Sedimentation and Emergence: Current Landscape, Structural Constraints, and Future Pathways of Knowledge Base Construction in the Publishing Industry in the Digital-Intelligent Era

Knowledge base construction in the publishing industry is gradually shifting from resource accumulation toward service emergence. Based on interview-based questionnaire data from 68 pilot units engaged in knowledge service models, this study applies the "Magic Canyon–Valley of Death–Darwinian Sea" innovation framework to examine its evolutionary logic across three dimensions of empirical patterns, structural constraints, and future pathways. The findings indicate that the industry has made staged progress in resource accumulation, technological application, business model innovation, and organizational adaptation, while structural tensions remain evident. Although user orientation has formed a general consensus, it has not yet been internalized as an ex-ante constraint in platform design, and the mismatch between resource advantages and demand rules generates a cognitive "Magic Canyon." Weak coupling between functional construction and operational realization limits the stable conversion of resource capacity into service capability and market returns, producing a "Valley of Death" in value transformation. Insufficient user connectivity, weak collaborative networks, and lagging ecosystem adaptation jointly intensify sustained pressure on knowledge base construction within open competitive environments, constituting a "Darwinian Sea" condition of selection and competition. Technological adoption varies significantly across institutions, with some platforms remaining at a foundational digitization stage, while others explore intelligent transformation, indicating an overall transitional phase from a data-centric stage toward a semanticized and model-based architecture. In terms of service models, a diversified structure has emerged, anchored in database services and extended through customized products and interactive services, yet customer structures remain fragmented, and business models lack stability, resulting in persistent uncertainty in value realization. Organizationally, editorial teams and technology development constitute a dual-core driving force, while capabilities in market operations and user growth remain relatively weak; closed loops between demand transformation and revenue generation remain incomplete, and many institutions still operate under conditions where investment exceeds returns. Based on the above analysis, this study proposes an optimization pathway centered on strategic alignment, capability integration, and ecosystem co-construction. Strategic alignment emphasizes embedding user demand into platform rule-setting mechanisms to enable a structural shift from resource orientation toward demand orientation. Capability integration focuses on reconstructing operational systems around user task performance to improve continuity of value transformation across the service chain. Ecosystem co-construction highlights multi-actor collaborative networks that enhance the adaptability and iterative resilience of knowledge service systems. The study argues that the essence of knowledge base construction in the publishing industry lies in a systemic restructuring of knowledge production logic and service paradigms. Its core rests in achieving a structural transition from resource accumulation to service emergence, alongside the establishment of stable coupling mechanisms across cognitive rules, value transformation, and ecosystem coordination, thereby providing both empirical grounding and a theoretical interpretive framework for the continued evolution of knowledge infrastructure in the digital-intelligent era.