How unique are hallucinated citations offered by generative Artificial Intelligence models?

ArXi:2604.16407v1 Announce Type: cross This paper investigates how generative AI produces and propagates hallucinated academic references, focusing on the recurring non-existent citation 'Education Governance and Datafication' attributed to Ben Williamson and Nelli Piattoeva. Drawing on 137 accessible source papers identified through Google Scholar and Google searches, the study analyses the structure, recurrence, and onward citation of this phantom reference.