Yesterday, one paper titled as ‘Thermal stability of phenolic resin: new insights based on bond dissociation energy and reactivity of functional groups’ was accepted by RSC Advances. Cheng Bian, the doctoral candidate of RGFP, is the first author. In this work, DFT approach was adopted to calculate the bond dissociation energies of C-C bonds in methylene bridges and C-O bonds in hydroxyls in the cured phenolic resins (PRs). The radical reactivity of the phenolic rings, methylenes and hydroxyls during the initial pyrolysis were also analyzed. These results are beneficial to understanding the thermal stability of phenolic resin.