I had 3 materials:

bacterial cellulose (BC), Bacterial cellulose covered with gelatin 1% (BCG) and bacterial cellulose mixed with gelatin 25% (mBCG). I performed XRD for 3 materials without baseline correction. I calculated crystallinity index % by Segal method for them. BC= 82%, BCG=43%, mBCG= amorphous.

Segal method:

CrI (%) = [(I110-Iam)/I110] ×100

where I110 is the maximum intensity of the diffraction peak from crystalline region at 2θ=22.75◦ and Iam is the minimum intensity from amorphous region at 2θ=about 18.

I sent my article to one Journal.

One Section from results of XRD in my article:

As the concentration of gelatin was increased, the intensity of peaks was decreased, which indicates a reduction in degree of crystallinity

Editor of journal wrote comments:

Please describe the background treatment and whether smoothing was applied to the data. Smoothing seems especially likely for the gelatin amorphous patterns, with that characteristic nearly periodic oscillation. Even bigger is the confusion that arises when the gelatin is added. If the gelatin results in increased intensity in the region of 18 degrees, it does not mean that the cellulose is less crystalline. It is not certain that the new peaks in BCG are from the cellulose. The peak intensities of the cellulose would decrease just because of dilution of the sample by the gelatin.

Thus, I did background treatment or baseline correction, Results of crystallinity index % was changed: BC= 99%, BCG=96.5%.

Whether is my new results Convincing?

Should I perform normalization of data?

Thank you very much in advance.