The PRC (Publish, Review, Curate) model for publishing is transforming how research is shared, evaluated, and made accessible to the scientific community. Sciety acts as a directory of organisations committed to public review and curation (the ‘R’ and ‘C’ of PRC), and a champion of their outputs. In this post, we explore the components of PRC and how the various groups on Sciety are innovating in this space.
Publish-Review-Curate (PRC), is a model of scientific communication that breaks the process of publishing down into distinct parts. In the publish stage, a research artifact (e.g., article, dataset, study registration) is made public by a researcher. In the review stage, reviewers transparently evaluate the research artifact and provide feedback. In the curate stage, research artifacts are compiled into collections, and they may have summary judgements or evaluations applied to them. The PRC model supports decentralization by design, with different services executing different parts of the scholarly communication process.
Understanding the Publish-Review-Curate (PRC) Model of Scholarly Communication by Katherine S. Corker, Ludo Waltman, and Jonny Coates and licensed under CC BY 4.0
Publish
Core to PRC is the Publish first approach, shifting the decision to publish from the traditional editor or journal to the author. Typically, an author will publish an openly licensed artefact via a preprint server or other PRC-oriented venue, so that it can be given a persistent identifier (DOI) to help discover and reference the work.
Example Initiatives
Indexed by Sciety: BioRxiv, MedRxiv, Research Square, SciELO, OSF, eLife Reviewed Preprints, Access Microbiology and more. Coming soon: arXiv, Zenodo, Figshare, F1000 and more
The role of Sciety
Sciety surfaces published work through search and personalised preprint recommendations. Each article page visualises the journey of the preprint, aggregating its publication and evaluation history to build trust in the work and direct readers to the most recent version. Sciety helps researchers discover both evaluated preprints and those yet to be evaluated, supporting further review and curation.
Review
Review involves the structured community peer evaluation of research by experienced peers, ensuring transparency and providing insight into the quality of the work. It is directed towards and can involve a dialogue with the author. Unlike traditional publishing models, PRC enables multiple community evaluations of the same work. Reviews share similar characteristics with the author publications they are linked with; unique and persistent identifiers and rich, interoperable metadata.
Example initiatives
PREreview Clubs, Review Commons, Arcadia Science, ASAPbio Crowd Review, Gigascience
The role of Sciety
Sciety aggregates and indexes evaluation activity (and where possible, the content), helping readers see at a glance which preprints have been reviewed and by which communities. Sciety allows, for the first time, multiple organisations and communities to endorse the same preprint, creating an ecosystem where review and curation is performed by many groups, not just a single journal. Sciety enhances the Review stage by producing a DocMap (a structured, machine-readable history of the review and curation process) to create rich, interoperable metadata, increase transparency in the process, and provide recognition for the reviewers.
Curate
Perhaps the most innovative and evolving aspect of PRC is Curate, which focuses on compiling and organising research to provide context to readers, informing them of what is interesting and important in their field. Curation often involves summarising findings, categorising/tagging/badging, or creating collections of related work by topic or theme. It can be coupled to the review stage (eLife), but also independent of it (preLights/postLights, MBoC). Curation activity is also linked within metadata to the artefact being curated.
Example initiatives
preLights, NCRC, eLife, Biophysics Colab, Gigabyte, RR/ID, PCI, MetaROR, MBoC, Sense Making Networks
The role of Sciety
Sciety highlights the act of curation by prominently displaying group curation summaries on an article page and the associated lists/collections an article is part of. By capturing this activity in the Sciety database, we make curation a recognisable and rewarding academic activity.Sciety also offers individuals the opportunity to create lists/collections of preprints. These help generate interest in the work, though they are not yet indexed or enhanced by metadata. Other initiatives, such as Sense Making networks, support this through the creation of nanopublications when scientists curate preprints via social media,for example.
Publish, Review, Curate
As previously mentioned, it’s possible to adopt one or more components of the PRC model, and many organisations are operating a full PRC model to provide an end-to-end publishing solution for authors and readers.
Example initiatives
eLife, Biophysics Colab, Gigabyte, RR/ID, PCI, MetaROR
The role of Sciety
Sciety captures the entire journey of the preprint, with a focus on the aggregation of the Review and Curate stages of PRC. It makes adoption of PRC simple, and through the DocMaps and COAR notify protocols ensures evaluated preprints can easily be discovered and review and curation efforts can be recognised and rewarded.
Be the catalyst for change
Publishing through preprints is becoming not only more common but increasingly required in the life sciences. The Publish, Review, Curate (PRC) model offers a valuable way to enhance the visibility of preprints by integrating community-driven peer evaluations.
If you're uploading artefacts to a preprint server, don't stop there—request a review from an expert community to enrich your work with valuable feedback. If you're a member or representative of a Society, consider adopting preprint review as a key part of your academic mission. For journal clubs, incorporating preprints into your discussions helps keep your members at the cutting edge of research. And if you're already reviewing preprints, start organising your evaluations into curated collections to guide readers toward the most impactful work.
By embracing the PRC model, you help ensure that preprints receive the rigorous evaluation they deserve while amplifying the influence of community-driven science.
Further reading
Read this article by Bodo M. Stern and Erin K. O’Shea on the concept of a “publish first, curate second” approach that moves the goalposts away from publication. Check out this post from eLife for an overview of the PRC model and this recent preprint on Understanding the Publish-Review-Curate (PRC) Model of Scholarly Communication.