I honestly don't get what a publication is, in essence. If it's not curation then it is what? Is it like a movement by which various people are gathered and they all agree to write articles specifically to be published on that place? That would make sense.
If I am right about this then the relay specific for the publication is what makes more sense to me:
Considering an example on the internet of 20 years ago, we could have Bob and his blog at bob.blog and a publication at xfiles.pub. Bob generally writes about politics on bob.blog, but on xfiles.pub he only writes about the X-Files.
Normal Bob followers will naturally connect to bob.blog and read his politics stuff and never see his X-Files articles and X-Files fans will read Bob's articles on xfiles.pub and may or may not be inclined to look for other Bob articles on bob.blog.
Of course, anyone is free to copy-paste Bob's articles from xfiles.pub or from bob.blog and rehost them elsewhere without mentioning where they were taken from, but that is of little relevance to most users.