Seaweed-Based Bioplastics: Data Mining Ingredient–Property Relations from the Scientific Literature

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Attached my comment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Comment 1; “The authors present a paper e Seaweed-Based Bioplastics: Data Mining Ingredient-Property Relations from the Scientific Literature, in which they have explored correlations between components and physicochemical properties of seaweed-based biofilms, considering several articles abstracts of the scientific literature and using natural language processing (NLP) approach. They have discussed about potentialities and limitations of this instrument, trying to find fine-tuning strategies of state-of-the-art language models for advancing the field of seaweed bioplastics. The dealt topic is a new one and it could be of interest for the readers. Results of the paper are well-presented and well-written and for this reason, I suggest accepting the paper in the present form.”

Response 1: We appreciate the reviewer’s positive feedback and recommendation for publication of our manuscript as is. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The study stands out for its innovative application of pre-trained language to explore ingredient-property correlations in seaweed-based bioplastics. The study provides valuable insights into ingredients and relevant properties. However, the practical contribution of these findings (e.g., recommended combinations for new formulations) could be emphasized more strongly. Following, the authors can find some specific comments.

Abstract: maybe some key finding on the seaweed-based bioplastics can be added

Line 35: please used appropriate reference for the sentence “difficult to recycle”. Not all packaging materials face this issue.

Lines 41-42: this statement is quite generic and take misleading information (competition with cultivable soil). As reported by European Bioplastics database, the agricultural area use for bioplastics production is less than 0.073 percent of the global agricultural area (https://www.european-bioplastics.org/bioplastics/feedstock/).

Introduction: a comprehensive state-of-the-art of the topic is missing. Please provide a general overview on what past research have done on this topic (if they are present; if not just state it) and highlight the novelty of your work.

Lines 83-84: can you give an estimation of the two numbers?

Table 1: I think is more appropriate to show the keywords for searching in a equation and not in a table.

Figure 3: please change the material property group “Biodegradability” with “degradability”. From what I see, the only word in this group is “weight loss”, which is not a parameter to assess the biodegradability of a bioplastic.

Table 3: can you resume in each mask the properties that you are referring? In this way it will be easier to read, without referring to the Table 2. Same for Table 5.

Section 3.3: in general, I don’t see a robust support of references with the results obtained by the model. I suggest to provide better confirmation of your finding with some findings by other articles. In addition, the section appears a bit complex and could be simplified. Finally, explaining the technical context of some additives mentioned would improve accessibility for non-specialist readers. 

Discussion: I was expecting a discussion of the results obtained from the identification of the properties and materials of seaweed-based bioplastics. I think from the results obtained you can provide a useful overview of what the model has generated in terms of material properties of bioplastics.

Discussion: I would consider to add a “Limitation” paragraph in this section confirming that the analysis relies only on abstracts and highlighting the advantages and disadvantages compared to using full articles.

Author Response

Please see attached response. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have replied to all my comments, producing a manuscript suitable for publication.