Valuing curation infrastructures
本研究基于对ICPSR（政治与社会研究校际联合数据库）相关方的67次访谈，从技术、组织和社会维度分析策展基础设施的价值，发现其支撑可持续性、提升研究效率、建立信任、构建社区和促进数据公平等作用。
Abstract This study uses a theoretical lens of infrastructural dimensions to examine stakeholders' perceptions of the value of curation, focusing on the social science data repository, the Inter‐university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Drawing on 67 interviews with both internal (ICPSR staff) and external (funders, data producers, and reusers) stakeholders, we analyze how value is ascribed to curation across technical, organizational, and social components of infrastructure. We identify five key ways interviewees conceptualized the value of curation infrastructures: supporting sustainability and durability, enabling research efficiency, fostering trust, building community, and advancing data equity. Our findings highlight the role of curation in knowledge generation by reframing curation as infrastructure rather than a set of discrete practices. We clarify how transparency operates in dual—and sometimes conflicting—ways: as both understandability and invisibility, shaping trust in and access to data repositories. Second, we demonstrate how data equity is increasingly perceived by stakeholders as a core infrastructural value, enacted through practices that lower barriers to access. Finally, we surface the persistent challenges in evaluating and funding curation infrastructures due to their long time horizons and often‐invisible nature. This work advocates recognizing and funding curation infrastructures as essential for long‐term scientific and societal progress.