Research data and metadata curation as institutional issues

This article examines variability in data and metadata practices using "institutions" as the key theoretical concept. Institutions, in the sense used here, are stable patterns of human behavior that structure, legitimize, or delegitimize actions, relationships, and understandings within particular situations.

Based on prior conceptualizations of institutions, a theoretical framework is presented that outlines 5 categories of "institutional carriers" for data practices: (a) norms and symbols, (b) intermediaries, (c) routines, (d) standards, and (e) material objects. These institutional carriers are central to understanding how scientific data and metadata practices originate, stabilize, evolve, and transfer. This institutional framework is applied to 3 case studies: the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) network, and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).