Publication Date

3-6-2026

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Pakistan Journal of Information Management and Libraries

Volume

27

DOI

10.47657/pjiml/ge2025

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is reshaping academic writing, sparking both enthusiasm and anxiety across higher education. Using GenAI tools to summarize literature, suggest outlines, and draft text is becoming more commonplace, but it also raises important questions in today’s academic writing: Who is the author when GenAI is involved? What counts as original work? What does learning look like when writing is generated and modified by machines? These questions are closely tied to long-standing concerns in library and information science (LIS), such as information literacy, transparency, authenticity, authorship, and ethics. These further prompt us to ask a larger question: What role should LIS educators play in preparing the next generation of library professionals to support critical thinking in academic writing, and how can librarians contribute? Critical thinking, which encompasses analysis, evaluation, thoughtful reflection, synthesis, inference, explanation, interpretation, and problem-solving, is an essential element of academic inquiry and professional practice. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy (2001) offers a useful framework for understanding critical thinking as a progression—from remembering and understanding ideas, to applying and analyzing them, and ultimately to evaluating and creating new knowledge (Krathwohl, 2002). But do these definitions still hold when GenAI tools can perform many of these tasks? Some argue that human judgment remains essential despite GenAI’s expanding capabilities. For example, the AI Ethics Learning Toolkit emphasizes that “critical thinking—characterized by the evaluation of information, questioning of assumptions, and the formation of independent judgments—remains a uniquely human skill that AI cannot fully replicate” (Duke University Center for Teaching and Learning, 2025).

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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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