The value of data

摘要

In this paper we argue that how scientific collaborations share data is bound up in the ways in which they produce and acquire that data. We draw on ethnographic work with two robotic space exploration teams to show how each community's norms of "data-sharing" are best understood as arising not from the context of the use or exchange of data, but from the context of data production. Shifting our perspective back to the point of production suggests that digital artifacts are embedded in a broader data economy. We present implications for analysis of data in interactional context, and for introducing systems or policies that conflict with the value of data in its context of production.