We are looking forward to working with the new members to improve scholarly communication!

At the same time, we would like to thank R. Dyche Mullins and Thabiso Motaung, who are leaving the Board following the conclusion of their terms, for their hard work and service to ASAPbio and the Open Science community.

Ryoji Amamoto

Assistant Professor, Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School

Jeremy Berg

Professor of Computational and Systems Biology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

Stefano Bertozzi

Professor of Health Policy & Management, University of California Berkeley School of Public Health

Natascha Chtena

Research Associate, ScholCommLab, Simon Fraser University

Rebecca Lawrence

VP Knowledge Translation, Taylor & Francis; Founding Managing Director, F1000; Vice-Chair, DORA

Christopher Marcum

Senior Fellow, Data Foundation

At a meeting held on the 3^rd December 2025 at Kings College, Cambridge over 50 delegates, comprising researchers, publishers, librarians, research funders and scholarly communication infrastructure providers, came together to discuss the Publish, Review, Curate (PRC) publishing model. The meeting, which was organised by COAR and the University of Cambridge Library and Archives with contributions from ASAPbio, aimed to showcase various PRC initiatives from around the world and illustrate its many benefits such as increased rigour, efficiency, and transparency.

The overarching outcome from the meeting was that the current model of scholarly publishing – based on subscriptions, APCs and opaque peer review processes – was in need of reform and that PRC is a viable and compelling alternative and one that is already available for researchers to use.

Why PRC should be the future of scholarly publishing!

In the keynote session, Ludo Waltman, Professor of Quantitative Science Studies at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University and President of ASAPbio, defined PRC as a model for scholarly publishing initiatives that build on the growing trend of preprint sharing and one that typically involves communities who peer review openly available preprints, providing an evaluation and/or endorsement of the research.

Crucially, Waltman highlighted how momentum for PRC is growing, as a result of three compounding factors. 

First, there is a huge concern around issues of research integrity, exemplified by the fact that more than 10,000 research articles were retracted in 2023. 

Second, there is growing recognition – as evidenced through the work of CoARA, DORA and others – for reform of research assessment and the need to go beyond crude journal metrics such as impact factors and article count, to recognise a much wider range of research outputs, including peer review reports. 

Third, there is growing political support for innovative and alternative publishing models, as seen for example in the recent cOAlition S 2026-2030 strategy and a recent report of the European University Association.

Waltman also stressed that this momentum may, over time, fade and that if there is an appetite amongst the research community to support a scholarly communication system that enables rapid, open, transparent, and equitable sharing of trustworthy knowledge, now is the time to seize this opportunity.  Specifically, researchers were invited to support a number of steps including preprinting their research, making public the peer review reports they write through to publishing their work on dedicated PRC platforms, or even setting up their own PRC platforms.

The different flavours of PRC

To highlight a variety of PRC platforms, delegates were then introduced to four working models; eLife, Transformations: A DARIAH Journal, MetaROR, and Peer Community in (PCI). 

The different approaches adopted by these four examples aptly demonstrate the flexibility of the PRC model and how it can support a wide range of workflows and scholarly communities. This diversity in practice was welcomed by all speakers, arguing that this was another strength of the PRC model. The speakers noted that the PRC model stands in contrast to the “one size fits all” approach favoured by the more traditional academic publishing models.

In the afternoon, delegates were provided with an overview as to how the Open Research team at the University of Cambridge is working to encourage innovative, publishing models.  Specifically, this work includes support for academic led publishing and Diamond OA journals, such as the Cambridge Educational Research e-Journal and the overlay journal Discrete Analysis.

In addition, the Universities’ repository system (Apollo) has recently implemented the COAR Notify protocol, which enables bi-directional communication between peer review services, overlay journals and repositories (including preprint servers, like bioRxiv). Implementing COAR Notify helps PRC scale more quickly and easily.

In the final session of the day, three active researchers based at the University of Cambridge spoke about their experiences of the current publishing eco-system. In summary, there was a clear sense that the traditional publishing model needs to change, and as such they are willing to explore new models, such as PRC.  However, for such models to become mainstream, it was also made clear that the way researchers are assessed must also change.

Next steps

To help ensure that the momentum from this meeting, and the support for the PRC model, is built upon, COAR and ASAPbio will convene a working group early in 2026 to help define a “PRC Alliance.”

We imagine that such an Alliance will act as a convener for the diverse PRC community in order to raise the visibility and status of PRC and to facilitate greater coordination across PRC initiatives by acting as a mechanism for addressing shared issues and challenges.

In the second half of 2026, the working group will present its plan for the PRC Alliance, based on input from a broad range of interested parties, with the aspiration that the Alliance is formally launched in the third quarter of 2026.

The working group will be composed of up to 20 people representing review and/or curation services and organisations actively supporting PRC models.  For more information, please contact Kathleen Shearer, Executive Director of COAR at: m.kathleen.shearer@gmail.com

This meeting was organised by COAR and the University of Cambridge Libraries and Archives, with thanks to Arcadia, ASAPbio, and participating PRC initiatives for their various contributions. This post is cross-posted with COAR.

The workshop involved international representatives from a range of stakeholder groups including:  

• Open science and assessment reform initiatives: African Journals Online (AJOL), Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), HELIOS Open, Latin American Forum for Research Assessment (FOLEC-CLACSO), Make Data Count, SPARC, Strategies for Open Science (Stratos) 

• Publishers: Cambridge University Press, eLife, PLOS 

• Research institutes & universities: DST Centre for Policy Research, Maynooth University, Research on Research Institute (RoRI) 

• Research funders & policymakers: Austrian Science Fund (FWF), European Commission, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), National Research Foundation South Africa (NRF) 

• Academies and researcher networks: Federation of Finnish Learned Societies, Marie Curie Alumni Association 

A shared agenda of challenges 

Discussions centred on key challenges at the intersection of publishing and research assessment, including overreliance on journal-based indicators, dependence on selective bibliographic databases, limited recognition of peer review and other essential research activities, and an excessive focus on journal articles relative to other research outputs. In breakout groups, participants explored practical gaps in existing initiatives, the need for more robust metadata and infrastructures to track diverse research contributions, and strategies to engage underrepresented voices and key decision-makers such as university leaders and funders. 

Participants also highlighted the importance of discipline-specific approaches, the professionalisation of research assessment, fostering community governance of infrastructures, and developing interoperable, globally informed standards and metadata frameworks. 

Building momentum for collaboration 

While the workshop highlighted the complexity of the challenges ahead, it also reaffirmed the potential for coordinated, multi-layered action to drive meaningful change. Participants noted that although many promising initiatives already exist, stronger connectivity among them, and greater alignment across sectors, will be essential to shifting entrenched norms and shaping a more coherent global landscape for research assessment and dissemination. 

The workshop marks an important step in a shared effort to build a research ecosystem that more fully recognises diverse scholarly contributions, strengthens research quality and integrity, and advances more inclusive and equitable practices across disciplines and regions. 

Although this was an invite-only preparatory meeting, the organisers emphasised that it forms part of a wider, ongoing process of community engagement. The insights gathered in Pisa will inform future, more inclusive activities, including a meeting convened by the ISC’s Forum on Publishing and Research Assessment, ensuring broader opportunities for the global research community to contribute to and shape the next stages of this work. 

The organisers are processing the many rich insights resulting from the Pisa workshop. Together with participants and partners, follow-up actions will be identified to deepen collaboration in the months ahead and to expand the conversation to include a broader range of actors in the global research landscape.

Cross-posted with the International Science Council (ISC), CWTS Leiden, and DORA.

The Gates Foundation’s support bolsters ASAPbio’s efforts to create lasting culture change that fosters open, rapid research communication and evaluation. Achieving these goals will accelerate and advance scientific discovery and the development of tangible solutions for human health. However, for researchers to adopt preprinting, open peer evaluation, and other innovations in research communication, they need to feel that (a) they are part of a research community where such activities are normative and valued and (b) it will benefit (and not harm) their careers to do so. Consequently, ASAPbio is working to build a supportive community that is advancing our vision of open, rapid, and rigorous research communication and to facilitate the creation of conditions where researcher-led, open, rigorous research communication is more attractive and valued. 

Since 2018, ASAPbio has been supported in its work by a Member Advisory Group. New members are invited to join the group in furtherance of our vision of a life sciences communication ecosystem where all papers and other outputs are shared rapidly and without restrictions on access or reuse, and open and constructive exchanges take place on research products at all stages. Organizations that are interested to join the Member Advisory Group are encouraged to get in touch.

Unfortunately, capping APCs is not likely to meaningfully reduce costs (Haustein et al., 2025), and it will not improve research quality. It may even increase costs as currently inexpensive publishers raise their prices to meet the cap. Importantly, a focus on APCs merely entrenches the current system and delays necessary reforms. We argue that rather than a stopgap APC fix, NIH is better positioned to put its weight behind more meaningful research communication reform. Fortunately, solutions already exist that will both save money and accelerate scientific progress: preprints and open evaluation.

Open publishing and open evaluation for a more robust publishing ecosystem

Preprints are research articles published durably and openly on preprint servers like bioRxiv and medRxiv (two of the largest such services in the life sciences). Preprinted articles are free to publish and free to read. They can be made available rapidly, as soon as researchers are ready to share the results of their work. The organizations that maintain the servers have costs to cover to provide their services, but those costs are pennies on the dollar when compared to the cost of APCs (and the cost of traditional publishing more broadly).

Research that is published on preprint servers can also be openly evaluated using a growing variety of services. For instance, PREreview (prereview.org) allows anyone with expertise to provide public (and durable) evaluations of preprints. In another model, overlay journals – run by communities of domain experts – provide open reviews of the latest preprints in their field (see, e.g., Rapid Reviews\Infectious Diseases). Services like these are proving that it is not necessary to rely on gold open access journals to perform important evaluation and vetting functions. 

There are substantial benefits for science that come from unbundling the publication and evaluation functions that journals currently serve. Under the traditional publishing model, research is completed and submitted to a journal, where it sits for several months as it undergoes a peer review process. Papers are often rejected (frequently for non-scientific reasons, such as page limits), meaning that a paper might undergo several rounds of several month processes before ultimately being published. Peer evaluations are usually unseen, because reviews of rejected papers are not often shared with anyone beyond submitting authors. The community can only build on and react to these papers many months or years after their completion.

By contrast, in a preprint-centered system, research is shared openly and in a timely way as soon as researchers have a result that they are ready to communicate. Evaluation can take place in a variety of diverse forms, including via the work of evaluation services but also by commenting and other forms of public feedback. The separation of publishing and evaluation functions allows for efficiencies; new evaluation services do not also have to be concerned with publishing functions and vice versa. Separation also allows for innovation. Improvements to the feedback and evaluation process can be realized when we move beyond the constraints of traditional review-then-publish models that keep research needlessly out of the hands of readers for months or years and then charge a heavy fee for the content to finally be openly available. 

Recommendations for NIH

We offer two recommendations for NIH to achieve its goals of reigning in expensive publication costs and supporting scientific rigor.

First, we urge NIH to augment its existing policies with additional guidance and encouragement for authors to follow best practices in open research communication. Together with Creative Commons, we recently published a Preprint Policy Framework (ASAPbio, 2025), which spells out recommended policies for funders that want to maximize their return on investment from their grants. Consisting of six components, the framework catalogs funder requirements for grantees to share preprints, retain their copyright, openly license their preprints for maximum reuse potential, time the submission of their preprints prior to any journal submission, acknowledge funders in the preprint, and provide availability statements describing how key research outputs like data and analysis code can be accessed. The biomedical funders Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) and the Gates Foundation endorse it as a model framework, and both require their grantees to adhere to these strong policies. Were NIH to do the same, NIH funded research would be strongly situated for a high level of reuse potential and impact.

Second, we urge NIH to direct resources to support an alternative publishing ecosystem with openly published preprints and open evaluation at its center. Existing services are already well-positioned to deliver on the vision that this alternative ecosystem could provide, and they are growing rapidly. bioRxiv, for instance, currently adds about 4,000 new papers each month, while medRxiv adds about 1,200 per month. Together the two services have published over 365,000 papers since their founding (in 2013 and 2019, respectively). In terms of evaluation services, these are also increasing in use. Corker et al. (2024) provides recent information about the growing volume of open evaluation services and platforms. Additional support for these vital community-led initiatives will allow them to scale and reach their full potential to provide a cost-effective and robust alternative to APC-based publishing. 

Focusing on improvements to the research communication process via (1) strong policies for NIH grantees and (2) support for preprinting and open evaluation infrastructure stands to better position NIH to achieve its goals to reduce publishing costs and improve research quality. We urge NIH to consider our recommendations and to reconsider its focus on APC caps, which are unlikely to achieve its stated goals.

About us

ASAPbio (https://asapbio.org/about/) is a non-profit, researcher-led organization that advocates for timely, open, and rigorous research communication. We work to create a life sciences communication ecosystem where all papers and other outputs are shared rapidly and without restrictions on access or reuse, and open and constructive exchanges take place on research products at all stages.

References

ASAPbio. (2025). Preprint policy framework. Retrieved from https://asapbio.org/preprint-policy-framework/

Butler, L. A., Matthias, L., Simard, M. A., Mongeon, P., & Haustein, S. (2023). The oligopoly’s shift to open access: How the big five academic publishers profit from article processing charges. Quantitative Science Studies, 4(4), 778-799. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00272

Corker, K. S., Waltman, L., & Coates, J. A. (2024). Understanding the Publish-Review-Curate  (PRC) model of scholarly communication. MetaArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/h7swt

Haustein, S., Shares, E., Alperin, J. P., Camargo, F., Matthias, L., Céspedes, L., Poitras, C., & Strecker, D. (2025). NIH explores capping APCs: Let’s look at the evidence. https://doi.org/10.59350/scholcommlab.5645

We are looking for new Board members who can help us deliver on our updated strategy and complement the perspectives of existing Board members. We particularly seek community leaders with expertise in the areas below:

• Institutional initiatives to support rewards and recognition for open research communication
• Culture change and advocacy for open science especially in the context of the life sciences
• Innovations in scholarly communication such as preprinting, open peer review, and publish-review-curate models

We represent a global life sciences community and welcome applications from colleagues worldwide. Additionally, we intend to appoint at least one early career member to the board in this cycle.

About ASAPbio

ASAPbio (Accelerating Science and Publication in biology) is a scientist-driven nonprofit working to promote innovation and transparency in life sciences communication through the use of preprints and open peer review. We envision a life sciences communication ecosystem where all papers and other outputs are shared rapidly and without restrictions on access or reuse, and open and constructive exchanges take place on research products at all stages.

ASAPbio seeks to embody the following values and priorities through our projects, activities, and community work:

• Focus on researchers
• Openness, equity, inclusion, and accessibility
• Respect, empathy, and collaboration
• Experimentation and adaptation to evidence

Our present activities include:

• Convening meetings and workshops in support of our current goals, in particular rewards and recognition for open research communication
• Community building through the ASAPbio Fellows program to empower researchers to catalyze conversations about preprints and open peer review
• Advocacy for more open practices, such as decoupling publication from evaluation via the publish-review-curate model, requiring open licenses for research outputs, or supporting open peer evaluation through crowd preprint review activities
• Connecting and partnering with other organizations, for instance on the Preprint Policy Framework
• Maintaining community resources such as our preprint resource center, peer review resource center, analysis of rates of preprinting

Expectations for Board Members

Board members are involved in strategic planning, participate in decision-making, and engage the community to help connect ASAPbio to contacts who can help us achieve our mission of accelerating the open communication of life sciences research.

The board meets four times per year via Zoom for approximately two hours; attendance at three out of four of these meetings per year is required. No travel is required. Board terms are for two years and can be renewed.

The board votes by email throughout the year and communicates through email and Slack. We expect all board members to join one or more committees and devote ~2 hours per month to ASAPbio activities. 

We do not have any expectations of financial contributions, nor are board members compensated. 

How to apply

The application consists of several short-answer questions. Applications will close on September 5th, and we expect to inform candidates of the outcome by the end of October, 2025.