: Often referred to as LZ78 , this follow-up paper introduced a dictionary-based approach to compression, which influenced later variations like LZW. Technical Specifications and Forensic Research

: While technically a technical note rather than an academic paper, this is the official documentation for the ZIP format created by Phil Katz . It details the structure of local file headers, central directories, and encryption methods.

If you are looking for academic or foundational papers regarding the ZIP file format and the compression algorithms that power it, the most significant works focus on and the DEFLATE algorithm . Key Foundational Papers

: This more recent paper (published in Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation ) discusses how the internal structure of a ZIP file can be analyzed to identify the operating system or application that created it.

: Research discussed in Computerphile explores using compression algorithms to determine the similarity between different data sets, such as genomes.

: This seminal paper by Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv introduced the LZ77 algorithm. It is the cornerstone of lossless compression and the basis for the DEFLATE method used in almost all ZIP files.