacturers come from a country where transparency is discouraged. Especially many products nowadays come from such countries. Since supply chain is very complex and countries will have different regulations related to information sharing, how the proposed system can handle this problem?
5. Line 340: "Solutions that secure a firm's intellectual property is needed" Please give some examples if available.
6. In the conclusion, line 611 "The validation of the presented conceptual model..." What validation is the authors referring to? If this is a theoretical model, validation process could not take place. I think what the authors meant is the case study focus?
7. The sentence after (Line 612) mentioned "Expanding the validation... other EEE categories". I thought this paper focusing on all EEE categories. If there's only one or a few EEE product(s) studied, it's not stated in this paper.
8. The overarching aim of this paper was repeated three times in the paper (highlighted in bold), which is redundant.

Some grammatical errors observed (list is not exhaustive):

1. Abstract, Line 11, "...the electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) directive..." missing "waste"
2. Abstract, Line 15, "For manufacturers this require that manufacturers..." please rephrase this sentence
3. Section 2.7, Line 274, "Sine the e-Product data..." please fix sine.
4. Section 4.1, Line 387, "... we introduce an edge&DL..." should be past tense
5. Line 476, "Their main circular strategies are recycling om metal" please fix "om"
6. Section 5, Line 590, "Our contribution is a system the lets the manufacturers..." please fix "lets"

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript shows EEE handling direction towards circularity economic by conducting case study. The manuscript seems to be well structured. However, the how to conduct for modeling should be more detailed to understand cases the authors studied. The research article should includes detailed methodologies. In addition, full name of abbreviations that present firstly should be defined (ex, line 25, CEEE). The authors can consider arranging all abbreviations in manuscript.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is well prepared. Its structure is good. The objectives and contributions of the article are clear. The methods used are appropriate and the results obtained are presented and interpreted with clarity. It is possible to congratulate the authors on the achieved results.

However, I think it makes sense to make some minor adjustments to make the article even more compelling and more readable and cited.

Adjustments suggested:

- Provide a more general and shorter, less specific title. It should be more attractive.

- The abstract should summarise the contents more clearly. You should be more specific, shorten an abstract.

- Greater emphasis on product life cycle terminology should be taken.

- The article should refer more to the terminology of sustainable development.

- The structure of the article needs to be improved: sections on discussions and conclusions need to be prepared.

- The literature review needs to be extended. It's insufficient now. The article should be dominated by references from the last three years.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

1. Line 149, the authors responded "Presently the directive has six different categories" Please mention what are these categories.
2. Line 296, the authors responded "licensing is mentioned as one solution". This can be combined with the previous sentence, or elaborate more what licensing means.
3. The authors have elaborated more on the data collection approach. However, it is still unclear how respondents are selected for the interviews. Please refer to qualitative sampling method to justify this.
4. Is the interview semi-structured? if so, what questions were asked in the interviews?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf