Knowledge Structures and Components of Rural Resilience in the 2010s: Conceptual Development and Implications

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please refer to the pdf as follow.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer's general comment:

Brief Summary: This paper focuses on a conceptual review of rural resilience through knowledge structure and knowledge components. The paper can be an important value addition to the existing literature since it employs a relatively novel approach (KCN) in analyzing the nature of the expansion of rural resilience framework in the scientific scholarship.
Broad Comments: Strengths of the paper: This is an interesting paper. It is engaging and fluently written. It displays evidence of considerable work and thought, centred on the issue of rural resilience. The paper’s title is informative and appropriate, and the abstract is well crafted.
The article’s central arguments are clearly presented and well-developed, using appropriate information and sources. The references are generally comprehensive and useful. Rural resilience, as noted in the paper, is a complex problem that has broad-ranging implications, notably on social-ecological systems. Understanding how the concept of resilience is applied in the field of rural studies and how it is related to other similar concepts are a crucial factor in developing evidence-based approaches for formulating key policy issues. This paper aims to make a contribution to this field.

General Response: Dear Reviewer, 

thank you very much for your positive and encouraging feedback on our work. We can see that you have very carefully gone through our manuscript. and we felt extremely thankful for your comments and suggestions to improve our paper. 

We have reflected all of your suggestions as follows:  

Comment 1:

A. Conceptual clarification: The authors used a number of terms and concepts in
analyzing their results such as node, degree, link, link degree, betweenness etc. For making them easily comprehensible, a brief definition (or meaning) of each term could be stated at the first use. The authors, for instance, defined “node” as “keywords” (p. 4, line 149). Similarly, they could define, following Radhakrishnan et al. (2017), “link” as “co-occurrence of a pair of keywords”, “degree” as “total number of links incident on a node” and so on. 

Response 1: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have provided a couple of more clarifications as follows(revised parts are highlighted in yellow).  

The KCNs were constructed as undirected, unweighted networks using R (3.5.2) software [29]. Since our focus is on the co-evolving pattern of connectedness (i.e., the overall position of keywords), we applied unweighted network analysis rather than weighted network for calculating betweenness centrality [see also 30] and degree centrality. In our approach, degree represents the total number of links incident on the node, and betweenness centrality indicates the number of times the keywords (i.e., nodes) is included in the shortest paths between all pairs of nodes in the keyword network [20]. Although unweighted networks contain less information than their weighted counterparts [20], they can be analyzed with more ease and efficiency than the latter [31].

We investigated the characterization of nodes (keywords), links (the co-occurrence of the words), and network structure in the rural resilience literature mainly based on degree and betweenness centrality measures with the R package of igraph [32].

Comment 2: 

Conclusion: A conclusion at the end of the paper can help the reader understand the significance of the research. The paper can be better structured if the authors add a conclusion by summarizing their findings, offering a contribution to the field, and suggesting further research on the topic. In its present form, the last paragraph of the paper (p. 11, lines 345-355) can be a part of a new “Conclusion” section.

Response 2: 

Thank you very much for your suggestion. We suggested, we have added the conclusions part as follows: 

5. Conclusions

Climate change, resilience, vulnerability, adaptation, and management are found to be critical concepts that have shaped the knowledge trend of rural resilience literature in 2010s, which highlights rural resilience should be embedded in systems concepts, which highlights nonlinear changes and interdependencies within a social-ecological system across scales [56, 57]. Our systematic review of the rural resilience studies finds that rural resilience assessment is often process-centered and entails systems-oriented learning for enhancing the functioning of ecological or social systems; this indicates a strong focus on resilience thinking. Further, community resilience is found to be an interesting knowledge component that characterizes rural resilience literature toward the end of 2010s. Community resilience in rural contexts indeed possesses great potential for encouraging community-based resource management systems, and is the subject of future research.

There are only few rural resilience assessments, however, that rely on empirical evidence based on field-tested work, and only some studies adopt a clear trans-disciplinary approach. Therefore, a more expanded review of the literature is needed to examine evidence-based rural resilience assessment tools and trans-disciplinary approaches. Despite the limitations of the study, we hope our efforts in reviewing rural resilience literature contribute to providing more comprehensive analytical lens that combine different framings, concepts, language, and minimize the chance for miscommunications across different academic disciplines [58].

Specific Comments: 

P. 3, line 100: to clarity ----- to clarify

--> Thank you for your keen observation. We have revised the part. For details of the changes reflecting your specific comments, please see attached the revised manuscript.

P. 3, line 110: Figure 2.1.1 ----- Figure 1

--> Thank you for your keen observation. We have revised the part. 

P. 3, line 110: The title of the Figure currently is “Data collection”, which seems to be not so much relevant. A more appropriate title could be “Methodological flowchart”.

--> Thank you for your keen observation. We have revised the part. 

P. 3, line 119: 2.1.2 Metrics of keyword ----- 2.2.1 Metrics of keyword

P. 4, line 133: 2.1.3 Systematic review ----- 2.2.2 Systematic review

--> Thank you for your keen observation. We have revised the part. 

P. 4, lines 139-144: These two paragraphs seem to be unrelated to the preceding arguments of that section. The authors should have a coherent narrative here.

--> Thank you for your keen observation. This part was an explanation written in the sample template provided by the journal, and we have forgotten to remove it before submitting. Now, it is removed. Thanks again. 

P. 7, line 213: These results of these ----- The results of these

--> Thank you for your keen observation. We have revised the part accordingly. 

P. 9, lines 251-2: This is an example of an equation:. ----- This sentence is not complete. Which equation? Mention the said equation here.

--> Thank you for your keen observation. This part was an explanation written in the sample template provided by the journal, and we have forgotten to remove it before submitting. Now, it is removed. Thanks again. 

P. 10, line 273: Climate change, natural disasters, financial crisis are described ----- Climate change, natural disasters, and financial crisis are described

--> Thank you for your keen observation. We have revised the part accordingly. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Interesting conceptual analysis of the very important agricultural sector and current global concerns about resilience.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

thank you very much for your positive comments on our work. We will make sure the paper demonstrates clearly defined contribution to the field in the course of revising it. Thanks again. 

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors presented the knowledge structure and the components of rural resilience - conceptual development and consequences. The topic presented in the manuscript is interesting, but the manuscript has many disadvantages.

What's new in this manuscript? Why is the subject matter so important and new? Who can benefit from this type of research?

What are the directions for the future, e.g. for in-depth research, analysis?

Figure 3 is hardly visible.

Table 2 name is too long (line 171-176). Why a footnote in the name?

There are two times "references".

The footnotes are made incorrectly (see e.g. line 319, 330, 333, 339, 404, 408 and others).

Why write the year 2010 in the title of the manuscript? I understand that the literature review of the articles has been done since 2010, but why write this in the title of the manuscript?

The source of tables 2 and 3 is too long, unclear.

DOI is missing from the literature list.

In my opinion, the methodology is missing in the table (pages 14-16). What was the methodology of these articles, eg SLR (Systematic Literature Review), statistical methods, correlation etc.? The current record is very simple and gives only basic information (authors, article title, year, journal).

Author Response

Reviewer's general comment:

The authors presented the knowledge structure and the components of rural resilience - conceptual development and consequences. The topic presented in the manuscript is interesting, but the manuscript has many disadvantages.

Authors' Response: 

Thank you very much for your precious time on reviewing our manuscript. We hope that you find our revision (that reflects three reviewers' comments) much more improved. Details of revision reflecting your comments are as follows: 

Comment 1:

What's new in this manuscript? Why is the subject matter so important and new? Who can benefit from this type of research?

Response 1: 

Thank you very much for your question. As stated in Introduction, this research may benefit many researchers in the field of rural sustainability by discussing the changes in approaching sustainability dynamics in rural contexts with the concept of resilience. Before 2010s, rural sustainability was merely seen interrelated with sustainable natural resource management practice and rural livelihoods, whereas the recent views (our findings) have started to recognize other critical drivers such as economic disparity, political instability, global climate change, and biodiversity loss. All of these are well summarized in our Introduction part, but we have also added the conclusion part to re-summarize our contribution to the field. 

5. Conclusions

Climate change, resilience, vulnerability, adaptation, and management are found to be critical concepts that have shaped the knowledge trend of rural resilience literature in 2010s, which indicates rural sustainability dynamics should be embedded in systems concepts highlighting nonlinear changes and interdependencies within a social-ecological system across scales [56, 57]. Our systematic review of the rural resilience studies finds that rural resilience assessment is often process-centered and entails systems-oriented learning for enhancing the functioning of ecological or social systems; this indicates a strong focus on resilience thinking. Further, community resilience is found to be an interesting knowledge component that characterizes rural resilience literature toward the end of 2010s. Community resilience in rural contexts indeed possesses great potential for encouraging community-based resource management systems, and is the subject of future research.

Comment 2:

What are the directions for the future, e.g. for in-depth research, analysis?

Response 2: 

Thank you very much for your comment. We have provided relevant contents in our Conclusions part as follows: 

Climate change, resilience, vulnerability, adaptation, and management are found to be critical concepts that have shaped the knowledge trend of rural resilience literature in 2010s, which indicates rural sustainability dynamics should be embedded in systems concepts highlighting nonlinear changes and interdependencies within a social-ecological system across scales [56, 57]. Our systematic review of the rural resilience studies finds that rural resilience assessment is often process-centered and entails systems-oriented learning for enhancing the functioning of ecological or social systems; this indicates a strong focus on resilience thinking. Further, community resilience is found to be an interesting knowledge component that characterizes rural resilience literature toward the end of 2010s. Community resilience in rural contexts indeed possesses great potential for encouraging community-based resource management systems, and is the subject of future research.

There are only few rural resilience assessments, however, that rely on empirical evidence based on field-tested work, and only some studies adopt a clear trans-disciplinary approach. Therefore, a more expanded review of the literature is needed to examine evidence-based rural resilience assessment tools and trans-disciplinary approaches. Despite the limitations of the study, we hope our efforts in reviewing rural resilience literature contribute to providing more comprehensive analytical lens that combine different framings, concepts, language, and minimize the chance for miscommunications across different academic disciplines [58].

Comment 3:

Figure 3 is hardly visible.

Response 3: 

Thank you very much for your comment. We have provided Figures 1S-3S with increased resolution together with our manuscript. 

Comment 4:

Table 2 name is too long (line 171-176). Why a footnote in the name?

Response 4:

Thank you very much for your comment. We have moved the second sentence of the table caption into the results part to address the issue. 

Comment 5:

There are two times "references".

Response 5:

Thank you very much for your comment. We have deleted the second "refences".

Comment 6:

The footnotes are made incorrectly (see e.g. line 319, 330, 333, 339, 404, 408 and others).

Response 6:

We really appreciate your keen observation. We have addressed all the errors with regard to references. (Please see attached the revised manuscript)

Comment 7:

Why write the year 2010 in the title of the manuscript? I understand that the literature review of the articles has been done since 2010, but why write this in the title of the manuscript?

Response 7:

Thank you for your question. We put "2010s" as our study demonstrates the overall knowledge trend and characteristics of the decade. We made it clear in both Introduction and Conclusions in our revising process. 

Comment 8: The source of tables 2 and 3 is too long, unclear.

Response 8: 

Thanks for your comment. We provided clarification and discussion of important findings in tables 2 and 3 in the Results section.

Comment 9: DOI is missing from the literature list.

Response 9:  Thank you very much for your comment. We added DOI to all references. 

Comment 10:

In my opinion, the methodology is missing in the table (pages 14-16). What was the methodology of these articles, eg SLR (Systematic Literature Review), statistical methods, correlation etc.? The current record is very simple and gives only basic information (authors, article title, year, journal).

Response 10:

Thank you very much for your comment. We provided a methodological flowchart and explanations in our manuscript, and we have also provided details of SLR in Appendix 1. Please refer to our manuscript and appendix attached. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

In the current version I accept the manuscript. Good luck!