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Journal paper on Z-Library cites TorrentFreak article that does not exist
TorrentFreak said a Taylor & Francis librarianship paper on Z-Library listed a nonexistent TorrentFreak article and other unfindable citations; the authors disclosed using AI tools.
- TorrentFreak is now reporting this
- New headline Was: “AI-Assisted Paper on Z-Library Cites a TorrentFreak Article That Doesn't Exist”
- Our desk filed its story
- torrentfreak.com is now reporting this
A peer-reviewed paper on the ebook library Z-Library, published this month in New Review of Academic Librarianship, cites a TorrentFreak article that the site says it never published, TorrentFreak reported Saturday1.
The paper, "Z-Library and Full-Text Access: Democratizing Knowledge or Undermining Copyright Ethics?," was written by two librarians at Nigerian universities and appears in a Taylor & Francis journal1.
In a section on enforcement, the authors wrote that major academic publishers including Elsevier and Springer Nature had taken legal action, citing a 2021 TorrentFreak piece listed in the references as "Publishers continue crackdown on shadow libraries" and linking to TorrentFreak's homepage1.
TorrentFreak said it has never published an article with that title and was not aware of the particular legal action described1.
The site said the paper's account of the U.S. criminal case against alleged Z-Library operators also misstates the record, writing that the Justice Department "arrested individuals" in 2022, while a department press release said two alleged operators were arrested in Argentina at the request of the United States; TorrentFreak said the title the paper gives for that press release does not exist either1.
Going through the full reference list, the site said it had trouble finding at least 10 of 44 citations, including a 2019 Harvard Journal of Law & Technology article attributed to professor Daniel Gervais that does not appear in that issue's table of contents, and a 2019 College & Research Libraries article attributed to Carol Tenopir and colleagues that is not in the cited issue1.
Other references TorrentFreak said it could not locate included a 2019 article credited to Bjorn Brembs, pieces credited to authors named Smith, Piper, Okike and Aronson, and a Kaspersky report on "the hidden dangers of shadow libraries"1.
The paper's acknowledgements state that AI was used in the research and writing. "We confirm that Consensus AI was used in sifting through large volume of literature and extract relevant information," the authors wrote, according to TorrentFreak, which also reported that they said ChatGPT was used to improve the language of parts of the paper1.
TorrentFreak said AI chatbots are known to invent plausible-looking citations, which could explain the missing references, but that this does not prove AI wrote them1.
The site said it ran the paper's abstract and conclusion through the detection tool Pangram, which reported that both sections were likely fully AI-generated, and noted that such tools can produce false positives1.
The lead author shared a copy of the paper with TorrentFreak but did not answer follow-up questions about the references, the site said; Gervais, Brembs and Tenopir also did not respond to queries about the work credited to them1.
A Taylor & Francis spokesperson told TorrentFreak the concerns had been referred to the publisher's Editorial and Publishing Ethics & Integrity teams, which will investigate, and that the publisher would not comment further while the inquiry is underway. Whether the paper will be corrected or retracted has not been announced1.