PONE-D-20-21530

Developing a Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach to compare types of Classroom Furniture Considering Mismatches for Anthropometric Measures of University Students

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ghousi,

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Dragan Pamucar

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Thank you for inviting me as a reviewer for manuscript titled Developing a Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach to compare types of Classroom Furniture Considering Mismatches for Anthropometric Measures of University Students. In this study authors proposed MCDM framework for comparison of types of classroom furniture. The authors implemented SAW method for classroom furniture evaluation. The model is well explained. Methodology is clear. The paper is clearly, concisely, accurately, and logically written. I must congratulate to the authors for very quality research and effort for presenting results. The paper would be more exiting if you implement below improvements.

Specific comments

- Introduction section – Need to highlight the novelty of study in the introduction. Introduction should be clearly stated research questions and targets first.

- Why is the topic important (or why do you study on it)? What has been studied? What are your contributions? Why is to propose this particular MCDM framework?

- After that the authors need to discuss their contributions compared to those in related papers. The research gap and motivation should be clarified in the introduction (literature review) section. Authors should begin with the problem, the gap, then propose the research question and just after that say what they want to do to address that. Where is the gap? And you should clearly why it is a gap? Once again, if you say that it is a gap, then try to build a case for the gap. This part will help you for improvements that are required in the next comment.

- As a part of the literature review you can’t neglect the papers that are implementing MCDM related papers in your research. You are using hybrid SAW method. Why you have used SAW method and not for example MABAC, TOPSIS, MARCOS, COPRAS etc? To provide the stated answers, literature review will help you. You should present in the literature review with application of MCMD algorithms in different fields. There are numerous interesting papers that are presenting application of MCDM algorithm. I suggest authors to read and add below listed papers in the literature review: Si, A., Das, S., & Kar, S. (2019). An approach to rank picture fuzzy numbers for decision making problems. Decision Making: Applications in Management and Engineering, 2(2), 54-64.; Biswas, S., Bandyopadhyay, G., Guha, B., & Bhattacharjee, M. (2019). An ensemble approach for portfolio selection in a multi-criteria decision making framework. Decision Making: Applications in Management and Engineering, 2(2), 138-158.

- Validation of the results is missing. Validation should be presented based on variation of input parameters and comparison with existing MCMD methodologies.

- Add more deep discussion in section 3.4.2.

- Conclusion - Highlight the study novelty; Future directions; Show limitations of the proposed methodology.

Reviewer #2: Thank you for sending me for review the paper “Developing a Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach to compare types of Classroom Furniture Considering Mismatches for Anthropometric Measures of University Students”. The topic is very interesting. The authors have presented the problem very detailed; I am giving support to the authors for investigation this topic. However, for the final acceptance of the work, it is necessary to make the following changes:

1. Insert the name of the applied method of multi-criteria decision making (SAW) in the keywords.

2. If abbreviations are used in the abstract, it is necessary to state their full name. In the main text of the paper, state the full title only for the first time and refer to the abbreviation. Use the abbreviation later.

3. In line 91-93 of the paper, the sources are listed where were investigated mismatches between school furniture dimensions and students' anthropometric measures. It is necessary to explain in 1-2 sentences what has been researched in the mentioned works and which methods have been applied.

4. After lines 218 and 249 (subtitles: 2.4. Anthropometric Measures and 2.5. Furniture Dimensions) it immediately starts with the enumeration. Before starting the enumeration, it is necessary to write one or two sentences of the introduction and point out what will be stated in the following text.

5. Line 280, 283, 287, 290, 293, 295, 299 and 302, subheadings 2.6.1 to 2.6.8 are used for enumeration. Use labels 1), 2) to 8).

6. In section 2.8.2. describe in detail the method by which the weight coefficients of the criteria were obtained (show step by step).

7. In section 2.8.3. explain why the SAW method was chosen (show it step by step).

8. For expressions where the calculation process is displayed, do not numbering the expression (such as expression 13). Delete number 13.

9. The sensitivity of the model was not performed in this paper. It is necessary to perform a sensitivity analysis. I suggest that the sensitivity analysis be performed at least in one way, such as changing the weight coefficients of the criteria (by favoring one criterion).

10. Bearing in mind that one of the first methods related to multi-criteria decision-making was used for ranking alternatives, in its original form, it is necessary to compare the results with 4-5 and if possible more other methods of older or newer date (TOPSIS, ELEKTRE, VIKOR, COPRAS, MABAC, CODAS, MAIRCA, TODIM, MARCOS, WASPAS ...).

11. It is necessary to edit the references - part of the references is incomplete (for example: line 596, line 597, line 600, line 609, etc.).

12. Most of the references are outdated. A very small number of references are more recent date (2018-2020), only one reference is from 2019 and 5 from 2018. References need to be supplemented with more recent sources (papers published from 2018 to 2020). Literature review is important for showing that authors are familiar with relevant research literature for the proposed field. I suggest that for example the sources listed in lines 141-146 be extended to newer ones such as:

- TOPSIS (A. Dobrosavljević, S. Urošević, Analysis of business process management defining and structuring activities in micro, small and medium – sized enterprises, Operational Research in Engineering Sciences: Theory and Applications, 2019, Vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 40-54);

- WASPAS (J. Mihajlović, P. Rajković, G. Petrović, D. Ćirić, The Selection of the Logistics Distribution Center Location Based on MCDM Methodology in Southern and Eastern Region in Serbia, Operational Research in Engineering Sciences: Theory and Applications, 2019, Vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 72-85)

- etc.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Developing a Multi-Criteria Decision Making approach to compare types of classroom furniture considering mismatches for anthropometric measures of university students

PONE-D-20-21530R1

Dear Dr. Ghousi,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Dragan Pamucar

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: All the reviewers' comments have been addressed carefully and sufficiently, the revisions are rational from my point of view, I think the current version of the paper can be accepted.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No