Curvenote Inc.

Curvenote Inc. is a Canadian software company that builds products and tools designed to keep technical and scientific knowledge connected, trustworthy and useful wherever it goes. According to its official website, the company's stated purpose is to help teams keep knowledge connected to the data, context and decisions behind it, preserving provenance, improving reproducibility and building confidence across every stage of research. Its product family spans documentation, figure generation, migration of legacy content into modern workflows, version management and technical publishing. The company was founded in 2019 by Rowan Cockett (CEO) and Steve Purves (CTO). Curvenote describes itself as "born from frustration with disconnected systems and static outputs," and as researcher-led and Y Combinator-backed. The founding story, as told on the company's About page, begins with Cockett having sold a visualization startup and won Canada's top research prize for his PhD, yet still hitting the same wall: he worked in dynamic notebooks but had to publish static PDFs, cutting out the code and data that made his work reproducible. Steve Purves, described as a machine learning and data science expert, shared the frustration. Taking inspiration from open-source communities where engineers build on each other's work, they founded Curvenote to close the gap between how science is done and how it is shared. Curvenote's flagship offering is its Scientific Content Management System (SCMS). The SCMS is positioned as a way to modernize research management so that content stays modular, interactive and discoverable, with integrations for MyST Markdown, Jupyter and GitHub. It supports accurate DOIs, citation tracking and full version control, and treats models, datasets and figures as rich, reusable building blocks that preserve context and remain connected to the broader scientific story. A companion product, Curvenote Reader, transforms existing static research into connected, web-native reading experiences layered onto publishers' and repositories' existing systems, without changing publishing workflows; it offers hover-over citations, expandable figures and structured discovery across large archives. The company operates an open-core model: research component formats and authoring tools are open source, while enterprise features add scale, security and support. Curvenote is a major contributor to open-source science communities, including MyST Markdown. It is headquartered in Canmore, Alberta, Canada, and says it is trusted by institutions around the world. Its mission is framed as transforming research beyond the PDF.

Curvenote was founded in 2019 by Rowan Cockett and Steve Purves. The company's own account of its origins begins with a problem familiar to researchers: a massive gap between how science is worked on and how it is shared. Rowan Cockett, who serves as CEO, had sold his visualization startup and won Canada's top research prize for his PhD, yet still encountered the same wall. He worked in dynamic notebooks but had to publish static PDFs, cutting out all the code and data that made his work reproducible. Even within his own lab, recreating his work was a constant struggle that took years. Steve Purves, described as a machine learning and data science expert and now CTO, shared this frustration. Taking inspiration from open-source communities where engineers build on each other's work seamlessly, the two founded Curvenote to close the gap and improve the way science is communicated. From the outset the company framed its mission as transforming research beyond the PDF, on the premise that science deserves better than static outputs. Curvenote describes itself as researcher-led and Y Combinator-backed, and says it is trusted by institutions around the world. Its headquarters are in Canmore, Alberta, Canada. Over time Curvenote developed an open-core platform. Research component formats and authoring tools are kept open source, while enterprise features add scale, security and support. The company became a major contributor to open-source science communities, notably MyST Markdown, an authoring and publishing ecosystem for technical and scientific content. Its product line centers on the Curvenote Scientific Content Management System (SCMS), which modernizes research management so that content stays modular, interactive and discoverable. The SCMS integrates with MyST Markdown, Jupyter and GitHub, and supports accurate DOIs, citation tracking and full version control. It treats models, datasets and figures as rich, reusable building blocks that preserve context and stay connected to the bigger scientific story, allowing teams to search for research components quickly, pull them into projects instantly, reuse methods across papers, share code between projects and link data without starting from zero. A second product, Curvenote Reader, addresses the reading side of the research lifecycle. It transforms existing static research into connected, web-native reading experiences layered onto the systems publishers and repositories already use, without changing publishing workflows. Features include hover-over citations, expandable figures, continuous reading that avoids jumping between tabs and PDFs, and structured discovery that can transform decades of research archives into connected knowledge experiences. An automated XML handoff turns structured content into connected reading. Curvenote positions its work around trust built on context: as research moves between teams, documents, data and systems, critical context is often lost, and Curvenote helps organizations keep knowledge connected to the data, methods, decisions and evidence behind it, preserving provenance and improving reproducibility. The company's stated values include being bold and empathetic, reflecting its ambition to reshape scientific publishing.

• 2019

  Curvenote founded by Rowan Cockett and Steve Purves.

• Rowan Cockett sells his visualization startup and wins Canada's top research prize for his PhD before founding Curvenote.

• Company becomes Y Combinator-backed and describes itself as researcher-led.

• Curvenote becomes a major contributor to open-source science communities, including MyST Markdown.

• Launch of the Curvenote Scientific Content Management System (SCMS) with MyST Markdown, Jupyter and GitHub integrations.

• Launch of Curvenote Reader for connected, web-native reading layered onto existing publishing systems.

Open-core, researcher-led scientific publishing infrastructure that keeps research modular, connected and reproducible beyond the static PDF; enterprise features add scale, security and support.

• Curvenote SCMS

  Scientific Content Management System that keeps research content modular, interactive and discoverable, with MyST Markdown, Jupyter and GitHub integrations, accurate DOIs, citation tracking and full version control.

• Curvenote Reader

  Web-based scientific article reader that transforms existing static research into connected, web-native reading experiences without changing publishing workflows; includes hover-over citations, expandable figures and structured discovery.

• MyST Markdown tools

  Open-source authoring and publishing tools for technical and scientific content, to which Curvenote is a major contributor.

• Modular research components

  Dynamic, version-controlled building blocks such as models, datasets and figures that can be updated, reused and cited throughout the research lifecycle.

1. 1Build connected knowledge | Curvenotecurvenote.com
2. 2About Curvenote: Rethinking Scientific Publishingcurvenote.com
3. 3Scientific Content Management System | Curvenotecurvenote.com
4. 4Web-Based Scientific Article Reader | Curvenotecurvenote.com
5. 5Curvenote Inc. (Canada) — Wikidatawikidata.org