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Thank you authors for carefully revising your manuscript, and addressing all the reviewers' queries. The editor considers your revision thorough, and the revised manuscript acceptable for publication. The editor believes authors have benefitted immensely from the peer-review process. Thank you for finding PeerJ as your journal of choice, and look forward to your future submissions. Congratulations
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Valeria Souza, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
Thank you authors for considering PeerJ as your journal of choice. As you can see, reviewers found your work very favourable and provided comments to improve the quality of the work. Kindly address these comments, in the very best detail, and diligently.
In addition, the editor requests authors to consider the following:
a) Start materials and methods with a new subsection captioned 'overview of experimental program', which presents a snapshot of steps followed to achieve the experiment. A schematic flow diagram must accompany this, showing : Collection of samples > Processing of samples (allocate as needed) > DNA extraction and 16S rRNA gene sequencing > Analytical measurements (allocate as needed) etc etc. The purpose of this is to guide the reader into understanding your work better. This subsection would have, three to four sentences.
b) The justification of the study should be strengthened. Why is this study relevant? What is the rationale for this study? What were the research gaps? Please, address these better at the beginning of the last paragraph of the introduction.
c) Why was PICRUSt analysis used? Why was Wilcoxon rank sum test (P < 0.05) with Bonferroni correction for multiple testing used? Provide more details in the statistics. Indicate the exact p values in the text, and tables, like in Table 4, provide the p-value column. In figure 2, provide the p-values for all metabolites with the significant difference in average concentrations among the processes. Please, this must be provided, in the figure legends, and indicated in the text where it is referred to.
This is a very brilliant study. I look forward to your revised manuscript. Thank you for finding PeerJ as your journal of choice.
The report is well presented and has the potentials to add more to the information already in the literature. However, some revisions are required as highlighted.
1. In line 48, where you stated "therefore, to avoid being the salinity too low,..", the statement is unclear. Kindly rephrase it for easy understanding by potential readers.
2. Similarly, in line 95, where you stated "Comparative analysis will be used to show that...", kindly consider replacing "will be" with "was".
3. The conclusion needs to be revised to completely reflect the title, the objectives of the study, the results, and recommendation (if any)
The experimental design appears to be reliable.
1. The full meaning of some of the acronyms need to be provided at the point they first appeared in the manuscript. For example, refer to line 85. Do so for other acronyms. Potential readers do not need to look out for the meaning from other sources.
2. The objective of the study is not clear enough, as seen in the last paragraph under introduction. Kindly make the objective more clear and specific.
The findings appear reliable. The conclusion needs revision as stated in number 3 under "Basic reporting"
Kindly go through the comments as highlighted. Minor revisions are required
The sentence in line 48 should be rearranged:
… therefore, to avoid the salinity being too low, pretreatment ….
In line 113-114, it was stated that the pickles were produced in 2017 and 2018. If possible, the months of production of the pickles should be stated.
i. Salt stock preparation process leads to increased production of BCAA via KARIs preference of NADH to NADPH; how would you account for general acceptability of this process to accommodate people on low-salt diet?
ii. In line 237-239, "The halophilic genera Halomonas and Halanaerobium constituted approximately 36% of the bacterial population, and Lactobacillus constituted approximately 15%." the sample group being described should be stated.
This is a very interesting paper on the effects of vegetable pickling conditions on the dynamics of microbiota and metabolites. The manuscript is well written, the experimental approach smart and sound, and the results are meaningfully and properly discussed. Thus, the manuscript certainly deserves publication in PeerJ. However, I would recommend the authors to address the issues raised before final acceptance of the manuscript.
Also, originality result (11%) using turnitin application is ok, however, it should be with no more than 1% from a source.
Good
Perfect
Satisfactory
• Provide point wise highlights for this article.
• The abstract needs to be reframed with better inputs and novelty statement.
• Summarize the aim of present work at the end of introduction.
• All the abbreviations must be defined at the first place.
• The discussion should discuss technical and scientific future directions and application in the area.
• Paper should describe further research in the future.
• Check the references throughout the manuscript.
• Microbial isolates identified in this study (Using 16S rRNA sequencing) is submitted in publicly accessible culture collection or not and was the accession no. obtained??
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