christopher.conselice@aas.org Attachments11:32 AM (12 hours ago) to igor.chilingar. May 22, 2018 Dr. Igor V Chilingarian Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory 60 Garden Street MS09 Cambridge, MA 02138 Title: A Population of Bona Fide Intermediate Mass Black Holes Identified as Low Luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei, AAS10941 Dear Dr. Chilingarian, I have received the referee's report on your above submission to the The Astrophysical Journal and appended it below. As you will see, the referee feels that your paper is not acceptable for publication in its present form. He/she has a whole list of specific comments designed to help you improve the manuscript. Click the link below to upload your revised manuscript;. https://aas.msubmit.net/cgi-bin/main.plex?el=A3KO3Bfv7A3CDNc6J7A9ftd5hx0lrCCggJwLU8G9vMEegZ Alternatively, you may also log into your account at the EJ Press web site, http://apj.msubmit.net. Please use your user's login name: igorchilingarian. You can then ask for a new password via the Unknown/Forgotten Password link if you have forgotten your password. When you submit the revised manuscript, please include a cover letter in which you outline in detail the specific changes you have made in response to each of the referee's comments. Reviewers find it helpful if the changes in the text of the manuscript are easily distinguishable from the rest of the text. Therefore we ask you to print changes in bold face. The highlighting can be removed easily after the review. The AAS Journals have adopted a new policy that manuscript files become inactive, and are considered to have been withdrawn, six months after the most recent referee's report goes to the authors, provided a revised version has not been received by that time. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Sincerely, Prof. Christopher J. Conselice Lead Editor, Galaxies and Cosmology Corridor AAS Journals University of Nottingham Email: christopher.conselice@aas.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Referee Report Editor's comments -- In sec 2.2, I do not understand the fitting procedure where "we recover the shape of the narrow line component in a non-parametric way by solving a linear convolution problem with the regularization, which requires a smoothness of a solution". Is kernel smoothing involved? Is this a semi-parametric local regression technique similar to splines or LOESS? Please explain the procedure in full detail, possibly in an Appendix. Give references to the methodology where applicable. Reviewer's Comments: The article discusses the identity of 305 IMBH candidates using mining data in wide-field sky surveys (SDSS DR7), archival, and follow-up observations. Among these 305 IMBH candidates, they confirmed the AGN nature of 10 sources, including five previously known AGNs and five new targets by detecting the X-ray emission from their accretion discs. Their results support the supermassive black hole seeds scenario formation from the population III. This finding is interesting and consistent with few recent investigations using different methods. The data reduction and analysis are solid and make a convincing case for the presence of 10 IMBHs out of 305 AGN candidates from SDSS DR7 survey. The authors are very clear in making assumptions that are likely to significantly affect their conclusions. They also take time to the implications and limitations of their choices. This is very appreciated. (see attachment for more detailed comments)