Research on Higher Education during the COVID-19 in the Gulf Cooperation Council: An Overview of Publications in the Journal Sustainability
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The present paper has great implications for higher education research under COVID 19 situation. Because of COVID 19, in many universities online learning or blending teaching plays a very critical role, which include for international students. I think that the content of this paper would be more convincing if the author can choose several typical courses, especially the engineering courses, to analyze the characteristics of the Blending Teaching Style during the COVID 19 period，and when choosing samples of teachers, it is also meaningful to distinguish the categories of courses, such as liberal arts and engineering.
Author Response
First we would like to thank you for your constructive feedbacks. The paper doesn't indeed focus on specific typical course as it is on paper published within Sustainability during COVID 19. Indeed looking at specific courses would be interesting but for instance we tried to identify trends in published research during COVID 19 in the GCC. We added at the end of section 3.2, l. 236-244, information on the field the researches within which the selected researches were conducted. However we do agree with you on the importance of these aspects when conducting HE research while the present review aim at identifying challenges, countries where research were conducted, gaps in the research as well as proposition emerging from these researches for HE.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The findings could not represent GCC on this topic. Only one journal resource. Very limited resources, limited findings, and less contribution. Need more data resources. The findings presentation is not interesting. Quantitative data are dominantly presented.
Author Response
We would like first to thank you for your constructive feedback and comments. The present review was conducted in agreement with Sustainability editorial board. This choice was made as the article was written for Sustainability special issue Impact of Covid-19 on Students and Teachers in Higher Education Institutions. Proposals and Policies for Improvement. However, we do agree that this is a limitation and included it in the article's method and discussion sections (lines 74 to 78 and lines 382 to 386).
The findings result from the included research and aim at identifying common trends among the selected articles.
The data are mainly quantitative as the methodology revolves around a quantitative approach. The selected articles are quantitative research.
Please find attached the revised parts of the article.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
In this study the authors attempt to give a systematic review on research regarding higher education in the Gulf Cooperation Council during COVID-19. While I believe this to be a topic of considerable importance, I have a major concern regarding the methodology of this systematic review that must be addressed.
Major comment
The main issue I have with this manuscript is the fact that a systematic review was done by systematically analysing exclusively papers from a single journal, even though the topic of higher education is covered by a large number of high quality journals. It is especially troubling that this journal is Sustainability - the same journal in which the authors are attempting to publish their article. This inevitably introduces a serious publication bias into the analysis.
Since the topic the authors are analysing is extremely interesting and the review otherwise potentially communicates important implications, it is imperative that the authors conduct the systematic analysis correctly.
The authors must broaden their search to include relevant databases - Scopus and Web of Science are usually acceptable for a wide range of fields. PubMed (Medline) is another good resource for the biomedical field, which frequently has its specific challenges in higher education. When searching larger databases, I would strongly suggest further specifying the search terms and utilizing more complex search operators, otherwise the initial input of studies will be too large for reasonable screening. The authors should also adjust the title, abstract and methodology accordingly.
Minor comments
1) Overall, the text would benefit from a thorough language revision. Most of the text is understandable, but there are numerous minor grammar mistakes that are distracting when reading the text (e.g. line 114 "in line with to" instead of "in line with", line 133 "were having" instead of "had", etc.).
2) Lines 80 - 101: this is mostly general knowledge and explains the difference between a regular/traditional review and a systematic review. I believe this part can be completely removed from the manuscript, or signifcantly reduced.
3) Figure 1 - in the flow chart, the authors should write the number of papers excluded for each particular reason (number excluded due to data not being collected from non-GCC participants, number excluded due to not being related to education, and number excluded due to both of these criteria). In general, please check once again that the flow chart adheres to the PRISMA flow diagram (PRISMA_2020_flow_diagram_new_SRs_v1.docx (live.com)).
4) Figures 2 - 5: On their own, each of these figures provides little new information. I would highly encourage the authors to condense this into one figure with multiple panels or to consider another way of conveying the same information more efficiently. Of course, this should be done after extending the analysis to studies published in journals other than Sustainability.
5) Figures 7 - 10: I suppose that some studies fit in more than one category, which is why the number of counts in these figures exceeds the number of studies analyzed. However, this should be clearly communicated either in the figure description or visually in the graph itself (once again, the authors should consider a more effective way of communicating this information than bar graphs).
6) Results - generally, it would be interesting to report which fields of higher education were analyzed in these papers (e.g. Engineering, Biomedicine, Informatics, etc.). Perhaps there were some specific issues in certain fields that should be highlighted.
7) Discussion - overall, I feel that the discussion would benefit from a more detailed comparison between issues identified in the GCC and issues identified in other regions, i.e. it would be benefitial for the reader to understand what specific challenges in higher education existed in the GCC during COVID.
Author Response
Major comment
The main issue I have with this manuscript is the fact that a systematic review was done by systematically analyzing exclusively papers from a single journal, even though the topic of higher education is covered by a large number of high-quality journals. It is especially troubling that this journal is Sustainability - the same journal in which the authors are attempting to publish their article. This inevitably introduces a serious publication bias into the analysis.
Since the topic the authors are analysing is extremely interesting and the review otherwise potentially communicates important implications, it is imperative that the authors conduct the systematic analysis correctly.
The authors must broaden their search to include relevant databases - Scopus and Web of Science are usually acceptable for a wide range of fields. PubMed (Medline) is another good resource for the biomedical field, which frequently has its specific challenges in higher education. When searching larger databases, I would strongly suggest further specifying the search terms and utilizing more complex search operators, otherwise the initial input of studies will be too large for reasonable screening. The authors should also adjust the title, abstract and methodology accordingly.
Response to Major comment:
We would like first to thank you for your constructive feedback and comments. The present review was conducted in agreement with Sustainability editorial board. This choice was made to focus on articles published in Sustainability journal as the article was written for Sustainability special issue Impact of Covid-19 on Students and Teachers in Higher Education Institutions. Proposals and Policies for Improvement. However, we do agree that this is a limitation and highlighted this limitation it in the article's method and discussion sections (lines 74 to 78 and lines 382 to 386).
We do also believe that the findings of this article have the potential to address highly interesting topics wich could have important implication, we underlined in the discussion that the restriction to one journal is a limitation and that for the conclusion to be confirm further research in additional database is necessary.
The title already specifies that this is a review of publication in Sustainability.
Please find attached the revised parts of the article.
Minor comments
- Overall, the text would benefit from a thorough language revision. Most of the text is understandable, but there are numerous minor grammar mistakes that are distracting when reading the text (e.g. line 114 "in line with to" instead of "in line with", line 133 "were having" instead of "had", etc.).
Response to Minor comment 1: the highlighted points on lines 114 and 113 have been corrected and further corrections have been made, please see the attached revised version of the article.
2) Lines 80 - 101: this is mostly general knowledge and explains the difference between a regular/traditional review and a systematic review. I believe this part can be completely removed from the manuscript, or signifcantly reduced.
Response to Minor comment 2: this part has been summarized and is now from lines 84 to 91.
3) Figure 1 - in the flow chart, the authors should write the number of papers excluded for each particular reason (number excluded due to data not being collected from non-GCC participants, number excluded due to not being related to education, and number excluded due to both of these criteria). In general, please check once again that the flow chart adheres to the PRISMA flow diagram (PRISMA_2020_flow_diagram_new_SRs_v1.docx (live.com)).
Response to Minor comment 3: the flow chart has been amended and the suggested information added. One further excluded section have been added alongside non-GCC participants and not being related to education, this section is GCC education other than higher education, please see the attached revised version of the article.
4) Figures 2 - 5: On their own, each of these figures provides little new information. I would highly encourage the authors to condense this into one figure with multiple panels or to consider another way of conveying the same information more efficiently. Of course, this should be done after extending the analysis to studies published in journals other than Sustainability.
Response to Minor comment 4: .
5) Figures 7 - 10: I suppose that some studies fit in more than one category, which is why the number of counts in these figures exceeds the number of studies analyzed. However, this should be clearly communicated either in the figure description or visually in the graph itself (once again, the authors should consider a more effective way of communicating this information than bar graphs).
Response to Minor comment 5: indeed for figures 7 to 10, some analyzed studies fit more than one category, a note has been added below the figure providing additional information on this issue.
6) Results - generally, it would be interesting to report which fields of higher education were analyzed in these papers (e.g. Engineering, Biomedicine, Informatics, etc.). Perhaps there were some specific issues in certain fields that should be highlighted.
Response to Minor comment 6: data on the fields in higher education covered within the selected papers. It appears that there is no predominance for a specific field. It also appears that cross-sectional papers represent a high proportion of research focus within the selected papers. A section on this topic has been added in the results at the end of section 3.2, please see in the attach corrected paper.
7) Discussion - overall, I feel that the discussion would benefit from a more detailed comparison between issues identified in the GCC and issues identified in other regions, i.e. it would be beneficial for the reader to understand what specific challenges in higher education existed in the GCC during COVID.
Two paragraphs has been added highlighting the main trends in Higher Education in Europe and also with evolution and trends in Asia l.321.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
You need to argue issues related to your research question in the introduction part. I don't see precisely why you need to investigate these research questions. As part of the Introduction, a theoretical review dealing with your focus investigation or theoretical framework on how you are seeing 'Research on Higher Education in a crisis should be provided. I think this is important to provide the audience with community understanding and to justify what you are investigating.
In the discussion part, it should be discussed and rationalized by discussing previous research and theoretical analysis, and how the findings change with the trend before covid. And what does it mean by the different findings across years of publication, across countries, and so on?
Implication; It does not specifically tell the implication of your research findings. It is quite general. And you need to tell the audience, how this research finding implicates Higher education in the participated countries and international communities based on your research context.
Please provide Conclusion.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
please find attached the responses to the comments.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Overall, the authors made some improvements to their manuscript, but failed to address several points listed in my previous review report. I would highly encourage the authors to fully address all the points raised in this review report.
Major comment
Even though the authors responded to my major comment regarding the fact that all the reviewed studies were from a single journal, they did not address the main issue behind my comment. While I appreciate the clarification on the authors intentions and understand that the choice to include only Sustainability as a source was done in agreement with the editorial board, this does not address the main methodological problem which arises from the fact that such a vast number of studies were excluded a priori. The authors are introducing a very obvious bias in their research, one which could easily be avoided by a different study design. The entire point of a systematic review is to avoid or significantly reduce selection bias when picking the studies. Stating that this is merely a limitation of the study does little to help in this regard, though it is appreciated that the authors now state this more explicitly in the paper.
In brief, the paper in this form is not a systematic review, but rather an overview of papers in Sustainability using methodology similar to that of a systematic review. There is nothing inherently wrong with the paper essentially being a systematically conducted overview and I have no problem with it being classified as a regular review paper within a special issue. However, the authors must communicate this much more clearly to their readers.
There are several aspects that must be rewritten very clearly before this paper could be recommended for publication:
1) Title:
change "Systematic Review of Publications in Sustainability" to "Overview of Publications in the Journal Sustainability"
2) Abstract:
line 13 - change "systematic review" to "overview"
3) Introduction:
line 54 - change "systematic review" to "detailed overview" (or "comprehensive overview")
line 66 - change "systematic review" to "detailed overview"
4) Methods:
Rewrite lines 71 - 101 to make it clear that this study gives a detailed/comprehensive overview of studies on higher education published in the journal Sustainability during the COVID-19 pandemic using the systematic methodology and reporting it according to PRISMA guidelines.
5) Also check the rest of the text and rewrite any other parts necessary to conform with the aforementioned changes.
Minor comments
1) Even though the authors somewhat improved the language in the overall text, the authors should recheck the newly written parts of the text, which would once again benefit from a language revision.
2) The authors failed to address Minor comment 4 in my previous review report and no changes were incorporated in the manuscropt regarding this point. Since Figure 2, 3, 5 and 6 convey very little information and te authors are already communicating the exact same information in the text, the authors shoudl remove these figure from the manuscript. Figure 4 is the only figure in this segment of the paper that conveys more than three pieces of information and is overall acceptable.
3) Since the paper now includes a paragraph discussing the methodological limitation of the study (lines 411 - 415), the headline "4.1. Limitations" has become somewhat confusing. The authors should rewrite the headline to clearly state that they are discussing the limitations found in the analyzed literature, not the limitations of their own study.
4) Table 1 - in general, there seem to be some formatting issues (the publication years are in two rows). Furthermore, there are spelling errors in the new (red) parts of the text: "qquestionnaire", "toand", "rethe striction"
5) References - there is a double comma in references 52 and 56. The authors should recheck that all references are written correctly.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
please find the response to the comments in the attached document
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have adequately addressed my previous comments.
There are a few minor mistakes that can probably be resolved in the copyediting phase:
lines 94 - 98: the reference numbers are written incorrectly: [1819] [20-2223] [24, 2526]
line 100: "27gaps" is written together
line 174: There should be blank spaces before and after "=" (n = 17, not n=17)
line 428: Full stop is missing at the end of the sentence. Also, Springer is a publisher, while Scopus and Web of Science are databases.
line 605: "FStrengthsts" should be corrected to "F Strengths"
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
please find the answer to the comments attached below,
thank you again for your constructive comments during this review process.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
