PONE-D-23-08826Certificateless broadcast signcryption scheme supporting equality test in smart gridPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Dong,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Pandi Vijayakumar, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

The paper has many serious issues. The conclusion section is missing, motivation is missing and the paper needs to be rewritten.

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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: The authors seek to propose a broadcast signcryption scheme supporting equality test based on certificateless Cryptosystem for smart grid. I have the following suggestions that need to be answered.

1) In the abstract, the sentence needs to be revised. “However, the current scheme cannot ensure user privacy or efficient network bandwidth utilization.”

2) I would suggest the authors to add a detailed motivation for the proposed scheme.

3) A detailed paragraph regarding the hardness efficiency details of the proposed scheme needs to be added above the contribution’s headings. The authors need to show why the proposed scheme is efficient and how.

4) The entire literature review section is written in the present tense. The words like constructed, presented, and proposed need to be changed to propose, construct and present.

5) The related work is limited; I would suggest the authors expand the related work. Besides, I would suggest the authors to conclude the related work. Currently, the authors did not conclude the related work; what did they learn after reviewing the literature?

6) In the system model, the authors just define the terminology used in the scheme; however, the workflow of the proposed scheme is missing.

7) The scheme's definition needs to be named with the subsection, like System Definition.

8) I haven’t seen any details in the experimental analysis for the number of devices. How and from where did the authors add the details for the number of devices? How can the authors set the devices hypothetically?

The authors did not conclude their research; a conclusion is necessary and must be added.

9) The article needs to be thoroughly proofread to remove all the grammatical and typos.

Reviewer #2: The technical aspects of the paper are fine. The authors, however, will need to make some minor adjustments before publishing it. The following are some of the concerns that the authors should address:

1. The introduction is quite brief. The authors should add to it, highlighting the smart grid's vulnerabilities and the merits of using a certificateless signcryption scheme.

2. Once more, the literature review section is extremely brief. Few relevant articles precisely on the same subject are ignored, for example (https://doi.org/10.3390/su131910891). The authors must contribute a few additional articles to this section.

3. I could not locate the section's conclusion. I have no idea why the conclusion is missing. Authors must provide justification.

4.  The authors need to revise the article with correct usage of English, grammatical mistakes, and punctuation errors.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Certificateless broadcast signcryption scheme supporting equality test in smart grid

PONE-D-23-08826R1

Dear Dr. Dong,

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,

Pandi Vijayakumar, Ph.D

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

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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

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

Reviewer #1: 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

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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

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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: I don't have further comments. The authors addressed all my comments. I recommend the paper for a possible publication in Plos One.

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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

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