Creating a Circular Design Workspace: Lessons Learned from Setting up a “Bio-Makerspace”

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper deals with very important problem which is teaching circular design at the university. It provides 12 months experience gained from setting-up a “bio-makerspace” at Ghent University. However, the manuscript is a little bit disorganized. The material needs to be logically rearranged as well as select necessary content.

As the authors show, there is a need to improve teaching in the field of circular / environmental design. However, there are no experiences from other universities showed. Moreover, the methodology part is poorly written, as there is no methodology inside. The authors discuss limitations, but there are rather the methodological gaps and weakness of the study.

The setting-up a “bio-makerspace” is a very good idea. However, the sample of 45 students is very low one to make conclusions, even when we talk about qualitative analysis. In my opinion is too low to create good conclusion. It should be noted that this statement is confirmed by the very low level of the last chapter (chapter 6). Moreover, there is any discussion inside the paper.

Author Response

Kind editors,

Kind reviewers,

Firstly, we would like to thank you for the very insightful revisions made on our article Creating a circular design workspace: lessons learned from setting-up a “bio-makerspace” (ref: sustainability-1505304). We have followed thoroughly your suggestions and implemented them in the resubmitted manuscript. In the following uploaded word document (rebuttal letter), we grouped your most critical feedback thematically and highlighted in blue which specific action has been taken as a follow up. This rebuttal letter specifically follows this structure:

1. General feedback
2. Language, typos, citations etc.
3. State of the art
4. Method
5. Results
6. Discussion
7. Conclusion
8. Further changes

Specifically, the last session comes from the authors willingness to further improve the manuscript. Thanking you again for the revisions, we remain available to answer further questions.

Regards,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments:

The article is interesting and touches on very current topics regarding the concepts of circular economy and sustainability. A very important role for the circular economy is the way in which products are designed and engineered in such a way as to fit in as well as possible with the concept of sustainability.

1. Formulation of the title

the article's title reflects the goal and findings of the research.

2. The importance and usefulness of the research

The use of sustainability and the notion of circular economy in education and research has resulted in the topic's importance and relevance. At the same time sustainable campus development, energy consumption, mobility, and other issues are all being addressed.

3. Originality and novelty

The originality lies in addressing a gap in the literature on the collection and evaluation of data on the effects of including a bio makerspace in a circular academic workspace. The paper also outlines what needs to be done to implement a bio makerspace in design workspaces.

I would suggest to the authors to present other similar studies (if any) that would present this integration of a bio makerspace. Possibly if there are design offices where students can practice learning design according to the rules of the circular economy.

4. Scientific quality

The scientific quality of the article is given by the way in which the results of the study were evaluated, in particular by the way in which Grounded theory and QUAGOL were applied to evaluate the opportunity to build a bio-makerspace.

I suggest that the authors better explain how Table 4 was built and how the threshold values were set.

It would be interesting to study how this makerspace can persuade design offices to use recyclable materials more often.

5. The style of expression

The paper is well-written and easy to understand. The points are given in a logical and simple manner. The rules of grammar and punctuation are followed. The work's graphic presentation is good.

6. Use of References

An important point of the work is represented by the bibliographic references, which are citations from peer-reviewed publications all around the world. References are taken from recent issues of relevant journals.

Additional comments:

I recommend that the authors provide studies on the economic, sociological, and environmental effects of implementing circular economy concepts, if possible. Or in other words in the conclusions to be clearer what would be the benefits of implementing such a bio-makerspace in universities.

Author Response

Kind editors,

Kind reviewers,

Firstly, we would like to thank you for the very insightful revisions made on our article Creating a circular design workspace: lessons learned from setting-up a “bio-makerspace” (ref: sustainability-1505304). We have followed thoroughly your suggestions and implemented them in the resubmitted manuscript. In the following uploaded word document (rebuttal letter), we grouped your most critical feedback thematically and highlighted in blue which specific action has been taken as a follow up. This rebuttal letter specifically follows this structure:

1. General feedback
2. Language, typos, citations etc.
3. State of the art
4. Method
5. Results
6. Discussion
7. Conclusion
8. Further changes

Specifically, the last session comes from the authors willingness to further improve the manuscript. Thanking you again for the revisions, we remain available to answer further questions.

Regards,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The topic of the research is very interesting and up to date.

I suggest to remove the purpose of the paper from the lines 231-236 to the end of the Introduction. 

Line 90. Correct Et. Al. to et al.  Also in other lines.

Line 122. “Circular Economy (CE)”, first described by the Ellen MacArthur foundation" it is not very good statement. Originally the concept exists many years before. I suggest to remove word "first".

 Line 264. Whats is the source of the Figure 3?

 Line 292. Whats is the source of the Figure 4?

I suggest to define hypotheses or research questions for better understanding of the purpose and research process.

It is necessary to correct references in the text according to the Journal requirements, i.r. remove years in brackets.

Author Response

Kind editors,

Kind reviewers,

Firstly, we would like to thank you for the very insightful revisions made on our article Creating a circular design workspace: lessons learned from setting-up a “bio-makerspace” (ref: sustainability-1505304). We have followed thoroughly your suggestions and implemented them in the resubmitted manuscript. In the following uploaded word document (rebuttal letter), we grouped your most critical feedback thematically and highlighted in blue which specific action has been taken as a follow up. This rebuttal letter specifically follows this structure:

1. General feedback
2. Language, typos, citations etc.
3. State of the art
4. Method
5. Results
6. Discussion
7. Conclusion
8. Further changes

Specifically, the last session comes from the authors willingness to further improve the manuscript. Thanking you again for the revisions, we remain available to answer further questions.

Regards,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is improved sufficiently.It will be better if authors can do the revision of spelling errors.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf