The 2026 COPE China Seminar, jointly organized by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Society of China University Journals (CUJS), convened in Beijing on June 17, 2026. The event focused on academic publishing ecosystem governance in the context of AI, collaborative prevention of research misconduct, and publication ethics standards. A key highlight was the presentation of a practical case study titled “24hreview: A Pre-Submission Integrity Safeguard Layer for Publishers,” which drew significant attention for its role as a public infrastructure asset in the academic integrity sphere.
During her opening address, COPE Chair Nancy Chescheir reaffirmed COPE’s mission to uphold the integrity of the scholarly record through collaborative discussion, education, and professional leadership. She expressed appreciation for innovative explorations in research integrity undertaken by China’s publishing and research communities, noting that global professional engagement would continue to refine available tools and mechanisms. Against this backdrop, the 24hreview initiative represents a tangible response to COPE’s vision—translating principles into implementable industry infrastructure.
The platform originated from a CUJS survey of 1,036 Chinese researchers, which revealed that only 19.64% of authors were familiar with COPE policies, while 86.7% supported pre-submission checks, and 31.6% explicitly expected professional pre-submission screening channels from publishers. The survey identified three structural gaps in the current publication ethics safeguarding system: late-stage screening (18.6%), limited capacity of individual journals (18.3%), and a lack of shared mechanisms and self-check tools (16.1%). The case report noted, “This is not a failure of individual editors or publishers, but a systemic structural gap that requires coordinated industry-wide solutions.”
24hreview is positioned as a dedicated integrity safeguard layer for publishers, working at the pre-submission stage before a manuscript formally reaches the publisher. Its three core features include standardized screening dimensions, integration with existing submission systems, and completion of front-end checks within 24 hours while supporting publishing efficiency. Launched in 2024 under the auspices of CUJS, the platform first piloted the approach with Wiley, a leading global publisher. The number of participating journals has since grown from an initial 8 to about 80, demonstrating that the model is straightforward to implement and reliably verifies manuscript integrity at the pre-submission stage.
Multiple presentations throughout the seminar converged on a common direction: addressing increasingly complex research integrity challenges requires transcending the capacity boundaries of individual journals or publishers and building a coordinated industry governance system. The full details of the case study are available at the original source URL: https://www.cujs.org.cn/site/content/8650.html.
