Prereview

What Prereview does

PREreview is a US-based nonprofit that operates an open-source, community-driven preprint review platform at prereview.org. Founded in 2017 and fiscally sponsored by Code for Science and Society, the organization enables researchers worldwide to provide and receive constructive feedback on scientific preprints through ORCID-authenticated accounts, with each review receiving a DOI via Zenodo and licensed under CC-BY 4.0. The platform is supplemented by Live Reviews (interactive collaborative review calls), PREreview Clubs (reviewer working groups), Open Reviewers Training (institutional workshops), the Champions Program (annual program for early-career researchers), and an in-development Dataset Review workflow. The technology stack runs on Fly.io with Upstash Redis and Managed Postgres, with an MIT-licensed open-source codebase.

The organization generates revenue through a mix of foundation grants and fee-for-service contracts. Major grant funders include the Gates Foundation (2024-2027 three-year award), Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and eLife. Service contracts with research institutions, funders, and publishers cover Live Reviews, training workshops, and collaborative programs; JMIR Publications is a recurring client running monthly Live Reviews, and CZI's Rare As One Network contracted PREreview in 2025 for patient advocate engagement work. Individual donations are also accepted via Donorbox. The core platform itself remains free and open to all researchers.

PREreview employs between 1 and 10 staff operating remotely, led by co-founder and Executive Director Daniela Saderi, with a small leadership team including Head of Product and Head of Technology. Its go-to-market is community-led, emphasizing equity-centered values, partnerships with aligned open science organizations, and engagement through PREreview Clubs, the Champions Program, and Live Reviews. The platform is integrated with 33 preprint servers and serves a community of 4,488 PREreviewers who have collectively produced 2,088 published reviews, with localization now complete in English, Brazilian Portuguese, and Latin American Spanish.

Name

Prereview

Legal name

Code for Science and Society

Website

https://prereview.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2017

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

PREreview operates a free, open-source platform and training services that enable a global community of 4,488 researchers to provide open peer reviews of scientific preprints, supported by grants and service contracts.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Open Peer Review Platform

NAICS

Exam Preparation and Tutoring (611691), Software Publishers (513210)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372), Services-Management Consulting Services (8742)

akta.pro primary industry

Collaborative Review, SME Feedback & Version Control for eLearning (EDAFAHAK)

akta.pro secondary industry

OER Authoring, Remixing & Publishing Tools/Platforms (EDAGAJAM)

Keywords

• Open peer review
• Preprint review platform
• Scholarly communication tools
• Research training services
• Open science software

Headquarters

HQ city

Portland

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Others

Revenue model

1. Grant Funding: PREreview operates as a fiscally sponsored project of Code for Science and Society (501(c)(3) nonprofit). They receive grant funding from foundations including Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Gates Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Mozilla Foundation, and Wellcome Trust.
2. Service Contracts: Contracts for service with research institutions, funders, and publishers, including running Live Reviews, training workshops, and collaborative programs. Organizations contracted include JMIR Publications, CZI Rare As One Network, ORFG+HRA, and various universities and organizations for Open Reviewers Workshops.
3. Individual Donations: Accepts individual, small dollar donations to support their small team and operations to keep the project and resources open and free to all researchers.
4. Free Platform Access: The core preprint review platform remains free and open to all researchers, reflecting the organization's mission to democratize peer review.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels8 records

Core offering

PREreview operates an open-source, free online platform where researchers from any discipline can provide and receive constructive peer feedback on scientific preprints, with every published review assigned a DOI via Zenodo and licensed under CC-BY 4.0. Beyond the self-serve platform, the organization delivers contracted Live Review events, Open Reviewers Training workshops, and an annual Champions Program for early-career and historically excluded researchers, supporting an international community of 4,488 reviewers across 33 preprint servers.

Product overview

PREreview is a single, unified open-source preprint review platform that enables researchers to provide and receive constructive feedback on preprints from an international peer community. The core platform is supplemented by several complementary offerings: PREreview Reviews (the core peer review functionality with DOI assignment via Zenodo), Review Requests (authors requesting community feedback), PREreview Clubs (collaborative review groups), Live Reviews (interactive preprint review calls), Open Reviewers Training (workshops on ethical peer review), the Champions Program (annual program for early-career researchers), and the experimental Matchmaking Experiment (for preprint recommendations). A dataset review workflow is under development to expand beyond preprints. All content is licensed CC-BY 4.0.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• PREreview Platform An open-source, free preprint review platform enabling researchers to provide and receive constructive feedback on preprints from an international community of peers. Users must have an ORCID iD to create an account; published reviews receive a DOI via Zenodo and are licensed under CC-BY 4.0.
• Live Reviews Collaborative, interactive preprint review calls run as an alternative approach to traditional peer review. Available as a contracted service for journals, publishers, and institutions.
• Open Reviewers Training Workshops Interactive workshops for organizations and institutions designed to help members develop skills as ethical, constructive peer reviewers, including tools to identify and mitigate bias.
• Champions Program

Quantifiable outcome

• 2,088 PREreviews published on the platform
• +2 more outcomes

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration3 records

Feature6 records

Partnerships

18 partnerships are on record, tiered minor and core.

• African Reproducibility NetworkminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartner organization working on reproducibility in African research. Collaborates with PREreview on shared goals of open and equitable scholarly communication.
• AfricArXivminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerAfrican preprint repository partner supporting open access to African research. Aligned with PREreview's mission for equitable scholarly communication.
• ASAPbiominorStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartner organization promoting innovation and transparency in life sciences publishing. Shares PREreview's vision for open peer review.
• COARminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerConfederation of Open Access Repositories partner working on global repository interoperability, including COAR Notify Protocol integration with PREreview.
• Cold Spring Harbor LaboratoryminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartner organization supporting preprint servers and open science initiatives.
• Eider AfricaminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerAfrican partner supporting open science and research equity initiatives.
• eLifecoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerKey strategic partner collaborating on preprint review integration. eLife sponsored the Open Reviewers program and has partnered with PREreview to promote greater diversity in peer review and boost community engagement in open peer review. Also contracted PREreview for training workshops.
• Health Research AllianceminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartner organization in health research funding. Worked with PREreview and ORFG on developing an open and equitable grant review training and mentoring program (2021-2023).
• Open Research Funders GroupminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartner organization of research funders. Worked with PREreview and Health Research Alliance on developing an open and equitable grant review training and mentoring program (2021-2023).
• Preprints.orgminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartner preprint server enabling PREreview integration for open peer review on preprints.
• SciELOminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerLatin American partner organization advancing open access scientific communication.
• ScietyminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartner organization evaluating preprints. Collaborated with PREreview and CZI on building an integrated system for preprint authors, reviewers, and readers.
• JMIR PublicationscoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerContracted PREreview to run 25 live-streamed preprint journal clubs for JMIRx Bio and JMIRx Med overlay journals (2021-present). Currently offering one Live Review per month as part of partnership.
• Current Research in Neurobiology (CRNEUR)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerElsevier Open Access journal contracted PREreview to run 5 Live Reviews and pilot collaboration to integrate Live Reviews in their review process (2023).
• Code for Science and SocietycoreOthersFiscal sponsor - a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides administrative and strategic resources to PREreview, assists in building relationships with funding agencies, connects with the public interest tech community, and supports hiring and staff management.
• Outbreak ScienceminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerNonprofit organization collaborated with PREreview on developing the Outbreak Science Rapid PREreview platform with Wellcome Trust funding.
• A Simple TranslationminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerJustice-oriented translation service (Luciana Lage for Portuguese, Noemí González-Rocha for Spanish) supporting PREreview's localization and translation campaign for Brazilian Portuguese and Latin American Spanish.
• Rare As One ProjectminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerNetwork of patient-led organizations working to improve lives of people affected by rare diseases. PREreview is exploring how patients and patient advocates can engage in reviewing preprints through this collaboration with CZI.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• PubPeer: PubPeer is a platform for post-publication peer review and discussion of scientific papers, providing open comments indexed alongside publications. Comparable to PREreview in providing public, citable peer review on scholarly outputs.
• F1000Research: F1000Research operates an open research publishing platform with named, post-publication peer review — directly comparable to PREreview's preprint review model. Both serve researchers seeking transparent peer review and both publish open, citable reviews.
• ASAPbio: ASAPbio is a nonprofit advocacy organization promoting transparency and innovation in life-sciences publishing, including preprints and open review. Listed as a PREreview partner, ASAPbio operates in the same open-science ecosystem with overlapping funder relationships (Sloan, CZI, Wellcome).
• eLife: eLife is a major open-access life-sciences journal that pioneered its own public peer review model. It is PREreview's closest strategic partner and contracted customer (sponsored Open Reviewers program), sharing the open peer review mission and overlapping community of researchers.
• Peerage of Science: Peerage of Science is a peer review platform that matches manuscripts with qualified reviewers and publishes open reviews. Directly comparable to PREreview in functionality (open peer review service for researchers), though serving traditional journals more than preprints.
• Hypothesis: Hypothesis is a nonprofit building open annotation infrastructure used for open peer review across scholarly publishing. Directly comparable to PREreview in offering an open-source, annotation-based collaborative review layer for scientific literature.
• Sciety: Sciety is a UK-based platform that curates and evaluates preprints, partnered with PREreview on the CZI-funded integrated preprint review system. Both target the same workflow — connecting preprint authors with public peer review — and share funder relationships.

Broad incumbents

• Faculty Opinions (formerly F1000): Faculty Opinions is an established post-publication peer review service covering biomedical literature with expert reviewers. Overlaps with PREreview's open review model but operates as a subscription/paid service for institutional customers rather than a free community platform.
• JMIR Publications: JMIR Publications is a major open-access academic publisher that has contracted PREreview for monthly Live Review journal clubs since 2021. While a customer/partner rather than a competitor, JMIR overlaps with PREreview in the open peer review space through its JMIRx overlay journals.

Emerging players

• Outbreak Science: Outbreak Science is a nonprofit collaborator that co-developed the Outbreak Science Rapid PREreview platform with Wellcome Trust funding. A closely allied partner and derivative use case of PREreview's open peer review infrastructure for outbreak research.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks3 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/PREreview
• YouTubeyoutube.com/@Prereview
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/prereview

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about Prereview