From Preprints to Publication: How Community-Driven Models Are Reshaping Scholarly Communication

The "Publish-Review-Curate" (PRC) model has emerged as a transformative framework for community-controlled publishing. This collection explores the practical implementation, regional nuances, and theoretical underpinnings of the PRC model across three continents: Africa, Latin America, and Europe.

The contributions (YouTube video available) analyse how decentralised, non-profit infrastructures can support equitable research dissemination without the barriers of author-facing charges or commercial silos. 

In Africa, the COPPHA initiative demonstrates a community-first approach, leveraging training and the "PublishNow" platform to empower early-career researchers in public health through preprint peer review. 

In Latin America, the discourse focuses on the sociological and epistemological dimensions of open peer review, emphasising transparency, scientific sovereignty, and the challenges of foreign technological dependencies. 

Meanwhile, European initiatives like Peer Community In (PCI) provide established workflows for the curation and recommendation of preprints, offering a viable "Diamond" alternative to traditional journal hierarchies. 

Collectively, these insights highlight that the future of scholarly communication lies in an interoperable "archipelago" of regional ecosystems committed to alignment, sustainability, and the re-appropriation of the publication system by research communities.

Included Outputs

The following materials from the ALMASI Discussion Series (held June 11, 2026) are included in this upload:

• Webinar Overview & Guidelines: Documentation of the session structure and technical guidelines for the global discussion.
• ALMASI Scoping Report: A high-level analysis of non-profit scholarly publishing at scale across the three focus regions.
• The African Perspective: Detailed slides on the COPPHA PublishNow model, focusing on training pathways and the establishment of a community of practice for public health research.
• The Latin American Perspective: An epistemological and bibliometric analysis of open peer review practices and the quest for informational sovereignty in the region.
• The European Perspective: A comprehensive guide to the Peer Community In (PCI) and Peer Community Journal (PCJ) ecosystem, detailing preprint recommendation and diamond publication workflows.