State-of-the-Art of Strategies to Reduce Exhaust Emissions from Diesel Engine Vehicles
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Reviewer´s comments on review manuscript energies-1129241
Judging from the manuscript title, this review manuscript focuses on fuel modification strategies to reduce GHG emissions from diesel vehicles. Abstract mentions other possible actions to enhance this reduction, namely improving the engine´s design. Review itself provides 3 plain text pages to techniques other than fuel modification, while the fuel modification is discussed on 3.5 plain text pages (excl. tables). Thus, review is unbalanced and should either focus on the GHG emissions reduction problem generally (which requires a more complex attitude) while adjusting the title, or deal with fuel modification strategies only. Both options will require a substantial manuscript improvement. Manuscript relevance and significance is questionable and literature selection is doubtful, including numerous autocitations.
At present I do not see enough evidence in the manuscript as to recommend it publishing in Energies. I recommend its rejection. A detailed manuscript assessment is provided below:
Manuscript language level is acceptable, though some style-polishing would be good.
Part 2 of the manuscript is largely off-topic judging by the manuscript title. Moreover, it is in form of plain text which does not attract readers. Likewise, part 3 should be condensed if the review really focuses just on fuel modifications.
Part 4 of the manuscript is again plain text combined with two tables. Author refers to them in a single sentence (line 379, 431). A far more intense inclusion of the information presented in those tables is required in the text; otherwise they can be placed in the appendix.
There are several formatting issues, such as variable font size (lines 283-315), omitted explanation of abbreviations used in tables and missing several bibliographic data in References. Author should carefully check the guide for authors.
Literature selection for a good and independent review should follow a standardized procedure. Author should include a chapter explaining how the literature pre-selection and classification was carried out. There are numerous autocitations and citations of previous co-authors which does not deliver a good impression on this manuscript.
Manuscript relevance and significance: Even this is not an original article but a review, author should explain and highlight the intended contribution to the body of knowledge. There are multiple good review papers on this topic already and only a novel perspective or a sum of relevant findings extracted from recent studies warrants publishing another one. This aspect is missing completely in this manuscript.
Author Response
We would like to thank for the suggestion and comments from the reviewer. We really appreciate the valuable suggestion provided by the reviewer and have tried to incorporate as much as possible. A detailed response to the reviewer comments is provided in the attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
A very well done state-of-the-art review. The article is entirely consistent with the title. I have a few comments:
Formal note: the font should be structured, remove double spaces.
Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 contribute nothing to the article, I suggest removing them.
I suggest adding an index and explanation of acronyms. Most of them are standard for engine science but it will make the text easier to follow.
The author has done a lot of work. There is a lack of recommendations in which direction the research should be done. This information will increase the value of the article significantly.
Author Response
We would like to thank the reviewer for his comments and valuable suggestions which has helped to further improve the quality of the manuscript. A detailed response to his comments are provided below:
The font should be structured, remove double spaces.
- We thank reviewer for this suggestion. We have now omitted double spaces and streamlined the whole manuscript.
Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 contribute nothing to the article, I suggest removing them.
- Figure 1 and figure 2 along with relevant text has been omitted based on reviewers suggestion.
I suggest adding an index and explanation of acronyms. Most of them are standard for engine science but it will make the text easier to follow.
- We have now added list of abbreviations and full form of acronyms are added at the end of the table.
The author has done a lot of work. There is a lack of recommendations in which direction the research should be done. This information will increase the value of the article significantly.
- We have now added the recommendations in the conclusion section of the revised manuscript.
Reviewer 3 Report
Manuscript is OK
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for taking time in reviewing our work and for such an encouraging observation.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Reviewer’s comments on revised review manuscript energies 1129241
Manuscript improved compared to original submission. The share of autocitations was reduced. A major revision is necessary; please see the individual queries below.
General: I would kindly like to ask you to highlight the changes performed in the manuscript in any future revisions. I think such requirement is included in the guide for authors. Just to provide a general answer stating a major manuscript overhaul and inclusion of a more focused discussion is insufficient and means the authors do not value the time and effort of the reviewer spent in the review.
References: Still some formatting issues remain. Even though you may use a dedicated software, a thorough check for bibliographic data completeness is required. Do not rely on the software only.
Manuscript formatting: Even though you claim to have checked everything carefully, the revised manuscript still contains a lot of formatting discrepancies. Please read the guide for authors carefully to avoid future problems with manuscript review.
Author Response
Manuscript improved compared to original submission. The share of autocitations was reduced. A major revision is necessary; please see the individual queries below.
General: I would kindly like to ask you to highlight the changes performed in the manuscript in any future revisions. I think such requirement is included in the guide for authors. Just to provide a general answer stating a major manuscript overhaul and inclusion of a more focused discussion is insufficient and means the authors do not value the time and effort of the reviewer spent in the review.
The authors would again like to thank the reviewer for his comments. We also would like to offer our apologies for not providing the track change version of our revised manuscript. We really appreciate the hard work reviewers do so that we can improve our paper to acceptable level. We now have attached a track change version of original to revision 1 for the reviewer.
References: Still some formatting issues remain. Even though you may use a dedicated software, a thorough check for bibliographic data completeness is required. Do not rely on the software only.
We have checked every reference accordingly to ensure bibliographic data completeness.
Manuscript formatting: Even though you claim to have checked everything carefully, the revised manuscript still contains a lot of formatting discrepancies. Please read the guide for authors carefully to avoid future problems with manuscript review.
The manuscript has been checked and reformatted according to Energies template to ensure there is no formatting discrepancies.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
thank you for providing all I needed to finish my review. I can state a significant improvement of the manuscript. Title modification was beneficial as well. The remaining minor language and formatting issues will be dealt with during manuscript production.
With best regards
Reviewer
