The Pubpeer Foundation

Nonprofit profile at a glance

EIN
474729597
IRS 990 coverage
2016–2025
Forms available
Form 990 2025, Form 990-EZ 2023, Form 990-N 2015
Location
San Francisco, CA, USA
Phone
4053966661
Rating
68
Verdict
SUPPORTED
Rating confidence
Moderate
Sector
Professional Societies, Associations

Reported finances

Revenue
$373,105
Expenses
$140,448
Assets
$546,508
Liabilities
$0

Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.

Leadership & pay

3 people listed

Executive titles in this filing

  • BRANDON STELL (President)

Highest reported compensation

  • BRANDON STELL (President): $45,765 total reported compensation

Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.

Overview

Mission

The Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of scientific research by fostering innovative platforms for community engagement and interaction. At the heart of our mission is PubPeer, our flagship initiative, aimed at centralizing and disseminating high-quality, valuable commentary on published research. By facilitating a unique convergence of direct user feedback and expert analyses, we strive to create a comprehensive ecosystem that elevates the standards of scientific discourse and contributes to the advancement of knowledge. Our commitment is to empower the scientific community to share, scrutinize, and build upon research findings, ensuring integrity, transparency, and excellence in the pursuit of scientific truth.

What it reported doing in 2025

In FY2025, we advanced our mission by expanding and rebuilding our dashboard service, improving user satisfaction, and increasing adoption by key stakeholders in scientific publishing. We also continued to grow the PubPeer platform, contributed to international policy conversations on academic integrity, and invested in the technical capacity needed to support the platforms future.PubPeer.com continued to grow as a central platform for post-publication peer review, with total comment volume reaching 80,360, up from 70,611 in FY2024 and more than tripling since 2020. We completed a full rewrite of our dashboard alerting service, addressing long-standing feature requests and usability concerns. This upgrade led to renewed subscriptions from publishers who had previously left the service due to limitations in the earlier version. We also signed new contracts with international publishers, an international association of publishers, and academic institutions. In parallel, we participated in high-level policy discussions on the future of academic publishing.Our primary focus in 2025 was the complete overhaul of the dashboard alerting service. The new version offers improved functionality, stability, and scalability, directly responding to feedback from existing and former users. These improvements resulted in both new and returning institutional and publisher subscribers. We also began recruiting full-time developers and invested in modernizing our infrastructure to support long-term growth.

Operating model

Revenue model
Earned-program. 72% of the money available for current operations came from fees and other program revenue.
Distribution model
Direct operator. The filing allocates 100% of reported program-service expenses outside its grant, affiliate-payment, and member-benefit lines. This expense classification does not rule out separately announced grant awards.

The verdict

SUPPORTED - The filed numbers largely add up and most voting board members are independent. A relatively small share of available resources goes toward mission work and a relatively small share of total spending goes to programs.

Rating breakdown

  • Financial Efficiency: 38
  • Transparency & Controls: 92
  • Accountability: 90
  • Sustainability: 76
  • Growth: 60

Detailed rating inputs

Financial Efficiency

  • Mission deployment rate: 22%; rating input score 22
  • Program expense ratio: 58.9%; rating input score 59
  • Fundraising efficiency: $18.23 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 53; 53rd percentile among comparable filings

Transparency & Controls

  • Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
  • Pay-setting controls: Limited
  • Foreign activity oversight: Limited
  • Grant itemization coverage: Limited
  • Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
  • Related-party transparency: Limited

Accountability

  • Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
  • Governance controls: 6 of 8 controls in place; rating input score 75
    • Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
    • Whistleblower policy: Pass
    • Document-retention policy: Pass
    • CEO compensation review process: Pass
    • Other executive compensation review process: NotApplicable
    • Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
    • Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
    • Audit committee oversight: Missing
    • Independent financial-statement audit: Fail

Sustainability

  • Operating margin: 62.4%; rating input score 94; 94th percentile among comparable filings
  • Total-asset coverage ratio: 3.89; rating input score 75; 75th percentile among comparable filings
  • Liabilities to assets ratio: 0; rating input score 77; 77th percentile among comparable filings
  • Officer compensation ratio: 32.6%; rating input score 9; 9th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

  • Program expense growth: -1.1% per year; rating input score 0; 25th percentile among comparable filings
  • Revenue growth: 9% per year; rating input score 100; 66th percentile among comparable filings
  • Asset growth: 21.4% per year; rating input score 100; 84th percentile among comparable filings

Details

  • Where the money goes: 22% of revenue deployed · 58.9% of spending went to programs
  • Governance: 3 of 3 board members independent · 6 of 8 filing controls reported
  • Programs: 1 filed program accomplishment · $83K in reported program spending
  • Leadership: top reported pay $46K · 3 people listed
  • Consistency: 17 of 18 current checks pass · 1 finding to review
  • Schedules: 3 filed schedules · includes major donors
  • Filing history: 3 filing years from 2016 to 2025
  • Contacts: How to reach this organization
  • Money network: 2 filed money-flow records
  • Grant readiness: Federal tax and exclusion status, award history, and grant-maker relationships.
  • People: Everyone the filings name, and which of them the filings identify by more than a name.

Key Signals

Signals prioritize questions for review. They are not findings of misconduct.

  • High — Financial Efficiency: Mission deployment rate scored 22/100.
  • Review — Financial Efficiency: Program expense ratio scored 59/100.
  • Review — Financial Efficiency: Fundraising efficiency scored 53/100.
  • High — Growth: Program expense growth scored 0/100.
  • Moderate — Transparency & Controls: Schedule A contributions reconciliation did not reconcile in the filed values.
  • Review — Accountability: Governance controls: Independent financial-statement audit not reported.
  • High — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 9/100.