About COAR

Our vision is to position repositories as the foundation for a distributed, globally networked infrastructure for scholarly communication, on top of which layers of value added services will be deployed, thereby transforming the system, making it more research-centric, open to and supportive of innovation, while also collectively managed by the scholarly community.

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Over 150 members

and partners from around

the world

Publish-Review-Curate (PRC) is a model of scholarly communication with three distinct steps, each of which fulfills a different function of the publishing process.

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A key part of the model is that research outputs are first published, prior to any subsequent review or curation.

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1. Publish: a research output (e.g., article, dataset, study registration) is made public, typically in an open access repository / preprint server by a researcher.
2. Review: reviewers evaluate the research output and provide feedback in an open, transparent way.
3. Curate: research outputs and reviews are organised and highlighted, often with summary judgements or evaluations applied to them.

What is PRC? … a working definition

• Lack of transparency in peer review and editorial decisions
• Very long lag times from submission to publication
• Excessively high ‘pay to access’ fees or ‘pay to publish’ fees (APCs)
• Print legacy systems / lack of innovation

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What we have

A predominantly

pay to access,

pay to publish

scholarly publishing

system

A universal,

quality-controlled

research

communications

system

Preprint servers and repositories

Adaptation of original slide from Ludo Waltman

Growing number of PRC platforms

Adaptation of original slide from Ludo Waltman

PRC is a flexible model of publishing that can accommodate a wide variety of editorial workflows, types of peer review, and research outputs, as demonstrated by several flavours of PRC that are already in use, from overlay journals that more closely mirror a standard publication, to initiatives that are adopting more innovative practices.

PRC initiatives are typically researcher-driven and community-based and can be implemented in low-cost environments. In a climate where the scholarly community is increasingly looking for alternatives to the traditional publishing system that is high cost, opaque, and slow, PRC offers a very promising alternative.

Because of the decentralized nature of PRC it is a model that can accommodate exciting innovations

A protocol to support a standard, interoperable, and decentralised approach to linking research outputs hosted in repositories with resources from external peer review services, using linked data notifications.

This will enable to scale more quickly!

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The technical glue COAR Notify

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The strategic glue PRC Alliance

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December 2, 2025

Why we need to team up

• PRC landscape is too complex and too scattered to effectively create political momentum for PRC
• There is no central knowledgebase of information if you want to launch, support, host or learn about PRC
• There is no common voice that can advocate for PRC

Interim Working Group Members

Michele Avissar-Whiting, HHMI

Isabel Bernal, Spanish National Research Council

Denis Bourguet, Peer Community In

Katie Corker, ASAPbio

Ashley Farley, Gates Foundation

Nathalie Fargier, CCSD

Thomas Guillemaud, Peer Community In

Fiona Hutton, eLife

Robert Kiley, Consultant COAR (Coordinator)

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Ross Mounce, Arcadia

Omo Oaiya, WACREN

Pandelis Perakakis, Open Scholar

Stephen Pinfield, MetaROR

Eloy Rodrigues, University of Minho

Daniela Saderi, PREreview

Kathleen Shearer, COAR

Bodo Stern, HHMI

Toma Tasovac, Dariah

Ludo Waltman, MetaROR / ASAPbio

Stay tuned!

• launch the Alliance in the fall 2026
• A membership and governance model are being developed by the Interim Working Group
• visit the website for updates: https://publish-review-curate.org/

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Kathleen Shearer, Executive Director, COAR

Thank you!