A Review of Optimization Studies for System Appointment Scheduling

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

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Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

The English language needs little editing.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript deals with a really interesting topic. To contribute to its improvement, I suggest:

1. Review the organization of the text, as it is 33 pages long and the method is described in the final pages of the manuscript (section 5), which causes strangeness and confusion for the reader;

2. The systematic literature review method must be briefly described before its effective application;

3. It is necessary to justify the choices made regarding the database(s) used. Why these databases?

4. It would be interesting to compare Cite Space with other possibilities, in order to better justify its use.

5. The conclusions could detail the findings a little better and better explain the results of the systematic literature review and their limitations.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The paper provides a literature bibliometric analysis as a supplementary reference to demonstrate the development of AS(Appointment Scheduling) system optimization.

Authors should search for more papers related to this study and cite them at appropriate places.

None

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

The paper presents a comprehensive review on mathematical models and optimization techniques for appointment scheduling in clinics and hospitals.  The review is structured by types of models and techniques, as well as by countries of publications, publishers, and keywords.

Very useful and well written review paper. The level of presentation is correct and accessible for those readers who are not experts in the field. I think the paper will be interesting for a wide readership of the journal. I recommend accepting the paper subject to considering the following minor comments:

1.       Tables 1,2 in Sectios 3,4 are very useful. It is worth illustrating the references considered in Section 2 by a similar table presenting a comparative description of the references mentioned in this section.

2.       Please discuss in Section 6 which models and techniques are area-specific (scheduling in medical centers) and which can be used in scheduling in other areas (production, timetabling, etc)

Author Response

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Reviewer 5 Report

In this manuscript, the authors review and summarize the development of AS (appointment scheduling) system optimization. In this regard, the paper classifies and summarizes the existing appointment scheduling system structures and decision-making frameworks. It also gives the system reliability optimization framework from three aspects: appointment scheduling system optimization objectives, decision variables, and constraints. Thus, the paper mainly systematically reviews the most used system optimization algorithms in different appointment scheduling systems, respectively a literature bibliometric analysis is provided.

Some text editing corrections should be applied.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript was improved and the authors took into account this reviewer's considerations and suggestions. Congratulations.