PONE-D-24-52606Music Score Copyright Protection based on Mixed Low-order quaternion Franklin MomentsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Zhu,

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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Kind regards,

Sadiq H. Abdulhussain, Ph.D.

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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

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: No

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: Title: “Music Score Copyright Protection based on Mixed Low-order quaternion Franklin Moments”

This article takes music copyrights as an example and designs a copyright protection method for musical score digital images. To enhance the robustness of the algorithm, a new zero-watermarking method based on mixed low-order Franklin moments is proposed. The work is good and well presented. However, there are some major points need to be addressed which are as follows:

1-In general, the Abstract needs to specify the specific problem statements should be mentioned clearly to show the main contribution of this work. Besides, how the robustness has been increased using the new zero-watermarking method based on mixed low-order Franklin moments?

In addition, based on the experimental results, how the proposed algorithm has strong resistance to mixed attacks? What measures have been used and what is the rate of improvement that has been achieved?

2- What is the difference between discrete and continuous moments in QTFM? Which one is preferable to use in color image processing? Why?

3- The introduction section is weak and should be improved, more research should be added in this area. In addition, why does the ability of zero-watermarking algorithms based on orthogonal moments to resist geometric attacks remain limited? In addition, it is required to include some applications of orthogonal polynomials to show their importance such as:

i) "A steganography based on orthogonal moments." Proceedings of the international conference on information and communication technology. 2019.

ii) "Face recognition algorithm based on fast computation of orthogonal moments." Mathematics 10.15 (2022): 2721.

iii) "3D object recognition using fast overlapped block processing technique." Sensors 22.23 (2022): 9209.

Moreover, it is required to mention the main gaps that are handled in the proposed work. please list the main contributions of this work clearly.

4- It is recommended to add the section of the related works to provide a clear vision of the proposed work and its actual contribution in the context of other recent related papers.

5- There are many grammatical and typo errors that should be checked in the entire manuscript.

6- Please cite any specific figures, dataset, equation, and measurements (such as SSIM and PSNR) with reliable sources unless they are related to the authors.

7- The mathematical formula of the time complexity of recursive and non-recursive orthogonalization process are given in section 2.2. However, it is not mentioned for the proposed one. Please clarify.

Besides, it is preferable to put Fig 2 with the section of the Experimental results and discussions.

8- How Gaussian and wavelet integration methods provide an accurate computation of GKS-QFFM. Please give more explanations.

9- In general, the figures and results need more discussion with more explanation about each Tables.

10- The conclusion section is good, but it needs more improvement. It should restart the problem statement, summarize the key findings, and demonstrate the significance of the current work.

Reviewer #2: This paper addresses the challenge of designing a copyright protection method for musical score digital images. To this end, a zero-watermarking approach based on mixed low-order Franklin moments is proposed. The paper uses an invariant moments against image attacks and the consistency of global image features. The paper is well written and well organized. However, I have the following points that need to be addressed.

1. The author use some incomplete senescence. For example, the author mentioned Experimental results demonstrate that the algorithm has strong resistance to mixed attacks. The author need to mentioned the which algorithm.

2. The paper contributions need to be highlighted in the introduction. I would suggest using bullet points to make it clear to the reader.

3. Spacing should be exist between the text and reference. Please consider this point. For example � ng[12].

4. After eq 1 the author mentioned By Sn denotes. I would suggest using where Sn denotes

5. After each section, at the beginning of each section, the author needs to mention what this sections stands for. What are the contents of the section. It would be more clear to reader. Please address this issue.

6. The authors should tell the reader about the computational overhead and latency introduced by the proposed method. Just clarification is needed.

7. What are the imitations of the proposed approach. Could you please clarify this.

8. The author use ‘’Where’’ after equation 4. It should be where small letter and no spacing at the beginning of the line.

9. Dot should be placed after fig 8 caption.

10. The author should state a future work and what can be carried out in the future. This would be really helpful and open the potential for future work.

11. Some relevant references are missing. For example [R1] and [R2]

[R1] Mahmmod, Basheera M., Sadiq H. Abdulhussain, Tomáš Suk, Muntadher Alsabah, and Abir Hussain. "Accelerated and improved stabilization for high order moments of Racah polynomials." IEEE Access (2023).

[R2] Abdulhussain, Sadiq H., Basheera M. Mahmmod, Marwah Abdulrazzaq Naser, Muntadher Qasim Alsabah, Roslizah Ali, and S. A. R. Al-Haddad. "A robust handwritten numeral recognition using hybrid orthogonal polynomials and moments." Sensors 21, no. 6 (2021): 1999.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Music Score Copyright Protection based on Mixed Low-order quaternion Franklin Moments

PONE-D-24-52606R1

Dear Dr. Zhu,

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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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Sadiq H. Abdulhussain, 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

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

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: 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: Most of the comments in the revised version have been properly addressed and no further comments are needed.

Reviewer #2: The author addressed all the issues. The paper is now ready for consireation to be published. The currect format is fine I would recommand accepting this paper.

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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

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