PONE-D-25-31773Empirical aesthetics of bridgesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Damiano,

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.

Most of the reviewers find the manuscript sound and of interest, with suggestions for minor revisions to improve clarity and completeness. I therefore recommend minor revisions as detailed in the reviewers’ comments.

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Matteo Bodini, 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: 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: No

Reviewer #3: 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: No

Reviewer #3: 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:  Summary

This manuscript presents a comprehensive, well-designed, and highly original empirical investigation of the aesthetic perception of bridges. Drawing from a dataset of 318 real-world bridges, rated by over 250 participants across multiple dimensions (aesthetic liking, complexity, interest, perceived safety), the authors identify two latent perceptual dimensions—Aesthetic and Perceived Safety—and examine how they relate to both structural design features and mid-level visual properties. The study integrates civil engineering expertise with cognitive science methods and contributes a publicly available dataset for future research.

The topic is timely and underexplored, and the study is methodologically sound and theoretically significant. The writing is clear, the analyses are appropriate and replicable, and the discussion is thoughtful and well contextualized.

Major Comments

• The manuscript explains that design features were annotated by experts, but it is not clear whether one or multiple annotators performed the coding. If multiple coders were involved, inter-rater reliability (e.g., Cohen’s κ) should be reported. If a single expert conducted the annotations, this should be stated explicitly, along with a brief justification (e.g., relevant experience or qualifications).

• While the authors rightly emphasize that their study captures laypeople’s perspectives, it would be helpful to acknowledge that aesthetic preferences may vary across cultures. The discussion could be strengthened by briefly addressing the potential role of cultural context—e.g., whether individuals from Asia, Europe, or Africa might evaluate bridge aesthetics differently—and what that might imply for the generalisability of the findings.

• The finding that angularity positively predicts aesthetic responses contradicts a large body of literature in empirical aesthetics. While the authors offer plausible and insightful explanations (e.g., domain-specific aesthetics of structural engineering, inferred size and complexity), these remain speculative. The discussion could be enhanced by suggesting concrete follow-up experiments to disentangle these interpretations.

Minor Comments:

• Missing p-value (line 518): In reporting the results of Experiment 3, the p-value for interest is missing: “interest: t(49) = -33.52;”

Please add the corresponding p-value for consistency (presumably p < 0.001).

• Typographical error (line 618): The word “For” is incorrectly capitalised in the middle of the sentence

• While the diversity of bridges is mentioned, a brief breakdown of bridge distribution by type, material, age, aesthetic premium and region (if available) would help readers assess the representativeness of the dataset.

Conclusion

This is an important and methodologically rigorous contribution to the growing field of empirical aesthetics. It advances our understanding of how large-scale engineered structures are perceived, opens new directions for interdisciplinary research, and provides a high-quality dataset for future studies. With minor revisions as suggested above, I strongly recommend this manuscript for publication.

Reviewer #2:  REJECTED. This is trivial disorganized and immature work both technically/analytically and structurally. Research work without ‘conclusion’???

The lack of innovation of this work in the science border is concrete!! The main novelty?? characterized contribution??? It simply can be seen from superficial review and all outdated references, with at least 3 years gap!!!!

There are many untreated technical concerns: The framework is a simple straight image analysis without any clear modeling procedure/proper justifications/lacking substantive enhancements to bolster the theoretical underpinnings and methodological robustness of the study/feature extraction strategy, noise removal/deep discussion about the claimed ‘dimension’, ‘safety’…

The prerequisite of this draft is the use of a unified pixel size and therefore, any modification to input data such as changes in resolution (pixels, grid structure, …) compromises data integrity. Hence, the capability and stability approval of the given model is not certified.

Incohesive English/inconsistent with the third passive/frequent flaws…

Unconvincing and documented Discussion/technical limitations/solid comparison with other scholars’ approaches/constraints in getting features/…

If and only if we consider Fig 10, it is simple uncertainty quantification where in comparison with advanced approaches like https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00366-023-01852-5... It is uncompetitive

Ill-formatted references in terms of required identifiers

Reviewer #3:  Clarity of Methods: The paper is well structured and clearly written. One area that could use a bit more detail is the description of the Factorial Analysis of Mixed Data (FAMD). A brief explanation of why FAMD was chosen over other dimensionality reduction methods would help readers less familiar with the technique.

Participant Characteristics: The study includes ratings from 254 participants, which is a strong sample size. It would strengthen the paper to provide a more detailed demographic breakdown (e.g., cultural or professional background), since perceptions of aesthetics and safety can vary across populations.

Practical Implications: The findings on bridge type and material are compelling. Expanding the discussion slightly on how these insights might inform future design practices or policy guidelines could enhance the paper’s practical relevance.

Perceived vs. Actual Safety : Since perceived safety emerged as a key dimension, it may be helpful to briefly connect this with research on actual safety outcomes. For example, 10.1080/23249935.2025.2516817. While focused on road safety, it shows how infrastructure features translate into measurable safety risks. Referencing such work could broaden the discussion by linking perceptions with outcome-based evidence.

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Reviewer #1: Yes:  Ivan Stojilovic

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Empirical aesthetics of bridges

PONE-D-25-31773R1

Dear Dr. Damiano,

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,

Matteo Bodini, 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 #3: 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 #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #3: (No Response)

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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 #3: (No Response)

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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 appreciate the thorough revisions made by the authors in response to my comments. All the concerns I raised in my initial review—including clarity in terminology, cautious interpretation of results, improvements to figure legends and table formatting, and clearer explanations of the modeling assumptions—have been adequately addressed. The manuscript is now more balanced, transparent, and accessible to a broader audience.

I find the revised version acceptable for publication and have no further comments.

Reviewer #3: My comments on the previous version of the manuscript has been addressed. Goodluck with your future research

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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:  Ivan Stojilović

Reviewer #3: No

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