Since April 2025, the University of Groningen (UG) has supported Peer Community In (PCI), a scholar-led, non-profit organization offering peer review, recommendation and publication of scientific articles in open access for free.

The UG views community-led open access models as a sustainable, affordable, and equitable approach to scholarly communication. We are committed to supporting trustworthy community-led open access initiatives. As part of this series, we spotlight the initiatives we support and explore how they are contributing to a more open and sustainable publishing landscape. 

In this interview, we discuss Peer Community In with Denis Bourguet and Thomas Guillemaud (PCI founders), and Elisa Chailler (PCI support officer).

The model proved it could work at scale: researchers are willing to submit, reviewers  and editors are willing to participate, and the resulting articles achieve the same visibility and  recognition as publications in conventional journals, while keeping peer review transparent and  publication free of charge. 

How does Peer Community In (PCI) work, and what makes its peer-review model  different from traditional academic publishing? 

PCI is a non-profit and non-commercial organisation that enables the review and recommendation  of preprints. Authors must deposit their preprint in a repository and then submit it to one of the  thematic PCIs of their choice (21 PCIs to date). If  the submission meets all requirements (e.g. if the preprint is within the scope of the PCI, if there are no financial conflicts of interest and if the data, scripts and code are publicly available), it can  be handled by a recommender (i.e. an associate editor), who seeks out appropriate reviewers. At  least two reviewers are required. The peer-review process proceeds as it does in traditional  journals, with detailed reviews, editorial decisions based on those reviews and authors’ responses, and with as many rounds of revisions as necessary. At the end of the evaluation  process, the recommender either rejects or accepts the preprint. If they decide to accept the  preprint they write a recommendation explaining the scientific interest of the preprint. 

The PCI review model differs from traditional forms of publication in several ways: 

• PCI does not publish the submitted articles; they remain preprints but are reviewed by  experts in the community. Authors are then free to publish (or not) their recommended  preprint in Peer Community Journal (PCJ) directly, in open access and at no cost for the  authors. They can instead submit it for publication in one of the many PCI-friendly journals  (Category 1: those that accept submissions without additional review, or Category 2: those  that provide an initial response within 5 days), or in any other journal. 
• Reviews, editorial decisions, authors’ responses and the recommendation are publicly available, making the evaluation process transparent. Moreover, they all have a DOI and  can be cited in job applications or evaluation committees.  
• Reviewers may choose to remain anonymous or disclose their identity. 

The review process and the publication in PCJ are completely free: there are no  publication fees for authors or readers. PCI and PCJ are funded through donations and  supported by more than 240 institutions worldwide. 

What key problems or shortcomings within the academic publishing system is PCI  trying to address? 

PCI tries to address several issues within the academic publishing system: 

• The lack of transparency in the review process. At PCI, the entire process is transparent  and public. Everyone has access to the various versions of the preprint, the data, scripts  and codes, the reviews, the editorial decision, the authors’ responses, and the  recommendation. 
• PCI separates the peer-review process from the publication process, giving authors the  freedom to decide where to publish their article once it has been positively evaluated and  recommended by PCI. This is less pernicious than a traditional publisher where the  income depends directly on the number of articles accepted. 
• There are no publication costs for authors and there is free access to readers: PCI  operates according to the diamond open access model.
• Conflicts of interest (COIs): the PCI community is very concerned about the impact of  COIs on scientific studies and, as such, does not allow submissions of preprints with  financial COIs. 

How can researchers engage with PCI in their own field, both as authors seeking  peer review and as reviewers or community members?

Researchers can get involved with PCI by: 

• Signing the pledge 
• Submitting articles 
• Creating a new PCI 
• Joining the managing board of one of the thematic PCIs 
• Joining the article formatting team of PCJ or the ‘script and editor’ team 
• Promoting PCI to institutions to obtain or secure funding 
• Volunteering to promote PCI at conferences 
• Participating in the peer-review process as a reviewer or recommender. A single person  can take on all of these roles, but not for the same article, of course. 

What does the future hold for PCI, and how do you see it evolving or shaping the  wider landscape of scholarly publishing?

PCI is growing: the number of submissions, reviews, recommendations, people involved in the  PCI process and even the number of thematic PCIs themselves are increasing. Open science and the diamond open access model are becoming increasingly prevalent in scientific publishing, with substantial political support. We therefore expect greater recognition of recommendations  and the peer review process by institutions and researcher evaluation committees.

The future of PCI and PCJ will also depend heavily on how scientific publishing evolves. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), the scholarly publishing ecosystem is undergoing  profound changes and faces considerable uncertainty. Major challenges include the role of AI in  peer review, the increasing use of AI in manuscript preparation and the associated proliferation  of fraudulent or fabricated articles, as well as the ongoing reviewer crisis. 

In this rapidly changing context, PCI and PCJ will need to adapt to these developments while  maintaining their core ambition: to provide a fully diamond open-access publishing model - free  of charge for both readers and authors - together with a high-quality process of peer review,  recommendation, and publication. 

PCI and Peer Community Journal are not-for-profit and non-commercial. How are  they funded? 

They are funded by more than 100 universities and scientific publishing organisations among  more than 240 supporting organisations. They  include: 

• 2 main sponsors: CNRS and INRAE
• > 90 universities and major research institutes: Sorbonne Université, Imperial College  London, University of Oxford, Institut Pasteur, University of Cambridge, to mention just a few. 
• > 10 university libraries: e.g. Harvard Library, Max Planck digital library, etc. 
• Several learned societies: e.g. SFE2.

Annual donations range from €500 to nearly €100 K, depending on the institution. 

What are the benefits of the Publish-Review-Curate model? 

The PRC model has several benefits, notably: 

• Possibility for readers to have access to the preprint prior to any evaluation 
• The transparency of the evaluation and editorial process 
• The possibility to use same evaluation process by journals to help and speed up their  editorial decision 
• Possibility to obtain more than one curation 

These benefits and others – be they for researchers, institutions, libraries or funders – are detailed on the PRC Alliance website

What's a PCI success story that convinced skeptics? 

A particularly convincing success story is the development of Peer Community Journal. When  PCI was launched, one of the main concerns was that authors would still need a conventional  journal to obtain a recognised publication after peer review and recommendation by a PCI. The  creation of the Peer Community Journal showed that this was not necessary. 

The journal now publishes hundreds of articles across many disciplines, is indexed in major  bibliographic databases, and provides authors with a fully diamond open-access publication route,  with no fees for either authors or readers. At the same time, an increasing number of researchers,  recommenders, institutions, and journals have joined or supported the PCI ecosystem. 

For many skeptics, the most convincing point was therefore not a single article or anecdote, but  the fact that the model proved it could work at scale: researchers are willing to submit, reviewers  and editors are willing to participate, and the resulting articles achieve the same visibility and  recognition as publications in conventional journals, while keeping peer review transparent and  publication free of charge.