PONE-D-23-34468Is `distinctiveness centrality' actually distinctive? A comment on Fronzetti Colladon and Naldi (2020)PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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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: Partly

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?

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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 paper highlights an interesting point that the new centrality measures should be proposed carefully and only if they are required. They also suggest that it is better to use gamma or beta centrality measures than using the Distinctiveness centrality.

I have the following concerns that should be addressed by the author:

1. The paper lacks some relevant references as centrality measures have a vast literature. For example: the survey paper on this topic is also not cited -- Centrality measures in complex networks: A survey, by A. Saxena and S. Iyengar

2. At line 65, the author can mention how Fronzetti Colladon and Naldi chose the value of alpha from a wide range for the sake of completeness as now the reader has to go to the original paper to understand it better.

3. At line 123, in Equ. 4: author proposes to compute alpha based on p. However, it will make alpha vary from -infinity to +infinity and that does not make sense as mentioned by the author earlier. So please add an explanation for that. Please add how such a situation will be handled or controlled.

4. One main concern is that the results are shown on very small networks or BA networks that are not a good representation of real-world networks having communities. I will suggest adding results for large-scale networks.

5. The authors should also perform experiments on synthetic networks having modular/community structure to verify the applicability.

6. The results show the correlation of centrality measure value. However the centrality ranking is different from the centrality measures. In centrality ranking the nodes are ranked based on their centrality value. The author also should study the correlation of centrality ranking.

Reviewer #2: By theoretical and numerical analysis, this paper elaborates that the proposed 'distinctiveness centrality' for node importance is essentially the same as previous one. I think that the reason provided in the paper is sufficient, and the paper is also well organized. Therefore, I would like to recommend that this paper can be accepted in current version.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Is 'distinctiveness centrality' actually distinctive? A comment on Fronzetti Colladon and Naldi (2020)

PONE-D-23-34468R1

Dear Dr. Neal,

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.

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Kind regards,

Pilwon Kim

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

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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: The authors have addressed all my comments. Therefore I recommend paper for the publication. I do not have any further concerns.

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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: Yes: Akrati Saxena

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