Comprehensive Overview of Homogeneous Gold-Catalyzed Transformations of π-Systems for Application Scientists

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this review, Kolocouris and co-workers have summarized the cases for the gold-catalyzed reactions of nucleophiles with π-systems and described the divergent catalysis for gold (I) and gold (III) complexes and so on. This review provides a detailed description and is valuable for the understanding of gold-catalyzed-reactions. However, lack of complete structure of the article is the major flaw of the review. Therefore, major revisions have to be done before this review could be accepted for publication.

The following are our specific comments in the article:

1.     The title of the article is unappealing. It is suggested to update the title of the review to make it more eye-catching.

2.     In the part of the abstract, you only mention the research contents of this review, which seems a little simple. The content of the abstract should be further enriched.

3.     In the part of keywords, thirteen keywords were used, which will distract the reader from the point of the article. Meanwhile, some keywords used are quite redundant, such as gold(I) and gold(III); allenamides, allenyl carbonyl derivatives and allenyl ethers. Please refine them.

4.     The explanation of gold element in metal chemistry in the introduction is too complicated. It is recommend that this part should be simplified.

5.     The conclusion is essential for a complete article. However, at the end of this review, we regret not to have seen your conclusions. A good summary in conclusion must be supply.

6.    You should check whether properties such as bond angles of a compound meet the requirements for submission to this journal, for example compound 6c (Scheme 6).

7.     Some subheadings should be numbered, such as “General reactivity profile (page 3, line 120), Functionalization with nitrogen nucleophiles (page 4, line 132)”, which is convenient for reader to learn the structure of this article.

8.     Both “Gold-catalyzed functionalization of activated π-systems with a withdrawing group (page 14, line 400)” and “Gold(I)- and gold(III)-π-system complexes in catalysis (page 26, line 681)” are numbered 2.3, please check carefully and correct the sequence number.

9.     Please check all schemes to keep the format consistent, for example, Scheme 22, Scheme 24, Scheme 25, Scheme 29, Scheme 34, Scheme 43, Scheme 45, Scheme 49. Furthermore, it is recommended to adjust the schemes so that the scheme is completely within the page, such as Scheme 55.

10.  The font size of the captions in schemes varies. You'd better check them carefully and correct all in the next revision.

11.  Please see the format in the references. Some references have website addresses at the end, while others not. The format of the references should be unified.

The quality of language is good for this manuscript, only minor editing of English language is required.

Author Response

We highly appreciate your comments to help us improve our manuscript. For the revision, please see the attachment and the revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In this manuscript, the authors summarized the homogeneous gold catalytic transformation in hard-to-reach organic molecules. There were several reviews on similar lines. However, this manuscript covers fundamentals in the introduction part and some of the recent advances in the following sections. This review will be a good reference for gold catalysis in organic synthesis and medicinal chemistry. With this, I recommend this manuscript for publication in Molecules. To improve the quality of the manuscript authors could address the below comments while resubmitting.  

1.     The authors mentioned that the manuscript has three parts. However, all subheadings are within sections 2 to 2.4.5.

2. Page 4 line 132 “Functionalization with nitrogen nucleophiles “is heading. If it is, there is no numbering for it.  

3.     Authors need to provide proper subheading numbers for the entire manuscript.  

4.     R1 and R2 must be superscript in the entire manuscript.

5.     Several space issues in the schemes.

6.  Authors could re-organize Scheme 30.

7. It seems schemes and arrow marks are not uniform authors could provide uniform schemes.

8. It would be more informative if the authors could provide the publication year, substrate scope, and the number of derivatives reported in each scheme.

9. There are several half-headed arrows in the mechanism. Is that a radical pathway? For example; schemes 27, 28, 29, and 35…etc.

10.  Authors could cite Chem. Rev. 2021, 121, 14, 9039–9112 article.

11. The references have several typo errors; for example, ref. 57 “R.S. Patil, M. D.; Liu,” should be “M. D Patil.; R.S. Liu,”

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

We highly appreciate your comments to help us improve our manuscript. For the revision, please see the attachment and the revised manuscript.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for the updated version of this manuscript. I think it is suitable for publication in the journal of Catalysts in its current state.