A Novel Fluorescent-Material-Based Simple Method for Sunscreen Evaluation
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Please see the attached document.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
We appreciate your careful review and constructive comments. In accordance with your appropriate suggestions, we have carefully revised the manuscript and conducted experiments wherever possible to support the results obtained by our method with conventional measurements and have greatly improved the quality of the manuscript. We believe the improvement of the revision based on your careful comments would revise your previous your decision on the manuscript.
Please see the attached files for the responses to each comment, the revised manuscript, and the revised supplementary document.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper reports an alternative method to evaluate the sunscreens protection parameter, which measures the fluorescence intensity of transmitted flux. It is interesting to show that the pilot measurement indicates the discrepancy of UV shielding index with transmitted UV energy for commercial sunscreens. The results suggest the importance to set up the authentic and reliable method for the evaluation of widely used sunscreens. It is too bad the present study does not provide side by side comparison with generally used hemispherical integrating sphere, so the conclusion of present method is not so convincing to the readers.
Some suggestions are noted below:
1) Rewrite abstract, it does not clearly summarize the results, also in poor grammar. E.g., too much ‘such’ are used in the paragraph.
2) The abbreviations should be indicated when they first occur and applied through the manuscript. E.g., line 32, what is PA? Rewrite line 32-38, which is too repetitive.
3) What is the fluorescent layer applied to? There are many fluorescent materials with different coefficients. A standard reference should be included in the measurement.
4) Section 6 ‘evaluation of sunscreens’, provide the important results indicating the reliability of present fluorescence method. What is the explanation for higher transmitted UV for SPF 26, 30 compared to SPF 25 in figure 7? It brings question as to it could possibly be the mistake for a special product? What is the selection of ‘commercial sunscreens’? Hence, the side by side comparison of hemispherical integrating sphere measurement should be provided here to validate the present method.
5) English improvement. I suggest the whole manuscript should be revised by native English speaker familiar with this research area.
Few examples:
Line 28-30, “Recently, the awareness of harmful effects of UV rays on human skin has increased because of news reports issuing warnings about increased UV rays as a result of environmental pollution and about their damaging effects to humans.” Better as “Recently the harmful effects of UV rays on human skin have attracted increasing awareness.”
Line 33-34, “Here, Ultraviolet B (UVB) is the radiation that is in the wavelength range of 290–320 nm.” Better as “Ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation lies in the range of 290-320 nm wavelengths.”
Author Response
We appreciate your careful review and constructive comments. In accordance with your appropriate suggestions, we have carefully revised the manuscript and conducted experiments wherever possible to support the results obtained by our method with conventional measurements and have greatly improved the quality of the manuscript. We believe the improvement of the revision based on your careful comments would revise your previous your decision on the manuscript.
Please see the attached files for the responses to each comment, the revised manuscript, and the revised supplementary document.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I recommend this manuscript be published in its current form.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have responded to the reviewer’s comments and made corrections in the manuscript.
Some English improvement:
E.g. Line 125 “This study proposes a layer that includes a fluorescent material placed behind the sample,” Rewrite the sentence.
