Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

The study addresses a relevant topic; however, the manuscript requires significant revisions to improve clarity, methodological detail, and scientific depth. Below, you will find specific suggestions to strengthen the quality and impact of your work.

Abstract
I suggest structuring the abstract as follows: (1) background/introduction, (2) objective of the review, (3) methods (e.g., bibliometric analysis + PRISMA), (4) main findings (e.g., species diversity, relevant bioactive compounds, research gaps), and (5) conclusion.
The abstract is overly descriptive and resembles an extended introduction. It includes a long list of species, which takes up space and detracts from the main objective of the abstract.
I recommend avoiding a full listing of species in the abstract. This information can be presented in the main body of the text, while the abstract should only mention the number of species analyzed and their main common characteristics.
Check for redundancy between keywords and the title, and prioritize terms that may increase the article’s visibility in database searches.

Introduction
I recommend starting the introduction with a clearer and more current problem statement, such as the need for dietary diversification, the conservation of underutilized edible plants, and the sustainable use of Mediterranean biodiversity.
The introduction mentions that previous reviews are limited but does not clearly specify the scientific gap this review aims to address.
It is important to clarify how the results of the bibliometric analysis were used to guide the narrative review—for example, by highlighting emerging themes, the most studied species, or research gaps.

Materials and Methods
Include a PRISMA flowchart in the body of the article showing the number of records identified, excluded, and the reasons for exclusion. Also, incorporate in the main text or appendix a description of the evaluation rubric used to classify the studies.
I suggest the authors clarify the type of review conducted: Is it an integrative review with a mixed approach (quantitative + qualitative)? Is it a systematic review complemented by bibliometric analysis?

Results and Discussion
It would be interesting to discuss how the bibliometric analysis confirms or challenges the findings of the review (e.g., recent increase in interest, underrepresentation of certain species or regions).

Author Response

Responses to Reviewer 1

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

The study addresses a relevant topic; however, the manuscript requires significant revisions to improve clarity, methodological detail, and scientific depth. Below, you will find specific suggestions to strengthen the quality and impact of your work.

Thanks!

1

Abstract

I suggest structuring the abstract as follows: (1) background/introduction, (2) objective of the review, (3) methods (e.g., bibliometric analysis + PRISMA), (4) main findings (e.g., species diversity, relevant bioactive compounds, research gaps), and (5) conclusion.

The abstract is overly descriptive and resembles an extended introduction. It includes a long list of species, which takes up space and detracts from the main objective of the abstract.

I recommend avoiding a full listing of species in the abstract. This information can be presented in the main body of the text, while the abstract should only mention the number of species analyzed and their main common characteristics.

Check for redundancy between keywords and the title, and prioritize terms that may increase the article’s visibility in database searches.

The abstract has been revised in accordance with the suggested recommendations.

A review of redundancies between the keywords and the title has been conducted. The new list is as follows: culinary tradition; diet; domestication; ethnobotany; ethnopharmacology; local food; modern cuisine; nutraceuticals; weeds; Asteraceae; sow thistle; functional foods; traditional knowledge; sustainable agriculture; bioactive compounds; wild edibles

We have revised the title to more clearly reflect the broader scope of the manuscript.

2

Introduction
I recommend starting the introduction with a clearer and more current problem statement, such as the need for dietary diversification, the conservation of underutilized edible plants, and the sustainable use of Mediterranean biodiversity.

Many thanks! We have added several sentences in this sense,

3

The introduction mentions that previous reviews are limited but does not clearly specify the scientific gap this review aims to address.

Thanks! Done! We summarily reported the core gaps as follows:

A significant scientific gap persists in our understanding of Mediterranean species within the genus Sonchus. There is a pressing need for a comprehensive review that integrates detailed data on species taxonomy and distribution, ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological knowledge, phytochemical composition, nutritional and gastronomic value, as well as information on the natural habitats and ecosystems in which these species grow. Such ecological insights are essential for informing potential cultivation practices. This integrative approach would provide a clear synthesis of the current state of knowledge and highlight critical gaps that warrant further scientific investigation.

 

4

It is important to clarify how the results of the bibliometric analysis were used to guide the narrative review—for example, by highlighting emerging themes, the most studied species, or research gaps.

Many thanks, we summarized the information as follows, in materials and methods section:

The bibliometric analysis identified the most taxonomically relevant species and primary research domains, facilitating the selection of appropriate keywords for the systematic literature search. The comprehensive search encompassed all taxa examined in this review, including recognized synonyms.

 

5

Materials and Methods

Include a PRISMA flowchart in the body of the article showing the number of records identified, excluded, and the reasons for exclusion.

Thanks! Given the heterogeneity of publications we only applied a standardized methodology of evaluation to those of phytochemistry. For the rest we needed a manual approach summarized as follows:

However, the bibliometric analysis yielded ambiguous results in several aspects, which led us to conduct a manual review of the 440 publications selected by Scopus (Table 2). Following the application of exclusion criteria, 36 publications were discarded for referring to species missing in the Mediterranean region (species outside the geographical scope of the study), and 28 publications were excluded due to errors in species identification or, i.e. attribution of data to Sonchus eruca, an unknown taxon, or studies focusing specifically on "Sonchus viruses" not Sonchus species.

Table 2. Distribution of Publications by Subject Area based on the results of the manual analysis of the Sonchus publications recovered by Scopus. ¹  

Subject Area	No. of Publications	Comments
Pharmacology	102	Multiple activity models
Phytochemistry	61	Flavonoids, sesquiterpene lactones
Weed Science	58	Weed control
Phytopathology	30	Fungal, viral, and insect-related studies
Ecology	23	Bioremediation
Horticulture	22	Optimal growing conditions
Microbiology	20	Bacteria and viruses
Genetics	17	Phylogenetic studies
Taxonomy	10	Nomenclatural, systematics and morphological analyses
Nutrition	10	Nutritive properties of Sonchus and food processing
Plant Physiology	9	Responses to abiotic and biotic stress
Technology	8	Applications in biotechnology
Toxicology	4	Toxic and nocive substances
Ethnopharmacology	1	Traditional uses
Veterinary Medicine	1	Veterinary applications
Total	376

Pharmacology, Phytochemistry and Weed Science are the main research areas. Additionally, it should be noted that a substantial portion of the 30 phytopathological studies focused on the development of biological control methods for Sonchus species as weeds.

Conversely, the numerous ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological data documenting traditional uses of Sonchus species were excluded from the search results due to the search criteria based on "titles," "keywords," and "abstracts." These data typically appear in comprehensive studies of localities and regions that include dozens or hundreds of species, which authors cannot reflect in their abstracts. This limitation led us to develop specific targeted searches.

 

6

Also, incorporate in the main text or appendix a description of the evaluation rubric used to classify the studies.

Thanks!

Supplementary Table 1 describes the evaluation rubric used to classify the phytochemical studies. The heterogeneity of sources in other fields made impossible to develop an operational evaluation rubric.

6

I suggest the authors clarify the type of review conducted: Is it an integrative review with a mixed approach (quantitative + qualitative)? Is it a systematic review complemented by bibliometric analysis?

It is a systematic review complemented by bibliometric analysis.

7

Results and Discussion

It would be interesting to discuss how the bibliometric analysis confirms or challenges the findings of the review (e.g., recent increase in interest, underrepresentation of certain species or regions).

The bibliometric analysis is in some instances highly deceptive. This is not fault of the tools but a consequence of the extremely heterogeneous sources available. But from the taxonomic viewpoint there is a high coincidence in the most relevant species in terms of available information and studies: Sonchus oleraceus, S. arvensis and S. asper.  Other relevant coincidence is the increasing interest of Sonchus among the researchers from China.

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper reviews the literature on 17 Sonchus species, covering a wide range of topics, from taxonomy to traditional uses, phytochemical composition… horticultural development.

The paper is very well and professionally written, and provides a significant contribution in collecting, organizing and synthetizing existing information, which will turn useful for anyone, scientists and practitioners, to further study and/or exploit the Sonchus genus.

I have few improvements to propose, which the authors can implement if they agree.

 

The title calls for the Horticultural potential, but indeed this topic is only the very last and minor part (at least quantitatively) of the review, which covers many more topics, which might be prodromic to understanding the horticultural potential, yet are different topics. This underscores the breadth of the review and is misleading to the reader. The title should give a clearer indication of the broader scope, which includes, last but not least, the horticultural potential. Readers interested in Sonchus distribution, or medicinal properties, etc. etc.), should not be turned away from this valuable paper, thinking that it deals only with the prospects of Sonchus horticultural development.

The same goes for the abstract, which, when stating the objectives of the review (at the very end) emphasizes the horticultural development, forgetting all the other objectives, as clearly reported only in the introduction (where 6 other objectives are reported before the horticultural development at the 7^th position).  

 

The abstract is a long introduction on Sonchus, reporting the objective of the review at the very end, with no results. Normally, the objectives are reported after only a brief introduction and then results and their significance are summarized.

The abstract does not clarify that the review is limited to the 17 species and not the 98 species.  This should be clarified also in the introduction when illustrating the objectives of the review.

The M&M do not describe the different techniques used to obtain the data reported in several figures (e.g. Fig. 2 and 3). Such techniques are mentioned, if at all, only in the caption of the figures. It might be appropriate to better describe them in M&M.

Lines 123 and 124: I would erase “notably” in both cases.

Section 3 (Sonchus diversity and research fields) reports a subsection 3.1 (Sonchus diversity) but no subsequent sub-section “research fields”. Eliminate subsection 3.1 and name section 3 Sonchus diversity?

Also, current section 3.1 does not specify where the information provided in Sonchus diversity is from: no literature is indicated.

I have some doubts about distributions. For instance, S. tenerrimus is reported in table 1 as distributed in Algeria and E. Spain, while it is indeed distributed all over (Mediterranean) Europe and probably beyond?

At the end of each subsection, there is a summary. Often this is useful and makes new points. But at times it simply repeats some of what has been just said, resulting in repetitive text, especially if the subsection is short. This contributes to lengthy text in an already very long paper… Consider omitting repetitive summaries where not indispensable?

Tab. 3: Not clear what is the difference between Number of references (1rst column) and References (last column)?

 

Often, statements are reported without citing the source. In most cases this is understandable, because too many papers report the same information, but often only 1 or few papers report the information, and it would be nice to know which ones they are. Just as an example, in line 1056 recreational purposes are cited, but no reference is reported. Who reported such use in the literature? But many other examples could be given.

 

Line 1358: “S. oleraceus” should be in Italic.

Author Response

Responses to Reviewer 2

 

This paper reviews the literature on 17 Sonchus species, covering a wide range of topics, from taxonomy to traditional uses, phytochemical composition… horticultural development.

The paper is very well and professionally written, and provides a significant contribution in collecting, organizing and synthetizing existing information, which will turn useful for anyone, scientists and practitioners, to further study and/or exploit the Sonchus genus.

Thank you!

I have few improvements to propose, which the authors can implement if they agree.

Many thanks we will do our best to follow your suggestions

1

The title calls for the Horticultural potential, but indeed this topic is only the very last and minor part (at least quantitatively) of the review, which covers many more topics, which might be prodromic to understanding the horticultural potential, yet are different topics. This underscores the breadth of the review and is misleading to the reader. The title should give a clearer indication of the broader scope, which includes, last but not least, the horticultural potential. Readers interested in Sonchus distribution, or medicinal properties, etc. etc.), should not be turned away from this valuable paper, thinking that it deals only with the prospects of Sonchus horticultural development.

Many thanks! The title has been changed to provide a clearer indication of the broader scope

2

The same goes for the abstract, which, when stating the objectives of the review (at the very end) emphasizes the horticultural development, forgetting all the other objectives, as clearly reported only in the introduction (where 6 other objectives are reported before the horticultural development at the 7th position). 

The abstract is a long introduction on Sonchus, reporting the objective of the review at the very end, with no results. Normally, the objectives are reported after only a brief introduction and then results and their significance are summarized.

The abstract does not clarify that the review is limited to the 17 species and not the 98 species.  This should be clarified also in the introduction when illustrating the objectives of the review.

Many thanks! Accordingly, the abstract has been revised in accordance with the suggested recommendations.

3

The M&M do not describe the different techniques used to obtain the data reported in several figures (e.g. Fig. 2 and 3). Such techniques are mentioned, if at all, only in the caption of the figures. It might be appropriate to better describe them in M&M.

Many thanks! Done as follows:

Figures were elaborated using different methods. In the case of Figure 1, Figure 4, Figure 7, and Figure 8, the images were obtained from the nature using conventional digital photo cameras. Figure 2 was elaborated using the tools of VOSviewer for the construction and visualization of a co-occurrence network of terms extracted from the titles and abstracts of publications [29]. Figure 3 is elaborated using the Bibliometrix R package [25,26] with Keywords Plus as the analytical parameter and employing six chronological demarcations (1992, 2009, 2013, 2018, 2020, 2022, 2025) to establish discrete temporal intervals [26]. Figure 5. This heat map was created using Python with the following libraries: Pandas (Used to structure the dataset into a DataFrame for easy handling before plotting), Matplotlib (matplotlib.pyplot) (Used for the overall plotting framework), Seaborn (used for generating the heat map via seaborn.heatmap) and Color Map. Figure 6 was manually elaborated using Excel.

4

Lines 123 and 124: I would erase “notably” in both cases.

Done.

5

Section 3 (Sonchus diversity and research fields) reports a subsection 3.1 (Sonchus diversity) but no subsequent sub-section “research fields”. Eliminate subsection 3.1 and name section 3 Sonchus diversity?

Section 3 (Sonchus diversity and research fields) reports a subsection 3.1 (Sonchus diversity) subsection 3.2 is 3.2. Bibliometric analysis of Sonchus research fields which extend approximately from page 10 to page 13.

6

Also, current section 3.1 does not specify where the information provided in Sonchus diversity is from: no literature is indicated.

Done. Bibliography has been cited

7

I have some doubts about distributions. For instance, S. tenerrimus is reported in table 1 as distributed in Algeria and E. Spain, while it is indeed distributed all over (Mediterranean) Europe and probably beyond?

Yes you are absolutely right, we are constricted by the references. We added in this and similar cases a sentence stating: Naturalized in other regions [8]. And cite as a reference GBIF in which the maps cover the broader area.

Taxon distribution data are according to POWO and Boulos that focus in what they consider natural distribution. We are aware of the shortcomings in the POWO database.

POWO. Plants of the World Online. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Available from: http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org. Accessed 20 February 2025.

8

At the end of each subsection, there is a summary. Often this is useful and makes new points. But at times it simply repeats some of what has been just said, resulting in repetitive text, especially if the subsection is short. This contributes to lengthy text in an already very long paper… Consider omitting repetitive summaries where not indispensable?

Many thanks! We removed those superfluous.

 

9

Tab. 3: Not clear what is the difference between Number of references (1rst column) and References (last column)?

Many thanks! Yes it was confusing.

We changed the heading of the 1rst column: ¹ No. of Publications: The number of publications in the consulted bibliography that included material from that particular country.

We also used the Journal’s style for citation of references in the last column.

10

Often, statements are reported without citing the source. In most cases this is understandable, because too many papers report the same information, but often only 1 or few papers report the information, and it would be nice to know which ones they are. Just as an example, in line 1056 recreational purposes are cited, but no reference is reported. Who reported such use in the literature? But many other examples could be given.

Many thanks. The detailed references are available from the Supplementary Material. But in cases such as the one you selected as example we introduced specific references along the manuscript.

11

Line 1358: “S. oleraceus” should be in Italic.

Thanks!. Done.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I suggest proceeding with publication.