Smart Textiles: A Review and Bibliometric Mapping

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The review is highly systematic, comprehensive, and possesses a strong methodological foundation. It stands as a valuable resource for gaining insights into the current state of the art in the field of smart textiles. Furthermore, it serves as an excellent template and guide for young researchers, illustrating how to employ existing instrumentation and software to analyze the state of the art in any field of study, extending beyond smart textiles.

However, there are a couple of noteworthy points to address:

1.     It's worth mentioning some doubts concerning the number of papers attributed to the most prolific authors in the smart textiles field, as displayed in Table 3. For instance, Stephen P. Beeby is credited with more than 61 papers within this field out of a total of 461. These numbers can be easily verified, even through manual searches on platforms like ResearchGate. Therefore, it is advisable to thoroughly verify the count of related documents for accuracy.

2.     While the authors of the review article appropriately utilized citations from other reviews to contextualize their work and highlight its significance, it might be more suitable, in certain instances, to cite original research papers instead of relying solely on reviews. This is particularly relevant when discussing specific issues or addressing particular research problems (evidenced in citations 138, 151, 155, 156, 164, 165, 173, 176, 181, 185, etc.). Such a practice can enhance the paper's rigor, especially when multiple review articles appear to be similar or when distinguishing between review articles and primary scientific papers can contribute to clarity.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

we are grateful for the critical comments that contribute to manuscript improvement. We have taken all comments into account. In the revised manuscript all revisions are highlighted by yellow shading.

Below we address each suggestion, provide responses to the comments, and explain point by point how we have revised and improved our manuscript accordingly.

 

Comment:

It's worth mentioning some doubts concerning the number of papers attributed to the most prolific authors in the smart textiles field, as displayed in Table 3. For instance, Stephen P. Beeby is credited with more than 61 papers within this field out of a total of 461. These numbers can be easily verified, even through manual searches on platforms like ResearchGate. Therefore, it is advisable to thoroughly verify the count of related documents for accuracy.

 

Response:

We have added the following text on page 14:

It should be noted that the authors listed in the table have a higher total number of publications, but only documents matching our search query on smart textiles were considered and are listed in the table.

 

 

Comment:

While the authors of the review article appropriately utilized citations from other reviews to contextualize their work and highlight its significance, it might be more suitable, in certain instances, to cite original research papers instead of relying solely on reviews. This is particularly relevant when discussing specific issues or addressing particular research problems (evidenced in citations 138, 151, 155, 156, 164, 165, 173, 176, 181, 185, etc.). Such a practice can enhance the paper's rigor, especially when multiple review articles appear to be similar or when distinguishing between review articles and primary scientific papers can contribute to clarity.

 

Response:

We thank you for your suggestion. Accordingly, we have added 48 new literature sources to the section on research hotspots, where the latest research results are presented.

 

 

Your sincerely,

Authors of the manuscript

Reviewer 2 Report

The review paper tackles the topic of smart textiles from bibliometric point of view, considering the standard ISO/TS 23383 for categorization of smart textiles. 

The paper offers a well structured and comprehensive point of view on the field of smart textiles. 

The methodology is well described and the bibliometric analysis well conceived. The paper tackles single manufacturing aspects of smart textiles. As suggestion for this review paper or for a future paper would be a bibliometric analysis related type of study: manufacturing, modelling, measurement and additional properties.

The conclusions are consistent and the arguments address in an appropriate way the topic of smart textiles.

The references are appropriate and connected with the argumentation.

Tables and figures are all right. Congratulations for nice paper!

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We are grateful that you have taken the time to review our work.

Your sincerely,

Authors of the manuscript

Reviewer 3 Report

Title : Smart textiles: a review and bibliometric mapping 

Manuscript ID : applsci-2601177-v1.

The manuscript is a literature review of research works (1989–2022) on smart textiles. It provides a comprehensive bibliometric analysis in the domain of smart textiles, using terminology, definitions and categorization of different types of smart textiles and textile products according to the standard ISO/TS 23383. 

The topic discussed in this review is very interesting. The language of the manuscript is good. Results presented in this manuscript are of great interest.

However, in some sections authors present a gather of literature works without discussing them. So, I suggest that authors reinforce the discussion aspect because it is essential in a review article.

This review article could be accepted for publication in applied sciences after authors decrease the plagiarism rate (actually near 26%). To do so, the authors are asked to rewrite the paragraphs taken from the two first sources (see the attached file: Plagiarism report applsci-2601177-v1).

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

we are grateful for the critical comments that contribute to manuscript improvement. We have taken all comments into account. In the revised manuscript all revisions are highlighted by yellow shading.

Below we address each suggestion, provide responses to the comments, and explain point by point how we have revised and improved our manuscript accordingly.

 

Comment:

However, in some sections authors present a gather of literature works without discussing them. So, I suggest that authors reinforce the discussion aspect because it is essential in a review article.

 

Response:

Thank you for your suggestion. On pages 27 and 28 we have added a discussion; the new text discusses and highlights the key observations, dilemmas, constraints and development opportunities that are emerging in the field of smart textiles.

Comment:

This review article could be accepted for publication in applied sciences after authors decrease the plagiarism rate (actually near 26%). To do so, the authors are asked to rewrite the paragraphs taken from the two first sources (see the attached file: Plagiarism report applsci-2601177-v1).

 

Response:

We thank you for your comment. We have carefully checked the highlighted parts of the text. Where possible, we have made linguistic changes to the phrases used (on pages 5, 6, 7, 8, 15, 16, 17, and 29). However, some parts cannot be meaningfully changed.There are marked definitions that we intentionally quote verbatim (in quotation marks and with source citation) to show the differences between them. Also highlighted are the bibliographic field names commonly used in databases, and some other technical terms used in bibliometric analyses; we believe these should remain unchanged.

 

Your sincerely,

Authors of the manuscript