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The comments have been addressed. We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been accepted for publication after the language corrections.
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My concerns on basic reporting have been addressed.
My concerns regarding the study design have been addressed.
My concerns regarding the validity of the findings have been addressed.
All my concerns have been addressed. I am happy to recommend that the paper be accepted.
According to the reviewers' comments, the paper needs improvements before publishing. Recent and important papers should be discussed. Conclusions should be extended. Sections are not given in detail.
[# PeerJ Staff Note: Please ensure that all review comments are addressed in a rebuttal letter and any edits or clarifications mentioned in the letter are also inserted into the revised manuscript where appropriate. It is a common mistake to address reviewer questions in the rebuttal letter but not in the revised manuscript. If a reviewer raised a question then your readers will probably have the same question so you should ensure that the manuscript can stand alone without the rebuttal letter. Directions on how to prepare a rebuttal letter can be found at: https://peerj.com/benefits/academic-rebuttal-letters/ #]
This literature review has followed a comprehensive methodology to study different digital technologies such as CTAs which have been used to control the COVID-19 spread. The manuscript has been written clearly using professional English which is easy to understand.
The article content has fallen in the Aims and Scope of PeerJ Computer Science.
The study has done a thorough investigation with a high ethical standard on all kinds of contact tracing applications (CTAs) and reviewed 800+ papers published in some prestigious journals such as Science Direct, IEEE, Scopus, etc.
Conclusions are well stated, and valid. The result and recommendations made are beneficial to governments and countries all over the world.
Figure 1 is a bit ambiguous. I would suggest changing it as in the attachment.
- The paper is very well written and in simple words. It is thus easy to understand which is a very important characteristic of any document.
- The sections are titled as questions. While this is innovative and gets the point across, I prefer a more conventional approach to naming sections
- Each section and each point has to be discussed in much more detail. The authors superficially discuss the ideas of various works and do so in a rather heterogeneous manner with separate paragraphs dedicated to separate papers. I would look forward to a more homogeneous discussion of ideas with disparate work smoothly falling into the discussion.
- Very little discussion is dedicated to the users’ privacy and its breach. The authors discuss laws that are prevalent around the world, “ethical” issues, and “values”. I would prefer a much more detailed analysis of the issues around privacy and its breach first in a general context and subsequently specifically with respect to the pandemic and the tracing apps.
- The authors discuss the attempts made by health authorities to protect and preserve privacy. I feel this discussion is limited. The authors should also include the efforts made by governments, health authorities, world bodies, and also those made at individual levels.
- Conclusions on various aspects of the study are not drawn. The authors talk about the issues based on the contributions of various endeavours but do not draw appropriate conclusions based on these.
- A few figures, block diagrams etc. would help the reader more effectively grasp the ideas being discussed.
- The authors may want to justify the content and both ends for a better appearance.
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