The Publish, Review, Curate (PRC) model re-imagines scholarly publishing by breaking the traditional publishing process into three distinct, independently executable stages: publish, review, and curate. PRC publishes the research output first, with review and curation following afterward. Each stage can occur independently, on different platforms, and more than once, and the outputs of every stage are made openly available — articles, reviews, and commentaries alike — introducing far greater transparency than the traditional publishing process allows.
The decoupling of stages makes PRC very flexible. It can accommodate a wide range of research outputs, peer review types, and editorial practices. This already takes several forms in practice: Some PRC initiatives incorporate preprint sharing and open review in established journal models. Other PRC approaches are more decentralised, with groups of researchers openly reviewing already-published articles.
This flexibility, combined with the fact that PRC initiatives are typically researcher-driven, community-based, and implementable in low-cost environments, is what makes the model so promising at a moment when the scholarly community is actively looking for alternatives to a publishing system widely seen as expensive, opaque, and slow.
Definition
The PRC Alliance defines PRC as follows:
Publish, Review, Curate (PRC) is a scholarly publishing model in which research outputs are first published prior to any subsequent open review and/or curation. The model consists of three steps.
- Publish: a research output (e.g., article, dataset, study registration) is made public by a researcher, typically in an open access repository or on a preprint server.
- Review: reviewers evaluate the research output and provide feedback in an open, transparent way.
- Curate: research outputs and reviews are organised and highlighted, often with summary judgements or evaluations applied to them.
More resources
For a more detailed overview of PRC, read this ASAPbio paper “Understanding the Publish-Review-Curate (PRC) Model of Scholarly Communication“
Ludo Waltman’s presentation at PRC event in Cambridge on December 3, 2025, “Why Publish, Review, Curate should be the future of scholarly publishing“
COAR’s “Publish, Review, Curate” web page and the COAR Notify resources
Publish | Review | Curate 