5,6-Diphenyl-1,3,4,7-tetra-p-tolyl-1,3,3a,7a-tetrahydropentaleno[1,2-c]furan

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper by Liu and colleagues is focused on polycyclic derivatives. The topic and the used analytical techniques are interesting, but the paper must undergo revision to meet the standard of the journal.

Major points:

·         Introduction should be improved: sentences such as “Presumably these structures are not common in natural occurring compounds” do not sound very scientifical. References must be introduced accordingly.

·         Authors present interesting crystallographic data. Nevertheless, I suggest to improve the quality of Figure 3. Maybe they could prepare the figure in portrait mode (panel b below a) to increase the size.

·         In experimental synthetic procedures, I encourage the authors to introduce the quantities in both mg and mmoles for all the species. In this version, for some compounds only mg or only mmoles are used. This is confusing.

·         The quality of the 1H-NMR spectrum in the Supplementary file must be improved: the resolution is too low and it is not possible to fully interpret the signals.

Minor points:

·         Check the use of capital letters. Sometimes it is not needed (e.g. Mass spectrometry).

·         Check the formatting: the spacing between paragraphs in 2.1 and in 2.2 does not seem to be consistent.

·         Figure 2: why in the caption the second sentence is between parentheses?

·         Table 1 should be moved to Supplementary file.

·         Conclusions section should be improved. The authors may anticipate the relevance that the synthesized compound may have in organic chemistry or in biological applications.

Author Response

Response to reviewer
We would like to thank reviewer’s comments and corrections. Those comments areall valuable and very helpful for the revision. The lists of changes are listed below.

1.  Introduction should be improved: sentences such as “Presumably these structures are not common in natural occurring compounds” do not sound very scientifical. References must be introduced accordingly.

 Ans: have removed that sentence.

2. Authors present interesting crystallographic data. Nevertheless, I suggest to improve the quality of Figure 3. Maybe they could prepare the figure in portrait mode (panel b below a) to increase the size.

 Ans: Have modified accordingly.

3   In experimental synthetic procedures, I encourage the authors to introduce the quantities in both mg and mmoles for all the species. In this version, for some compounds only mg or only mmoles are used. This is confusing.

  Ans: have re-written in both mg and mmoles for species.

4  The quality of the 1H-NMR spectrum in the Supplementary file must be improved: the resolution is too low and it is not possible to fully interpret the signals.

 Ans: Have modified accordingly.Minor points:

5  Check the use of capital letters. Sometimes it is not needed (e.g. Mass spectrometry).

Ans: Have corrected.

6   Check the formatting: the spacing between paragraphs in 2.1 and in 2.2 does not seem to be consistent.

Ans: Have corrected.

7   Figure 2: why in the caption the second sentence is between parentheses?

Ans: have removed the parentheses.

8. Table 1 should be moved to Supplementary file.

Ans: Have moved to SI as Table S5.

9.  Conclusions section should be improved. The authors may anticipate the relevance that the synthesized compound may have in organic chemistry or in biological applications.

Ans: Have added a sentence

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors introduced the requested changes.