Market Dynamics, Governance and Open Research Metadata in the AI Era

Fuente: arXiv
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Autore principale: Hook, Daniel W.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Hook, Daniel W.
author_facet Hook, Daniel W.
contents The debate about scholarly knowledge infrastructure has long been framed as a contest between openness and commercial enclosure. This framing distorts both policy and practice. The real tension lies between the persistent cost of producing and refining structured metadata under deep technological friction, and the differentiated demands distinct communities place on data quality, focus and granularity. We introduce the innovation annulus: the zone between freely available structured data and the advancing frontier of commercially refined knowledge products. This zone is a permanent, functional feature of the ecosystem -- not a pathology to eliminate. By analogy with the efficient market hypothesis, its width measures production inefficiency, set by the interplay of friction and demand. Artificial intelligence reshapes the annulus, lowering barriers to basic structuring, raising the threshold at which refinement adds value, and introducing systemic risks through unprovenanced AI-derived metadata. CRediT contributions, funding acknowledgements and AI disclosure statements illustrate the annulus lifecycle. Governance should calibrate the annulus, not abolish it: thin enough to serve research efficiently, wide enough to sustain innovation. A formal welfare framework, analogous to the Nordhaus optimal patent life, characterises the trade-offs and yields testable predictions. The Barcelona Declaration offers a promising forum for boundary governance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_19507
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Market Dynamics, Governance and Open Research Metadata in the AI Era
Hook, Daniel W.
Digital Libraries
Computers and Society
The debate about scholarly knowledge infrastructure has long been framed as a contest between openness and commercial enclosure. This framing distorts both policy and practice. The real tension lies between the persistent cost of producing and refining structured metadata under deep technological friction, and the differentiated demands distinct communities place on data quality, focus and granularity. We introduce the innovation annulus: the zone between freely available structured data and the advancing frontier of commercially refined knowledge products. This zone is a permanent, functional feature of the ecosystem -- not a pathology to eliminate. By analogy with the efficient market hypothesis, its width measures production inefficiency, set by the interplay of friction and demand. Artificial intelligence reshapes the annulus, lowering barriers to basic structuring, raising the threshold at which refinement adds value, and introducing systemic risks through unprovenanced AI-derived metadata. CRediT contributions, funding acknowledgements and AI disclosure statements illustrate the annulus lifecycle. Governance should calibrate the annulus, not abolish it: thin enough to serve research efficiently, wide enough to sustain innovation. A formal welfare framework, analogous to the Nordhaus optimal patent life, characterises the trade-offs and yields testable predictions. The Barcelona Declaration offers a promising forum for boundary governance.
title Market Dynamics, Governance and Open Research Metadata in the AI Era
topic Digital Libraries
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.19507