Post Publication review of chosen researcher paper 2 in Plant science Title of the Article:"Comparison of Herbarium Label Data and Published Medicinal Use: Herbaria as an Underutilized Source of Ethnobotanical Information" Authors: E. N. F. SOUZA* AND J. A. HAWKINS Journal Name: Economic Botany DOI: doi:10.1007/s12231-017-9367-1 Title is informative and relavent Abstarct Abstract matches the rest of the article with clearly stated aim and conclusions from the study conducted for comparision of two data sets of literature reports and herbaria. Background The authors clearly mentioned about the back ground information on importance and use of botanical herbarium in modern world, by providing one taxonomic group of plant members from leguminosae. The research question, addressing the use of herbarium data for ethnobotanical research, is clearly stated by possible comaprisions of publsihed literature reports on Brazilian leguminsae species and available herbarium data. The article is laying foundation for future need for establishment of digital library for bioinformatics search of published literature on botanical specimens with complete details along with medicinal use or economical or industrial use. Collection of such information helps to reinvestigate the herbarium collections made to date to enhance and explore the region for more specimens. There are several other taxons in plant kingdom having lot of application in human health, which is either not published yet or reviewed the old publications from different regions of the world. Methods The variables and criteria were clearly defined with a definite therapeutic application and it is a study intended to initiate a source in future to retrieve information online by updating data from literature and herbarium sources. The study methods (choice of data base) and subject selection (selection of journals related to the genera and species of leguminosae) were clearly explained. With the help of WHO ICD-10, the herbarium and literature reports were compared and classified. Total numbers of each therapeutic application, plant part used, and mode of application were recorded for both sources. Fo analysis of results, to compare the two data sets spearmans rank /pearson correlation tests were used which is a perfect choice. Key terms used were very scientific, presentation is organised, study is well planned, implemented, executed , presented and classified for medicinal use parts and applications. These collections are grouped as new, known, unknown and avalibale species of Herbarium and reports from Brazilian leguminosae family. Author clearly stated that if there is any missing information on therapeutic applications or parts used. Results The presented results revealed that tremendous amount of information on unique species with application in medicinal use/therapeutics (tables 1,2,4), but lack of avaliability of herbaria for those useful species provides an opportunity to update herbarium with new and unique species with a specific use criteria. Statistical analysis was done using Pearson-rank correlation and identified significant correlation for the criteria chosen. Tables were highly informative, with a lot of choice for a reader to chose the specific group with unique identity (Tables 1,2 and 4). The text is written consistently, highlighting the significant and meanignful information from the results obtained. Table 2 with most cited genera has information on mostly plantation trees with food, fibre, health, essential oil and ornamental values from Leguminosae, and were all from native (north or south) americas., which shows the study helps in exploring the use of native species. Spacial and temporal distribution of species provided useful information about the regions which were not explored and with few reports like in Pampas compared to the regions with more than 400 reports from cerrado and caatinga biomes. The herbaria collections were not consistently done, there were gaps in some years. Compared to literature, herbarium data provided 99 new uses of the species (listed in the last line of the results section). Discussion and Conclusion The results were discussed thoroughly with conclusive statements as supported by references. Discussion also included missing information on some available herbaria species collected on tropical specimens, as well as difficulties involved in the process of organisation and limitations in collection of information from remote areas. Conclusions are in line with aims of the study. References The references are relevant, recent, cited correctly for key points of discussion as well as for the background information. Overall The study introduced new ways of collecting useful information besides adding information to the current day informatics era of research investigations. Review Overall statement or summary Excellent research investigation and contribution to the ethnobotany and medical botany having applications in pharmacy, medicine and industry. It is truly an informative title about herbaria as they were really underutilized resource in modern world, unless an attempt was made like present investigation to push forward to a stage of digitization of all the economically important plant species in a geographical region.

Strengths of the article 1) High scope in near future for digitalisation of the herbaria with their ethnobotanical use and application along with geographical origin information. 2) Huge data handled in an organised manner to elucidate the valid information. correlation, validation and augmentation were done very well. 3) Problems a researcher face in exploring the plant specimens in places like Amazon and reading the herbaria documented in the past by expert botanists or assigned physics faculty, and misidentified specimens, is clearly explained which will help the future researcher. 4) Entire document was written very well. No language or formatting errors or spelling mistakes were identified. Weaknesses of the article Minor: 1) Sub heading were not distinctly viewed/presented from the content in every paragraph of "Data Analysis" and Results, though they first letter of the word was capitalised. 2) Paragraph 6,Line 4: Repetition of the names of data traits like "total numbers of each therapeutic application, plant part used, and mode of application". 3) The data is based on only published reports, but not from the published research articles that provides additional information on missing labels. 4) Today most herbaria are in the process of digitalization, including therapeutic use information from global data base resources would have provided some more input on the species listed in researched herbaria/literature reports from that region, which were not provided with any information or missing with labels. Specific comments Excellent article with lot of content to the future researchers. Only data that was unable to see is the information on the useful parts of each group that is unique from Table 1, though the families from table 3 were providing some information on use. A table with information on therapeutic use parts from each genera is highly informative, though Table 4 is provided with number of reports on each use and application from both the data sources. A digital data source with the entire information would be beneficial to the community of researchers in ethnobotany and medical botany areas with application in biomedical science.As stated in the conclusion,definetly there is huge need for future research for new opportunites to explore the use of the herbarium and the digitalisation process of the herbarium with extensive information.