Present and Future Perspectives for Biocides and Antifouling Products for Stone-Built Cultural Heritage: Ionic Liquids as a Challenging Alternative
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I have completed my review of "Present and future perspectives for biocides and antifouling products for stone built cultural heritage: Ionic liquids as a challenging alternative" In general, the topic is very interesting for the scientific community. However, the text is difficult to understand, and a revision of a native english is necessary.
Author Response
Reviewer nr. 1:
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
I have completed my review of "Present and future perspectives for biocides and antifouling products for stone built cultural heritage: Ionic liquids as a challenging alternative" In general, the topic is very interesting for the scientific community. However, the text is difficult to understand, and a revision of a native english is necessary.
Response:
Authors would like to thank you for your suggestion. Following your suggestions the manuscript was deeply revised and in particular language revision was performed by a native English American, namely Mrs. Sherron Collins. Her name was introduced in the Acknowledgments section.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This is an interesting review regarding the use of biocides and antifouling products for protection of stone built cultural heritage.
Some comments:
- Note the use of E.g. remove “.” in the title; try to reduce the use of “” in the whole text, e.g. “Safe by Design”, “green”, too often use of such punctuation makes no sense for the core concept of the review article.
- Please avoid the use personal pronouns in the beginning of a paragraph. E.g. line 61 and line 77.
- Figure legends are in general insufficient, e.g. in Fig. 1, what do the arrows mean? What is the logic to put Temperature, CO2 in the image? Shall text explanation be enough?
- Note the table style of Table 1, and please add advantages and disadvantages
- Line 141-152, use regular text style (a paragraph) to introduce the definitions of biofilms biocides..
- 5, interpretation (detailed figure legend) is needed
- I suggest the authors to delete the figures which are introducing compounds or put them together in a single figure and use a, b, c to cite and describe them
Author Response
Reviewer nr. 2:
First of all, Authors would like to thank the reviewer for his/her useful suggestions. Detailed response are specified below.
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
This is an interesting review regarding the use of biocides and antifouling products for protection of stone built cultural heritage.
Thank you! Following the reviewers comments we deeply modified the manuscript in the structure and language.
Some comments:
Note the use of E.g. remove “.” in the title; try to reduce the use of “” in the whole text, e.g. “Safe by Design”, “green”, too often use of such punctuation makes no sense for the core concept of the review article.
The use of “ “ was reduced both in the abstract and in the whole text.
Please avoid the use personal pronouns in the beginning of a paragraph. E.g. line 61 and line 77.
Done
Figure legends are in general insufficient, e.g. in Fig. 1, what do the arrows mean? What is the logic to put Temperature, CO2 in the image? Shall text explanation be enough?
Figure legends were modified and expanded. We hope that now are more clear.
Note the table style of Table 1, and please add advantages and disadvantages
The style of Table 1 was modified. Advantages and disadvantages of the methods and products are reported in Table 2 of the modified manuscript.
Line 141-152, use regular text style (a paragraph) to introduce the definitions of biofilms biocides..
This part was modified
5, interpretation (detailed figure legend) is needed
Done! All the figure legends have been deeply modified and expanded
I suggest the authors to delete the figures which are introducing compounds or put them together in a single figure and use a, b, c to cite and describe them.
The compounds and schemes shown in Figures 8 and 9, respectively, cannot be unified. They deal with different series of Ionic Liquids. Further, the first demonstrates the dependence of bioactivity as function of the anions, while the latter highlights the dependence from cations. The figures regarding ILs compounds and the corresponding legends (Figures 7-9) have been modified to make them more understandable to readers and taking into account the multidisciplinary nature of the present review.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
comments:
- please ensure that captions are on the same page as pictures (Fig 1).
- table 1 should be spanning over full width of the document. The formating looks weird. The formating of tab 2 is recommended.
- I doubt that a question is a good header (Chemical products... ?).
- Why is ECOSUSTAINABLE written bold ? thats a word, not an abbreviation.
In principle a nice overview paper, however, it does not really deeply penetrate the topic of new technologies, neither it is a real meta-research about publications in the field.
As such, i recommend to extend the article by the mentioned aspects (going more deep into the new technologies, meta-research about current practice), as well as adding examples of employment of the new methods.
I plead for minor revision.
Author Response
Reviewer nr. 3:
First, Authors would like to thank the reviewer for the useful suggestions that allow to improve our manuscritpt.
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Please ensure that captions are on the same page as pictures (Fig 1).
Done
Table 1 should be spanning over full width of the document. The formating looks weird. The formating of tab 2 is recommended.
Done
I doubt that a question is a good header (Chemical products... ?)
The title of the paragraph was changed in “Choice of suitable chemical methods”.
Why is ECOSUSTAINABLE written bold ? thats a word, not an abbreviation.
It was a mere mistake and as such modified.
In principle a nice overview paper, however, it does not really deeply penetrate the topic of new technologies, neither it is a real meta-research about publications in the field.
As such, i recommend to extend the article by the mentioned aspects (going more deep into the new technologies, meta-research about current practice), as well as adding examples of employment of the new methods.
I plead for minor revision.
.
The present manuscript, introduces a definition for the term Green Conservation, deals with “the most recent research activities on counteracting the bio-deterioration process of stone monuments, underlining all those aspects regarding eventual procedural drawbacks and compliance to green criteria.” It aims to give only an overview on the most accredited current technologies, limited to the biocidal/antifouling application, pointing out the attention on Ionic Liquids as very versatile systems engineered by Safe by Design established criteria.
The authors do not use statistical methodologies in evaluating the current literature data on biocidal/antifouling methodologies being this, among others, out from their competence, but their assessments are coming from a deep reading of literature. Surely the use of meta-analytical approach could be an improvement in the whole field of Green Conservation, which, as underlined in text, involves multi-, and inter-disciplinary skills.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript has not improved enough and continues to have errors.
