Reviewer name and names of any other individual's who aided in reviewer	Agastya P Bhati
Do you understand and agree to our policy of having open and named reviews, and having your review included with the published manuscript. (If no, please inform the editor that you cannot review this manuscript.)	Yes
Is the language of sufficient quality?	Yes
Please add additional comments on language quality to clarify if needed
Is there a clear statement of need explaining what problems the software is designed to solve and who the target audience is?	Yes
Additional Comments	As noted in my comments, it would be beneficial to clarify what new capabilities are provided by this new portal over and above what is already available currently.
Is the source code available, and has an appropriate Open Source Initiative license <a href="https://opensource.org/licenses" target="_blank">(https://opensource.org/licenses)</a> been assigned to the code?	No
Additional Comments	There is a github repository (https://github.com/gnsastry/MPDS-18Compound_Library), however, I am unable to access it currently.
As Open Source Software are there guidelines on how to contribute, report issues or seek support on the code?	Yes
Additional Comments	A github repository provides such capabilities. However, it is inaccessible currently.
Is the code executable?	Unable to test
Additional Comments
Is installation/deployment sufficiently outlined in the paper and documentation, and does it proceed as outlined?	Unable to test
Additional Comments
Is the documentation provided clear and user friendly?	Yes
Additional Comments
Is there enough clear information in the documentation to install, run and test this tool, including information on where to seek help if required?	Yes
Additional Comments
Is there a clearly-stated list of dependencies, and is the core functionality of the software documented to a satisfactory level?	Yes
Additional Comments
Have any claims of performance been sufficiently tested and compared to other commonly-used packages?	No
Additional Comments
Is test data available, either included with the submission or openly available via cited third party sources (e.g. accession numbers, data DOIs)?	Yes
Additional Comments
Are there (ideally real world) examples demonstrating use of the software?	Yes
Additional Comments
Is automated testing used or are there manual steps described so that the functionality of the software can be verified?	No
Additional Comments
Any Additional Overall Comments to the Author	Molecular Property Diagnostic Suite for COVID-19 (MPDSCOVID19) is an open-source disease specific web portal aiming to provide a collection of all tools and databases relevant for COVID-19 that are available online along with a few in-house scripts at a single portal. It is built upon another platform called "Galaxy" that provides similar services for data intensive biomedical research. MPDSCOVID19 is in continuation to two other similar disease-specific portals that this group has published earlier - for Tuberculosis and Diabetes mellitus. Overall, MPDSCOVID19 is an interesting and useful resource that could be helpful for biomedical community in conducting COVID-19 related research. It brings together all the databases and relevant tools that may make a researcher's life easier as exemplified through the various case studies included. I recommend publishing this article after the following revisions noted. Please note that any mention of page numbers below is referring to the reviewer PDF version. Major revisions: (1) One main issue in this manuscript is the lack of a clear description of the "new" capabilities provided by MPDSCOVID19 over and above what Galaxy provides. I think a clear distinction between the capabilities/features of Galaxy and MPDSCOVID19 would help improve the manuscript substantially and help readers better understand the capabilities of this new COVID-19 portal. Further, a description of the additions in the new portal over the earlier TB and Diabetes portals is mentioned on page 7. However, I think more details on such advancements/additions would be beneficial. It could be in the form of a table. (2) It is mentioned that a major advancement in this new portal is the inclusion of ML/AI models/approaches, however no details have been provided. It would be beneficial to briefly describe what ML based capabilities are included in MPDS and how they can be used by any general user. An additional case study demonstrating the same would be helpful. (3) MPDS portal provides a collection of tools and databases for COVID-19. However, such resources are ever-growing and hence constant updating of the portal's capabilities/resources would be a necessary requirement for its sustainability. There is no mention of any such plans. Do authors have a modus operandi for the same? Have there been further releases of the previous MPDS portals for TB and Diabetes that may be relevant here? (4) Page 6 - lines 3-4: I suggest replacing "are going to witness" with "are witnessing". There are several recent advancements in applying ML/AI based approaches to improve different aspects of drug discovery. I recommend including a few references here to this effect. Below are some relevant examples: (a) 10.1021/acs.jcim.0c00915 (b) 10.1021/acs.jcim.1c00851 (c) 10.1038/s41598-023-28785-9 (d) 10.1098/rsfs.2021.0018 (e) 10.1145/3472456.3473524 (f) 10.1145/3468267.3470573 (5) Page 7 - line 8: I am assuming that the terms like "updates", "additions", etc., used in this paragraph are comparing MPDS with its older versions. If so, it would be beneficial to clarify this explicitly. In addition, I suggest that the authors include a brief literature survey to describe what other tools and/or webservers are available already and how MPDS compares with them. This has not been done so far. (6) The github repository is currently inaccessible publicly. This needs rectification. Minor revisions: (1) Page 4: Before introducing MPDSCOVID19 it makes sense to briefly describe Galaxy and its main features. For instance moving forward lines 19-20 (page 4) and lines 3-6 (page 5) to line 12 (page 4). (2) Page 5 - line 22: I suggest that authors mention the total number of databases/servers that are covered by MPDSCOVID19 as of now. From Table S1, it appears that there are 15 currently (items 5 and 7 are repeated so the 13 seems the wrong total - needs rectification). (3) Page 5 - line 30: It would make sense to specify details of the MPDS local server. For instance, how many cores/GPUs are available and what are their hardware architectures? Also, it would be beneficial for the users to know if it is possible to use MPDS tools on their own or public infrastructures for large scale implementations. I suggest authors comment on this aspect too. (4) Page 6 - lines 16-19: The sentence "Galaxy platform.......extend the availability." needs some rephrasing. It is too long and the hard to comprehend. (5) Page 7 - line 18: I don't understand the word "colloids". Please clarify. (6) Page 8 - line 30: "section 2.3" is referred to but I don't see any section numbering the PDF provided. This needs rectification.
Recommendation	Major Revisions