The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) and ASAPbio have formed an Interim Working Group in January 2026 to discuss establishing a more coordinated effort to advance the Publish, Review, Curate (PRC) model. During the first six months of 2026, the group is working to define a PRC Alliance that will act as a convener for the diverse PRC community. A website is now live to provide information about the initiative and to share updates on developments.
Publish, Review, Curate (PRC) is an umbrella term for scholarly publishing initiatives that build on open preprint sharing. The model typically involves communities reviewing open articles or other research outputs and providing an evaluation or endorsement of the research object.
The PRC model has been growing in popularity across the scholarly communications landscape and is positioned as an alternative to the current model of scholarly publishing, which is characterized as slow, expensive, and based on opaque peer review processes. PRC typically includes the public sharing of peer reviews of open articles, offering transparency intended to support public trust and integrity in the research landscape.
Accelerating adoption of the PRC model is a key objective of the COAR Notify Project. The project has developed a standard, interoperable, and decentralized approach to linking research outputs hosted in distributed repositories with resources from external peer review services. COAR Notify enables authors to send messages related to peer review systems or overlay journals using linked data notifications.
With funding from Arcadia, COAR Notify will be available by the end of January 2026 in recent versions of most open source repository software systems, including Dataverse, DSpace, EPrints, Hyrax, InvenioRDM, Open Preprint Systems, and PubPub, as well as individual platforms and peer review services. Widespread adoption beyond project partners is expected by the end of the project in 2027.
In 2026, development projects are being funded to expand current use cases for COAR Notify, including notifications to external systems regarding updates and changes to repository records. As adoption expands, COAR Notify is anticipated to be recognized as a method supporting a more connected, transparent, and resilient scholarly communications ecosystem.
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