Beyond the Witch-Hunt of Zero-Tolerance Policies: A Response to ‘GenAI and Academic Writing’ (Jandrić 2026)

When Jandrić (2026) describes his experiences as an editor confronting unacknowledged GenAI use in submissions to Postdigital Science and Education, he articulates pressing concerns.His four challenges-detection, sourcing, writing, and attituderepresent difficulties that scholarly publishers now face.His honesty about his own editorial mistakes (Park 2024) is commendable.His invocation of episteme (true justified belief) over doxa (common opinion) as the goal of scholarly publishing is a sound principle.However, the zero-tolerance policy and blacklist that Jandrić proposes do not follow logically from his own diagnosis.If detection is impossible, as he acknowledges, a blacklist is unenforceable.If 'the border between co-writing and word processing is blurring' (Jandrić 2026: 376), a blacklist is unjust.If the goal is to educate authors, change unethical behavioural patterns, and improve scholarly practice, a ban is counterproductive.Scholarly publishing has long relied on distributed production systems encompassing editors, copyeditors, software, databases, and infrastructures.Generative AI represents a continuation and expansion of this established condition rather than a fundamental transformation of it.This paper examines these inconsistencies and offers an alternative framework grounded in communication theory, copyright laws, and empirical evidence about research practices.It engages directly with Jandrić's (2026) proposed challenges and solutions, addressing each one of his key arguments in turn, and presenting a counter-proposal.