Applying a Hydrophilic Modified Hollow Fiber Membrane to Reduce Fouling in Artificial Lungs
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors described the application of using hydrophilic modified hollow fiber membrane to reduce fouling in artificial lungs. Work in present status, after corrections and modification is better. Figures are in good resolution. The errors are rectified, data re-done for clarity and missing components are incorporated in the revised manuscript. Literature looks better than in previous version.
Author Response
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
The authors described the application of using hydrophilic modified hollow fiber membrane to reduce fouling in artificial lungs. Work in present status, after corrections and modification is better. Figures are in good resolution. The errors are rectified, data re-done for clarity and missing components are incorporated in the revised manuscript. Literature looks better than in previous version.
Answer: Thank you for the constructive comments. As per the instruction necessary modifications are done in the manuscript. Figures are converted for better resolution
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors resubmitted the paper " Application of using hydrophilic modified hollow fiber membrane to reduce fouling in artificial lungs”. As in the previous revision, my opinion is that the topic is very interesting and surely has important practical application but the present results (one figure and one table) without any statistical or mathematical modeling of the data are not sufficient for the publication in a high-quality scientific paper. Therefore, my suggestion is to reject papaer in the presented form.
The authors did not answer the following specific comments: Figures and tables are low quality
- Please check if the correct figures were included in the manuscript
- There is a lack of comparison of presented results and available literature.
Author Response
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
The authors resubmitted the paper " Application of using hydrophilic modified hollow fiber membrane to reduce fouling in artificial lungs”. As in the previous revision, my opinion is that the topic is very interesting and surely has important practical application but the present results (one figure and one table) without any statistical or mathematical modeling of the data are not sufficient for the publication in a high-quality scientific paper. Therefore, my suggestion is to reject papaer in the presented form.
Response : Thank you for the reviewer suggestion mathematical modeling is not done in this study as it is a preliminary study. This aspect will be taken care for further research.
The authors did not answer the following specific comments: Figures and tables are low quality
Comment 1
Please check if the correct figures were included in the manuscript
Response1: Necessary corrections are made in the manuscript regarding the figures and tables.
Comment 2
There is a lack of comparison of presented results and available literature.
Response 2: Thank you for reviewer comments as per the instruction necessary modifications are done in the manuscript.
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
As in the previous two revisions, my opinion is that the topic is very interesting and surely has important practical application but the present results (one figure and one table) without any statistical or mathematical modeling of the data are not sufficient for the publication in a high-quality scientific paper. Therefore, my suggestion is to reject paper in the presented form. This research can be published only as preliminary communication and not as the research paper.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
- The clarity of the figures should be improved.
- The Discussions chapter should be improved by reporting the results obtained to those in the literature. What new do these residuals bring?
- Bibliography is a bit old should be cited several articles from the last 5 years.
Reviewer 2 Report
In the paper " Application of using hydrophilic modified hollow fiber membrane to reduce fouling in artificial lungs”, the authors present efficient application of hydrophilic modification of polysulfone membranes to reduce membrane fouling. The topic is very interesting and surely has important practical application. But in my opinion, the present results (one figure and one table) without any statistical or mathematical modeling of the data are not sufficient for publication in a high-quality scientific paper. Therefore, my suggestion is rejected in the presented form.
Besides that, some specific comments are stated below:
- Specific results should be included in abstract
- The novelty of the research should the stated in the introduction section
- Figures and tables are low quality
- Please check if the correct figures were included in manuscript
- Line 143, measuring unit for Kla?
- There is no comparison present results and available literature.
Reviewer 3 Report
The work of Alshammari & Alazmi titled "Application of using hydrophilic modified hollow fiber membrane to reduce fouling in artificial lungs" is concise but should be improved, especially with regard to the editing and quality of presented results.
I found a lot of editorial errors, figures and tables are illegible and unclear, there are lack in references (missing author's names, missing journal's names).
The subject of work is quite interesting, but poor editorial quality makes this work difficult to read and hard to focus on. Results should be presented more clear. So - in my opinion - the work needs to be thoroughly improved.
Reviewer 4 Report
The authors described the application of using hydrophilic modified hollow fiber membrane to reduce fouling in artificial lungs. The idea is interesting, the introduction is well written, but the other parts need seriously improvements. There are faults in the writing (sometimes very long sentences difficult to be understood) and scientifically part also; overall the text is difficult to be followed. Please re-write materials and methods, results and discussions in a clearer way. If the introduction and the other parts were written by different people, the person who wrote the introduction should make the corrections. In addition, please see my specific comments below.
Sometimes you kept more than one space between the end of a sentence and the next one. Please check in the whole text.
Line 49 the sentence “Modified the PSF membrane by immobilizing urea on the membrane surface” does not have a verb
Line 72 – please clearly highlight the novelty of the study at the end of the introduction.
Line 75 – the authors wrote “Fig.1. summarizes the principal characteristics of the three different groups of fibers evaluated in this study.” . Not that is wrong, but I wouldn’t start the materials section with this sentence. I think is better to move it at the end of the section.
Please mention the purity of the substances presented in materials section.
Comment for all figures: they are well designed, but they have very low quality. Please provide higher quality figures. Moreover that figures caption shouldn’t be included in the Figure body, but provided separately immediately under the figure. And once again moreover: I did not see a proper discussion of the Figures in the text. You should discuss the Figures: what they represent, what they show as, what is the meaning of them. This will improve the quality of the discussions and will make the text clearer.
Please describe materials and reagents used in a single section, and the membranes fabrication in a different one. They don’t match together.
Please find a different way to introduce Figure 2 after you finish the discussion about it. Again, remove the figure caption from the figure body.
Lines 108-119 – about which chamber the authors are discussing? That presented in figure 1? I yes this should be clear stated in the text, because the whole paragraph is very confusing.
Line 105 – if “Gas Exchange Experiments” does not have another subheading except “Prepare the chamber”, (that however does not sound good), why they introduced a subheading? Please decide for an appropriate title and do not keep a sub position.
Please write N2 as N2. Check the whole text.
Please write the equations in the journal style (as presented in the template)
Please introduce the Table in the journal format (see template)
Line 172 – this work is not a research proposal, but an article.
The references are not in the template style
Why the authors submitted a version of the manuscript as unpublished material?
