Zero-shot performance analysis of large language models in sumrate maximization

Ali Abir Shuvro; Md. Shahriar Islam Bhuiyan; Faisal Hussain; Md. Sakhawat Hossen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0329674

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 25, 2023
20 May 2024 Decision Letter - Sheetal Kalyani, Editor PONE-D-23-43572Zero-shot Performance Analysis of Large Language Models in Sumrate MaximizationPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Hossen, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 04 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Sheetal Kalyani Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Please note that PLOS ONE has specific guidelines on code sharing for submissions in which author-generated code underpins the findings in the manuscript. In these cases, all author-generated code must be made available without restrictions upon publication of the work. Please review our guidelines at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/materials-and-software-sharing#loc-sharing-code and ensure that your code is shared in a way that follows best practice and facilitates reproducibility and reuse. Additional Editor Comments: Both the reviewers have some critical concerns. Please address them in detail. More simulations with existing state of art techniques is required. More optimization of the prompt engineering is required. The utility of the work also needs to be discussed in greater detail. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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: No ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No ****** 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: No Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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: No ****** 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: In this paper, the authors study the performance when leveraging the generative power of LLMs for networking optimization problems. Although the idea is interesting, the reviewer has the following comments: 1. The insights are from the testing of LLM. The paper is more like a technical report of LLM in networking. More insights should be added. For example, how can we improve the LLM to meet the requirement of network optimziation tasks. 2. Moreover, except directly using LLM, is there any other way to use LLM to enhance the network? Reviewer #2: As the problem is solved using GPT, and the proposed solution is sub-optimal, the reviewer is not sure if the LLM is able to propose a good enough solution. Even though using LLM for sum-rate optimization is unique, but the results are not good enough to ensure that LLM is really useful for all such tasks. Promt engineering is not explored well for creating algorithms and it needs extensive study and comparison with existing algorithms and show comparable results to establish that LLM can be used for sumrate maximization in wireless communication. The system model is not present, which make it difficult to follow. Table 3 does not have explanation. Fig 2 needs explanation. ****** 6. 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 ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0329674.r001
Revision 1
4 Jul 2024 Author Response Reviewer 1 Concern 1: The insights are from the testing of LLM. The paper is more like a technical report of LLM in networking. More insights should be added. For example, how can we improve the LLM to meet the requirement of network optimziation tasks. Response: We appreciate the reviewer's concern. We have added a separate subsection - "Improving LLM for Network Optimization". In this section, we have added our insight on how to improve LLM to meet network optimization task requirements See Page 8, Line 251-258 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Concern 2: Moreover, except directly using LLM, is there any other way to use LLM to enhance the network? Response: In Section 4.3, we proposed an idea about using LLM as an intermediary. It can provide outputs to help other algorithms in achieving better performance in tasks like Sumrate Maximization. See Page 8, Line 259-264. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reviewer 2 Concern 1: As the problem is solved using GPT, and the proposed solution is sub-optimal, the reviewer is not sure if the LLM is able to propose a good enough solution. Even though using LLM for sum-rate optimization is unique, but the results are not good enough to ensure that LLM is really useful for all such tasks. Response: We thank the reviewer for pointing this out. LLMs can be used to make quick decisions without having prior algorithmic knowledge. This was unclear earlier and now we have specified it in our manuscript. See Page 7, Line 210-212 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Concern 2: Promt engineering is not explored well for creating algorithms and it needs extensive study and comparison with existing algorithms and show comparable results to establish that LLM can be used for sumrate maximization in wireless communication. Response: Our prompt has evolved through multiple iterations while judging from the outputs of the LLMs. We extensively analyzed the outputs to understand the need of the models and we provided more information to obtain our desired result. We have now added the changes made to each iteration while developing our prompt. See Page 3-4, Line 115-126 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Concern 3: The system model is not present, which make it difficult to follow. Response: Section 2 - Methodology has subsections which are the steps taken by us for conducting our experiment. This is now specified in the manuscript. See Page 3, Line 104-105 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Concern 4: Table 3 does not have explanation. Response: We are grateful to the reviewer for identifying this as it will definitely help improve the quality of the manuscript. We have added a proper explanation to the table to assist the readers. See Page 5, Line 166-170 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Concern 5: Fig 2 needs explanation. Response: A proper explanation of the figure with all the features is currently added. A summary of the main gist of the figure is also added in one sentence. See Page 7, Line 199-202 Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0329674.r002
12 May 2025 Decision Letter - Divya Chaudhary, Editor PONE-D-23-43572R1Zero-shot Performance Analysis of Large Language Models in Sumrate MaximizationPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Hossen, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 26 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Divya Chaudhary, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: Minor Revision Both the reviewer comments should be addressed for acceptance of the paper. Reviewer 1 Most my previous comments are addressed. This paper can provide some insights for the applications of LLM in the network issues. However, one important things is that most refs discussed in this paper is about the LLM from the AI perspective. Considering that recently there are many works that use LLM in the network optimization, e.g., together with reinforcement learning or RAG, it is necessary to discuss these papers to provide the readers a detailed background. Reviewer 2 To strengthen your manuscript’s reproducibility and clarity, please consider the following revisions: • Specify the hardware and software environment used for the experiment • Report the average turnaround time from prompt submission to GPT response when using your JSON input • It would be helpful if the authors provided insight into the parameters used for the OpenAI ChatCompletion to generate the response, e.g., max tokens, conversation: system, user, etc. • Replace the generic phrase “In the result comparison graph” used in section 2.3 with an explicit pointer (e.g., “As shown in Figure 3…”). To ensure the graph refrenced is understood by the readers. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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: (No Response) Reviewer #3: (No Response) ******** 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: (No Response) Reviewer #3: Partly ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #3: N/A ****** 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: (No Response) Reviewer #3: 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: (No Response) Reviewer #3: 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: Most my previous comments are addressed. This paper can provide some insights for the applications of LLM in the network issues. However, one important things is that most refs discussed in this paper is about the LLM from the AI perspective. Considering that recently there are many works that use LLM in the network optimization, e.g., together with reinforcement learning or RAG, it is necessary to discuss these papers to provide the readers a detailed background. Reviewer #3: To strengthen your manuscript’s reproducibility and clarity, please consider the following revisions: • Specify the hardware and software environment used for the experiment • Report the average turnaround time from prompt submission to GPT response when using your JSON input • It would be helpful if the authors provided insight into the parameters used for the OpenAI ChatCompletion to generate the response, e.g., max tokens, conversation: system, user, etc. • Replace the generic phrase “In the result comparison graph” used in section 2.3 with an explicit pointer (e.g., “As shown in Figure 3…”). To ensure the graph refrenced is understood by the readers. ****** 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 #3: No ******** While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0329674.r003
Revision 2
12 Jun 2025 Author Response Reviewer 1 Most my previous comments are addressed. This paper can provide some insights for the applications of LLM in the network issues. However, one important things is that most refs discussed in this paper is about the LLM from the AI perspective. Considering that recently there are many works that use LLM in the network optimization, e.g., together with reinforcement learning or RAG, it is necessary to discuss these papers to provide the readers a detailed background. Response: We appreciate the reviewer's concern. We have discussed another manuscript in our Related Works section which is focused on this particular suggestion. Reviewer 2 To strengthen your manuscript’s reproducibility and clarity, please consider the following revisions: • Specify the hardware and software environment used for the experiment Response: We have added another subsection (Section 3.1.1) titled "Hardware and Software Environments" under the Section Experimental Setup where we discussed every experimental environments used. • It would be helpful if the authors provided insight into the parameters used for the OpenAI ChatCompletion to generate the response, e.g., max tokens, conversation: system, user, etc. Response: We thank the reviewer for pointing this out. We have now added another subsection, "Parametric Values of the LLMs," where we discuss these in detail for the readers. • Replace the generic phrase “In the result comparison graph” used in section 2.3 with an explicit pointer (e.g., “As shown in Figure 3…”). To ensure the graph refrenced is understood by the readers. Response: We corrected this cosmetic issue and accepted the reviewers suggestion. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response_to_Reviewers_auresp_2.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0329674.r004
4 Jul 2025 Decision Letter - Divya Chaudhary, Editor PONE-D-23-43572R2Zero-shot Performance Analysis of Large Language Models in Sumrate MaximizationPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Hossen, 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. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 17 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Divya Chaudhary, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments: Please include the reviewer comments in the submission. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 #3: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #4: All comments have been addressed ******** 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 #3: Partly Reviewer #4: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #3: N/A Reviewer #4: 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 #3: (No Response) Reviewer #4: 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 #3: Yes Reviewer #4: 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 #3: I commend the authors for their efforts in improving the manuscript. However, I suggest a few suggestions to further strengthen the manuscript: 1. Although the introduction is brief and to the point, it would be beneficial to include a short explanation of what sum-rate maximization entails, particularly for readers who may not be specialists in this area. This addition would enhance accessibility for a broader audience. 2. The manuscript stated a valid concerns regarding the limitations of large language models (LLMs) in reasoning in the related works section (line 59 – 63) of the manusctipt. However, recent advancements have introduced techniques such as chain-of-thought prompting, and scratchpad reasoning which have significantly enhanced the performance of LLMs in structured reasoning tasks. Instead of broadly stating that LLMs struggle with reasoning, I recommend refining this point to reflect that while current models have improved, their reasoning abilities can still be fragile or dependent on context. 3. Additionally, the manuscript employs GPT-3.5-Turbo, which is now considered a relatively outdated version of OpenAI's models. It would be helpful to explain the rationale behind selecting this version. If possible, consider rerunning the experiments using more recent models with stronger reasoning capabilities, such as GPT-4o or o3-mini, as they may yield improved results and strengthen your conclusions. Reviewer #4: The authors have adequately addressed all the comments raised in a previous round of review. # # # # ****** 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 #3: No Reviewer #4: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0329674.r005
Revision 3
7 Jul 2025 Author Response 1. We appreciate the reviewer's concern. We have discussed about sumrate maximization in our introduction for the readers to have a clearer idea about the topic. 2. We have discussed about chain-of-thought prompting and scratchpad reasoning in our manuscript taking into account the reviewer's suggestion. We thank the reviewers for this valuable feedback. 3. We thank the reviewer for pointing this out. The scope of the work, when submitted, was with GPT 3.0 and we are certain that newer models might outperform this model. But the research is regarding the then version of GPT and if that shows significant performance boost (which it does), we can conclude that newer models would follow the trend. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response_to_Reviewers_auresp_3.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0329674.r006
21 Jul 2025 Decision Letter - Divya Chaudhary, Editor Zero-shot Performance Analysis of Large Language Models in Sumrate Maximization PONE-D-23-43572R3 Dear Md Sakhawat Hossen, 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. An invoice will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. 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, Divya Chaudhary, 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 #3: All comments have been addressed ******** 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 #3: Partly ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #3: N/A ****** 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 #3: 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 #3: 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 #3: (No Response) ****** 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 #3: No ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0329674.r007

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