Dear Dr. KWAKYE,

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 Jan 23 2026 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.

• 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Safdar Ali Amur

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.-->--> -->-->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. In your Methods section, please include information about voucher specimens including the name and qualification of the expert providing verification of the sample identification (Azadirachta indica).-->--> -->-->3. In your Methods section, please provide additional information regarding the permits you obtained for the work. Please ensure you have included the full name of the authority that approved the field site access and, if no permits were required, a brief statement explaining why.-->--> -->-->4. We suggest you thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar. If you do not know anyone who can help you do this, you may wish to consider employing a professional scientific editing service. -->--> -->-->The American Journal Experts (AJE) (https://www.aje.com/) is one such service that has extensive experience helping authors meet PLOS guidelines and can provide language editing, translation, manuscript formatting, and figure formatting to ensure your manuscript meets our submission guidelines. Please note that having the manuscript copyedited by AJE or any other editing services does not guarantee selection for peer review or acceptance for publication. -->--> -->-->Upon resubmission, please provide the following:-->--> -->-->The name of the colleague or the details of the professional service that edited your manuscript-->--> -->-->A copy of your manuscript showing your changes by either highlighting them or using track changes (uploaded as a *supporting information* file)-->--> -->-->A clean copy of the edited manuscript (uploaded as the new *manuscript* file)-->--> -->-->5. We note that your Data Availability Statement is currently as follows: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its supporting information files.-->--> -->-->Please confirm at this time whether or not your submission contains all raw data required to replicate the results of your study. Authors must share the “minimal data set” for their submission. PLOS defines the minimal data set to consist of the data required to replicate all study findings reported in the article, as well as related metadata and methods (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-minimal-data-set-definition).-->--> -->-->For example, authors should submit the following data:-->--> -->-->- The values behind the means, standard deviations and other measures reported;-->-->- The values used to build graphs;-->-->- The points extracted from images for analysis.-->--> -->-->Authors do not need to submit their entire data set if only a portion of the data was used in the reported study.-->--> -->-->If your submission does not contain these data, please either upload them as Supporting Information files or deposit them to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of recommended repositories, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories.-->--> -->-->If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. If data are owned by a third party, please indicate how others may request data access.-->--> -->-->6. If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise. ?>

Reviewers' comments:

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1:  1. introduction lacks a novelty statement. The last paragraph of the introduction is not well fit here. It must be revised to focus on the aim and novelty of the work.

2. Throughout MS, make the writing style of silver ions or silver uniform.

3. Follow the correct scientific writing of tested microbes.

4. Remove repetition of DPPH and NBTS chemicals in materials and methods.

5. For metakaolin: give accurate oven temp. and how filtration was done.

6. neem leaves (Azadirachta indica): the scientific name should be used firstly in the introduction part, then either write the scientific name or the English name.

7. Explain in detail the methodology of characterization techniques.

8. In MIC, how were the stock solutions were made?

9. For XRD results, add more supportive literature and provide JCPDS card numbers of materials.

10. Add more peak numbers in the FTIR and Raman results discussion and justify with literature.

11. Correct the Table 1 format. Antibacterial results should be discussed in detail and also described in correlation with SEM data.

12. Correct the format style of the p-value throughout the MS.

Reviewer #2:  1. Revise the abstract to include key results of synthesis.

2. introduction should be revised to justify the study title and include a novelty statement.

3. Make uniformity to write chemical names, plant names, and tested organisms.

4. Provide a detailed method of characterization.

5. Mostly, temp/time in many experiments is not given.

6. Results need to be strongly discussed in detail and supportive literature.

7. Add peak numbers in XRD and FTIR graphs. Add scale bar in SEM images.

8. Supply the antimicrobial visual images in the main article.

9. Overall, the study is OK, but novelty is not discussed anywhere, and results are not encouraged to stand alone as worthy of work.

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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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[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.]

To ensure your figures meet our technical requirements, please review our figure guidelines: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures

You may also use PLOS’s free figure tool, NAAS, to help you prepare publication quality figures: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/figures#loc-tools-for-figure-preparation.

NAAS will assess whether your figures meet our technical requirements by comparing each figure against our figure specifications.

<p>Antimicrobial and Antioxidant Activities of Neem assisted Silver-Modified Zeolite X Synthesized from Kaolin

PONE-D-25-58884R1

Dear Dr. Ralph Kwakye

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. For questions related to billing, please contact billing support .

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,

Safdar Ali Amur

Academic Editor

PLOS One

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

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??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

Reviewer #1: All comments are answered by authors. All necessary changes have been done in MS. The current form of MS is acceptable. My recommendation is accepted for publication.

Reviewer #2: Authors have addressed all comments professionally and have made changes in MS. The current form of MS is acceptable, and it is recommended the study be published.

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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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