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.

翻译：关于学术知识基础设施的争论长期被框定为开放性与商业封闭之间的博弈。这种框架扭曲了政策与实践。真正的张力存在于深层技术摩擦下生产和优化结构化元数据的持续成本，与不同社群对数据质量、关注点和粒度提出的差异化需求之间。我们提出"创新环"概念：介于免费获取的结构化数据与商业化精炼知识产品前沿之间的地带。这一地带是生态系统中永久性的功能性特征——而非需要消除的病理现象。类比有效市场假说，其宽度衡量生产低效程度，由摩擦与需求的相互作用决定。人工智能重塑创新环：降低了基础结构化的门槛，提高了精炼增值的阈值，并通过无溯源AI衍生元数据引入系统性风险。CRediT贡献声明、基金致谢与AI披露声明诠释了创新环的生命周期。治理应校准创新环而非废除之：使其足够薄以高效服务研究，又足够宽以维持创新。类比Nordhaus最优专利存续期的正式福利框架描述了权衡关系并得出可检验的预测。《巴塞罗那宣言》为边界治理提供了有前景的讨论平台。