@inproceedings{chen-etal-2026-coconuts,
title = "{C}o{C}o{NUTS}: Concentrating on Content while Neglecting Uninformative Textual Styles for {AI}-Generated Peer Review Detection",
author = "Chen, Yihan and
Chen, Jiawei and
Mo, Guozhao and
Chen, Xuanang and
He, Ben and
Han, Xianpei and
Sun, Le",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1240/",
pages = "26921--26950",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-390-6",
abstract = "The growing use of large language models (LLMs) in peer review threatens scholarly integrity. Recent conference policies allow AI tools for language polishing but prohibit their use for generating substantive content. However, existing detectors mainly rely on stylistic cues, making it difficult to distinguish between surface-level language refinement and genuine content generation. To address this, we advocate a content-based detection paradigm and introduce CoCoNUTS, a comprehensive benchmark containing 315,535 reviews covering leading AI conferences and six human-AI collaboration modes. Our evaluation shows that current detectors struggle to handle these nuanced settings. Consequently, we propose CoCoDet, an AI review detector designed to identify substantive AI-generation. Experiments demonstrate that CoCoDet achieves a macro F1-score of 98.24{\%}. Crucially, on permissible machine-polished reviews, it maintains a low false positive rate of 3.89{\%}, substantially outperforming the strongest baseline (7.84{\%}). Examination on real-world reviews using CoCoDet reveals an escalating trend of substantive AI generation. Our work exposes the inadequacy of current detectors, underscoring the importance of domain-specific solutions."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="chen-etal-2026-coconuts">
<titleInfo>
<title>CoCoNUTS: Concentrating on Content while Neglecting Uninformative Textual Styles for AI-Generated Peer Review Detection</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Yihan</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Chen</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jiawei</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Chen</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Guozhao</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Mo</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Xuanang</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Chen</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Ben</namePart>
<namePart type="family">He</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Xianpei</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Han</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Le</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Sun</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2026-07</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Maria</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Liakata</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Viviane</namePart>
<namePart type="given">P</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Moreira</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jiajun</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Zhang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">David</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Jurgens</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">San Diego, California, United States</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-390-6</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>The growing use of large language models (LLMs) in peer review threatens scholarly integrity. Recent conference policies allow AI tools for language polishing but prohibit their use for generating substantive content. However, existing detectors mainly rely on stylistic cues, making it difficult to distinguish between surface-level language refinement and genuine content generation. To address this, we advocate a content-based detection paradigm and introduce CoCoNUTS, a comprehensive benchmark containing 315,535 reviews covering leading AI conferences and six human-AI collaboration modes. Our evaluation shows that current detectors struggle to handle these nuanced settings. Consequently, we propose CoCoDet, an AI review detector designed to identify substantive AI-generation. Experiments demonstrate that CoCoDet achieves a macro F1-score of 98.24%. Crucially, on permissible machine-polished reviews, it maintains a low false positive rate of 3.89%, substantially outperforming the strongest baseline (7.84%). Examination on real-world reviews using CoCoDet reveals an escalating trend of substantive AI generation. Our work exposes the inadequacy of current detectors, underscoring the importance of domain-specific solutions.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">chen-etal-2026-coconuts</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1240/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2026-07</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>26921</start>
<end>26950</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T CoCoNUTS: Concentrating on Content while Neglecting Uninformative Textual Styles for AI-Generated Peer Review Detection
%A Chen, Yihan
%A Chen, Jiawei
%A Mo, Guozhao
%A Chen, Xuanang
%A He, Ben
%A Han, Xianpei
%A Sun, Le
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-390-6
%F chen-etal-2026-coconuts
%X The growing use of large language models (LLMs) in peer review threatens scholarly integrity. Recent conference policies allow AI tools for language polishing but prohibit their use for generating substantive content. However, existing detectors mainly rely on stylistic cues, making it difficult to distinguish between surface-level language refinement and genuine content generation. To address this, we advocate a content-based detection paradigm and introduce CoCoNUTS, a comprehensive benchmark containing 315,535 reviews covering leading AI conferences and six human-AI collaboration modes. Our evaluation shows that current detectors struggle to handle these nuanced settings. Consequently, we propose CoCoDet, an AI review detector designed to identify substantive AI-generation. Experiments demonstrate that CoCoDet achieves a macro F1-score of 98.24%. Crucially, on permissible machine-polished reviews, it maintains a low false positive rate of 3.89%, substantially outperforming the strongest baseline (7.84%). Examination on real-world reviews using CoCoDet reveals an escalating trend of substantive AI generation. Our work exposes the inadequacy of current detectors, underscoring the importance of domain-specific solutions.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1240/
%P 26921-26950
Markdown (Informal)
[CoCoNUTS: Concentrating on Content while Neglecting Uninformative Textual Styles for AI-Generated Peer Review Detection](https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1240/) (Chen et al., ACL 2026)
ACL
- Yihan Chen, Jiawei Chen, Guozhao Mo, Xuanang Chen, Ben He, Xianpei Han, and Le Sun. 2026. CoCoNUTS: Concentrating on Content while Neglecting Uninformative Textual Styles for AI-Generated Peer Review Detection. In Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 26921–26950, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.