Journal article
A Step Score Is Not a Step Verdict: Three Quantities Under the Name Process Supervision, and the Outcome-Only Results That Make the Distinction Load-Bearing
(c) 2026 Pranay Mahendrakar. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Process reward models are introduced, almost without exception, as models that score whether an individual reasoning step is correct. This paper argues that the phrase "process supervision" is currently attached to three different target…