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 seminar focused on academic publishing ecosystem governance in the context of AI, collaborative prevention of research misconduct, and publication ethics standards. A key session titled "Ecosystem Panel: Research Integrity Practices in China" featured a case study on 24hreview, a platform positioned as a pre-submission integrity safeguard layer for publishers, which drew significant industry attention.
COPE Chair Nancy Chescheir reaffirmed COPE's mission to uphold the integrity of the scholarly record through collaborative discussion and professional leadership. She praised innovative explorations by China's publishing and research communities in research integrity and publication ethics. Against this backdrop, 24hreview represents a tangible response to COPE's vision, translating principles into implementable industry infrastructure.
The platform was developed following 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% expected professional pre-submission screening channels from publishers. The survey identified three structural gaps in the current publication ethics 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 that this is a systemic structural gap requiring coordinated industry-wide solutions, not a failure of individual editors or publishers.
24hreview operates at the pre-submission stage, before a manuscript formally reaches the publisher, ensuring that every submission entering the publisher's workflow has passed standardized academic integrity checks. Its three core features include standardized screening dimensions, integration with existing submission systems, and completion of front-end checks within 24 hours to support 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 grown from an initial 8 to about 80. The pilot demonstrated that the model is straightforward to implement, integrates smoothly with publishers' existing submission workflows, and reliably verifies manuscript integrity at the pre-submission stage.
Multiple presentations at the COPE China Seminar converged on the need to transcend the capacity boundaries of individual journals or publishers and build a coordinated industry governance system. The 24hreview initiative is a step toward addressing increasingly complex research integrity challenges through shared infrastructure. More details can be found in the original source at https://www.cujs.org.cn/site/content/8650.html.
