Scaling up Action on Urban Sustainable Food Systems in the United Kingdom: Agenda Setting, Networking, and Influence

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors,

The authors report on “Agenda Setting, Networking and Influence: scaling up action on urban sustainable food systems in the United Kingdom" ". The authors focused on improving the potential of city-based initiatives to address the negative impacts of the global food system. They used interviews selecting stakeholders, from the data from 29 of the most active members cites, and the result of their analysis revealed that sustainable food cities (SFC) provided foundations for solutions and inspiration on a major and complex issues.

Nevertheless, the current manuscript provides useful information and represents a valuable contribution about an important subject. The manuscript is generally well written and structure. The authors have provided enough background information and tried to encompass all relevant references in the introduction part and used an appropriate research design and described the methodology section fairly well. The results were nicely presented, which is appealing to the readers. The authors compared and contrasts their findings from the related previous studies.

However, the overall quality of this manuscript can be improved substantially. The written presentation and readability can be improved by simplifying the language, shortening complex sentence structures, correcting many apparent typographical errors and enlisting the aid of an English language editor or editing service.

Please address the above mentioned comments and suggestions, for improving the overall quality of the manuscript. 

Thank you

Author Response

Please find the response to reviewers document attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper addresses an existing gap in the literature but requires revision.

The introduction, methods, and results sections require revision/elaboration/clarification. The discussion is satisfactory with the exception of the additions noted at the end of the line-by-line comments below.

The evidence presented in the introduction to support the importance of the research—and of local food systems--is thin. Studies are merely listed rather than described in lines 36-40. Overall, the introduction needs to be substantially expanded. Methods are inadequately described, as discussed in the line-by-line comments. The results section is choppy, with underdeveloped paragraphs sometimes only two sentences long, inadequately substantiated claims, and vague and/or confusing language.

Lines 60-61 Why study the Sustainable Food Cities program? Are study results potentially generalizable to other such programs in other countries? You introduce the SFC rather abruptly here, without even mentioning what the program is.    Line 75 overseas   Lines 84-86  I get no  sense of what these awards are, their significance, or the criteria used to award them. Expand.   Line 90 Unclear that the program design and delivery plans refer to the SFC and not to local organizations. How did you “assess” them? How did you obtain them? Are they publicly available. How did you assess “perspectives”? How did these data sources shaped your inquiry?   Line 95 Again, what are these “program records”? How did you obtain these records and the records of the 50 member cities? In what format? Are Award applications and progress reports the only documents you analyzed? How did you determine that these 29 member cities had been the most active? What does this mean that they were the “focus” of analysis? How were they treated differently than the other 21 cities?   Line 103 Who conducted these interviews? Were they unstructured or semi-structured interviews? How were they conducted? In person? Over the pohone? Via email?   Lines 107-108 So now you’ve introduced another sample it seems, members of the national program team, who I assume did not represent the 8 cities. This is confusing. How many interviewees were actually local stakeholders and how many were members of the national team?   Lines 109-110 References for software versions?   Line 131 Who “felt” this?   Line 133 How was this determined, the absence of evidence? “Joined-up approach” sounds colloquial.   Lines 135-138 Run-on sentence.   Lines 133 and 138 “Significant” is a weak word. Be more descriptive.   Line 142 What is this “holistic nature”?   Line 143 What is the antecedent of “this”?   Lines 149-153 This paragraph is vague and skeletal. Provide more detail and be more precise in your language.   LIne 155 How so? How does this tracking happen?   Line 160 I assume these are the 29 focal cities? Make that clear. Why call them “member areas” here and not “member cities”? Or are the "50 member cities" in line 96 not really cities but member areas?   Lines 160-161 What do you mean at a “high level”? This is a vague term. Be more specific.   Lines 169-171 What were the problems with the recording/reporting systems? (Why do you switch from “recording" to “reporting”?) Does this data quality issue affect the validity of your results? How were these links between the SFC’s influence and local goals discerned?   Lines 172-173 What is this evidence? These “SFC members” are the member cities or member areas?   Line 177 What is this “SFC Phase”? This is the first time you mention it.   Line 177-184 Short paragraphs here and elsewhere make the text choppy and feel superficial, like bullet points rather than well-developed paragraphs.   Line 181 This is the first mention of a financial analysis. This should be described in the methods section. Was this financial analysis conducted for all 50 cities or just the 29 focal cities? Or all member areas in the SFC? This is unclear.   Line 188 What is “food poverty”? Food insecurity?   Line 193 Again I don’t understand what Phase 2 is, and are these the 29 focal member areas/cities?    LIne 204 Between whom did this sharing of ideas occur? It’s unclear whether it’s occurring at the city level, between member areas/cities, or between the SFC national program and member cities. Again, use a more descriptive word than “significant.”   Lines 215-217 This quote could/should be better integrated. It just dangles at the end of the section.   Lines 219-231 I’d like to see this level of detail and description elsewhere in the results section.   Line 242 Now you use “city members.”  Be consistent, if “member cities,” member areas,” and “city members” all refer to the same entities. If not, make the distinction known.   Line 244 I don’t know what this means, “was presented in parliamentary consultation as making a contribution.”   LIne 254 What are these “case study cities”? Are these the 29 focal cities? Or more likely the 8 cities for which you did interviews? This is totally unclear. Also, the idea of a “case study” introduces another research method which isn’t described in the methods section.   Line 256 What’s the evidence of this burnout and turnover?   Line 258 But did you collect any data for these 11 dormant members or the 5 whose membership was revoked? If not, how can you say this? Was there evidence in the program records?   Line 292 Word choice: marked out.    Discussion: What are the shortcomings of the study? What additional research is needed? What are the implications of study findings for other networks and regions?  

Author Response

Please find our response to reviewers document attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The Authors presented an interesting paper, however I have a pew comments:

The article would gain in value if the literature review was wider. Currently it is not sufficient.

Also the Introduction could be more developed.

The presentation of results lacks clarity. A summarizing table or a diagram would be a good complement to the demonstrated considerations.

The conclusions could be developed as well, referring more to the research results.

Author Response

Please find our response to reviewers document attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf