Systematic Literature Review of MBSE Tool-Chains

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper presents a review of the works in the literature dealing with the MBSE method. The paper is well structured. However, even if the analysis of the literature is discussed, the authors have not focused enough on the research lines to deepen in the future.

Please, add the development lines of the research in this field.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you very much for your review,  we add suggestions for the future research of MBSE tool-chains in the conclusions chapter.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper provides a comprehensive literature review of MBSE tool chains, which is quite interesting and valuable for the readers. The article shows important trends of the existing studies and has the potential to find new research topics. On the other hand, it was a bit difficult for the reviewer to understand the main aim and value of this study. Therefore, the reviewer suggests that the authors improve the manuscript based on the following comments.

Major comments
- It is not so easy to understand the differences between MBSE and MBSE tool chains, and between tool chains and MBSE tool chains. This makes it difficult to understand the flow of lines 71-84. The reviewer would appreciate it if the authors improved their description and the flow in the last parts of the introduction.
- What is the main profit of this paper? While it is interesting to know the trends of the existing studies, the reviewer has problems understanding what would be expected from this result. For example, could the authors propose what kind of studies should be done in the future?

Minor comments
Introduction
- l.19: Please exclude a period from 'phases." [1].'
L. 21: "etc" may not be appropriate for academic papers.
- l.31: "Compared with others," it may be beneficial to list the examples of others.
- l.60: "it is important to understand" Are the authors discussing the importance of understanding as academic research or for those who will use it for the practical purpose?
- If the authors of a reference are multiple, please respect it in the manuscript (e.g., Asplund [14] should be Asplund et al. [14] in line. 76).

Research methodology
- l.139: It is beneficial to clarify when the authors did the search process (e.g., yy/mm/dd).
- Aren't the allocations of the literature in RQ 2, 3, and 4 subjective? Will the same result be obtained if other people categorize?

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you very much for your review, I will reply to your suggestions one by one:

1. MBSE、tool-chain and MBSE tool-chains have been introduced in the Introduction(lines 15-29). I optimize the flow of lines 71-84, this section enumerates some scholars' surveys, which can only be part of MBSE tool-chains, indicating that there is currently a lacking survey for MBSE tool-chains.
2. We add suggestions for the future research of MBSE tool-chains in the Conclusions.
3. All the minor comments have been revised.
4. In the limitations chapter, the deadline has been specified.
5. We have made a comprehensive summary of the MBSE tool-chains through RQ 2, 3, And 4, and other peoples' categorization will be within our summary.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper reviews MBSE tool-chains literature and identifies its related research areas, research types and main research contributions.

The topic is very relevant to both academicians and practitioners.

The paper is generally well written and the summary of the literature review findings is clear and insightful. 

The authors already pointed some of the paper weaknesses, in particular, missing some relevant paper by strictly following one mentioned protocol. This is indeed an issue since this may influence the big picture drawn by the authors. Therefore, they might need to double check, if changing the protocol will lead to substantial change in the conclusions (or not).

There seem to be some little redundancy between findings summary (section 3) and detailed analysis of the results (section 4).There should be a clear difference between general overview and detailed analysis.

What might need to be discussed further are the research perspectives based on the detailed analysis. Several interesting insights were drawn by the authors, such as modelling to build a high-level understanding of the problem, meta-modelling is the most commonly used approach, contributions focused on frameworks, sectorial analysis.
What recommendations shall the author provide for future research based on these insights?
I think this part is very important in the paper and should be extended.    

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you very much for your review, I will reply to your suggestions one by one:

1. I agree with you that more relevant papers would make the analysis more accurate, but "MBSE", "Tool-chain" is the core keywords, the number of omissions is very small. In the future, as the scope of research and the new research direction appears, the addition of new papers may lead to different analysis results.
2. I have made some adjustments to the content of the findings summary (section 3). I only state the analysis results, and reduce some subjective judgments to reduce redundancy.
3. I have added suggestions for the future research of MBSE tool-chains in the conclusions chapter.

Reviewer 4 Report

A very interesting article on modern topics. A very good approach to creating a review, very interesting combinations of research results, after minor corrections to emphasize the full professionalism of the authors:

1. Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 14 and 15 show different font sizes. The drawings were originally prepared with the same font size, then the drawings were reduced in size. It is a good idea to predict the size of the drawings when determining the font size in the charts.
2. Figure 7: Error in the word mathematics.
3. Figure 15, 17: The font size in the drawing is definitely too large, as well as the font size in the drawing is similar in size to the caption under the drawing.

Author Response

Thanks for your review, I have optimized the illustrations in the article, but because the images show different content, there is no guarantee that all font sizes will be the same.