Cyanobacterial Extracellular Polymeric Substances for Heavy Metal Removal: A Mini Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is a review on Heavy Metal Removal. The main focus is on utilizing of cyanobacteria for the elimination of the heavy metal toxicity.
The work reviews some mechanisms and applications on how microbes can select the elements, but the presented material is very far from integrity and being complete. As a review paper, the topic does not reflect the content of the work. The title of the paper is very general and doesn’t cover the details of the work.
The references do not support the material of study in the main paragraphs, for example citing 2 references only. The number of references should be at least double.

The step-by-step progress achieved by previous researchers and the importance of each work hasn’t been included.
Section 5 and discussion section need graphic materials.
To make a strategy, considering the life-cycle assessment and risk assessment and plausible environmental side effects are required.
The importance of the work for the corresponding industrial community should also be included.

Therefore, I encourage the authors to revise and resubmit the work after covering these issues.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of the paper “ Cyanobacteria for Heavy Metal Removal: A Review” by

 Ajit Pratap Singh Yadav  et al.

This paper is interesting and present a major review for a critical industry and society need. Despite some good approach this paper requires major improvements before accepting it.

Some comments that helps to further improve are as below:

The introduction is very brief it should be extended

Please stress clearly how this work will improve the state of art

It will be better to indicate how this paper is structured

Many phrases are introduced without citing their refs.

Please provide the copyright for some Figures and of curse cite them even they are adapted

Please proof read it for English and typo mistake “task .The”

It will be better to structure the conclusions with some bullet points

Please clearly divide the conclusions and future works  

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I agree that the work: "Cyanobacteria for Heavy Metal Removal: A Review" is interesting. The authors of the manuscript decided to write a review paper on the cyanobacterial species that have a large potential towards the heavy metal removal from the aqueous system ranging from very low to very high concentrations. The topics discussed in this manuscript match the magazine. The presented data is useful. In my opinion, the scientific quality of the manuscript is good. The figures & tables included in the manuscript are of good quality and require no corrections.
Nevertheless, the manuscript needs a major revision. The comments are given as follows:
1) In my opinion, the authors of the manuscript should necessarily refer to the newer publications from 2018-2020 in „3. Cyanobacteria" section. The authors of the manuscript refer to their work to publications from 2003-2018 in this section. It seems to me that there are many curious and interesting works about cyanobacteria-mediated remediation of wastewater that have been published in recent years, which could be referred to in „3. Cyanobacteria" part of the manuscript.

2) This is essentially a review article, unfortunately it does not have sufficiently emphasized the advantages and disadvantages of cyanobacteria-mediated remediation of wastewater. I believe that the authors should rewrite the current version of the article and describe in detail (compare) the advantages and disadvantages of the application of cyanobacteria for heavy metal removal in the context of the works cited in the article.

3) Since it is a review paper, I think it would be worth including information on, e.g., the annual number of publications on cyanobacteria for Heavy Metal Removal as provided by the search engine of Scopus (as of 2017-2018) or on generating knowledge in the field of cyanobacteria for Heavy Metal Removal according to countries (based on Scopus data for 1980–2020). Such data should be included in the introduction to the manuscript to clearly define the interest in this type of subject. Personally, I think the introduction is too general. It is necessary to strongly improve this part to give a complete scientific framework of the proposed review.

4) The above paper may be of possible technical interest. However, for submitting it to the editorial review process, English of the whole paper will mandatorily require considerable language revision efforts. Authors should take the help of some reliable professional agency to proofread their manuscript or of a native English speaker with some technical knowledge of the subject.

The paper needs improvements, after which it can be published.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors resubmitted the manuscript with some changes but the structure of the review paper still needs to be fundamentally changed to be worth publishing.

Reviewer 2 Report

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