| Reviewer name and names of any other individual's who aided in reviewer | MAJEED ABDUL |
| 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 | Some changes are needed to make the writing more scientific. |
| 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 | |
| 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? | Yes |
| Additional Comments | |
| As Open Source Software are there guidelines on how to contribute, report issues or seek support on the code? | Yes |
| Additional Comments | |
| 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? | Yes |
| 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 |
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| 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? | Yes |
| Additional Comments | |
| Any Additional Overall Comments to the Author | In this paper, the authors introduced a Molecular Property Diagnostic Suite (MPDS), which is a Galaxy-based web portal that was conceived and developed as an open-source disease-specific web portal. MPDS is a customized web portal developed for COVID-19, which is a one-stop solution for drug discovery research. I read the article; it is well-written and well-presented. The enclosed contents can be very useful for researchers working in this field (e.g., COVID-19 systems development). However, I propose some comments/concerns to the current version that need correction during the revision. 1- In the abstract, please provide the technical description of the method’s working. Also, please mention the entities which can benefit from the system. 2- The introduction section doesn’t present the challenges/problems of the existing tools. Please discuss the challenges of the previous such tools and how are they addressed through this new system. 3- I could not find the concrete details of data modalities supported in the system. The authors are advised to include such details. 4- The authors mentioned the use of ML, but I couldn’t find any potential usage of ML models. Please add such analysis during the revision. 5- Also, please add some performance results like time complexity, storage, I/O cost, etc. 6- One comprehensive diagram should be included to better illustrate the working of the proposed tool. 7- Please add limitations of the proposed tool in the revised work. 8- Please add the potential implications of this tool in the context of current/future pandemics. |
| Recommendation | Major Revisions |