Associate Professor Andrea Thomer Receives Second ASIS&T Best JASIST Paper Award

For the second time in four years, University of Arizona College of Information Science Associate Professor Andrea Thomer has received one of the field’s highest research honors.

Thomer and her coauthors—University of Michigan scholars Morgan F. Wofford, Libby Hemphill, Katherine Polasek and Elizabeth Yakel—have earned the 2026 Best JASIST Paper Award from the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) for their article, “Valuing Curation Infrastructures,” published in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

Presented annually by ASIS&T, the award recognizes the best refereed paper published in the journal during the previous volume year, honoring exceptional scholarly contribution, professional merit and quality of presentation.

“It’s a huge honor to receive this recognition from ASIS&T, which is my primary scholarly ‘home,’” Thomer says. “I am truly grateful for this recognition from my peers. The paper is about the value of curatorial infrastructures like libraries, museums, data repositories and archives, and I’m gratified to see research on this topic valued by ASIS&T in turn.”

The award marks Thomer’s second Best JASIST Paper recognition. In 2023, she received the honor as the sole author of “Integrative Data Reuse at Scientifically Significant Sites: Case Studies at Yellowstone National Park and the La Brea Tar Pits.”

The newly recognized paper examines how people understand the value of curation—the often-invisible work of organizing, preserving and maintaining data that enables research over time. Focusing on the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, one of the world’s leading social science data repositories, the research draws on 67 interviews with repository staff, funders, data producers and data users.

Rather than treating curation as a collection of behind-the-scenes tasks, the authors argue that it should be understood as essential research infrastructure. Their findings identify five ways stakeholders perceive the value of curation infrastructures: supporting long-term sustainability, improving research efficiency, fostering trust, building scholarly communities and advancing data equity by lowering barriers to access. The study also highlights the ongoing challenges of evaluating and funding infrastructure whose greatest benefits often emerge over long time horizons.

One award juror praised the paper for providing “an accessible and convincing exploration of the importance of curation and the validity of framing it as an element of infrastructure.”

In a joint statement, the authors said the recognition also underscores the importance of continued investment in libraries, museums, archives and other public-interest research infrastructure.

“We’re honored to receive this award from ASIS&T for our work—thank you!” they said. “Curation infrastructures deserve sustained investment and scholarly attention. Our project was supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and represents the kind of federal investment in libraries and research infrastructure that is now under threat in the U.S. This award is a reminder of what’s at stake when we defund the agencies that make rigorous, public-interest research possible.”

Thomer's research explores the maintenance and evolution of knowledge infrastructures, scientific data curation and information organization, with particular interests in long-term database curation, natural history collections and the conceptual foundations of data science. Her work has been supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Science Foundation and has appeared in leading journals across information science and related disciplines.

The Best JASIST Paper Award will be presented during the ASIS&T Annual Meeting, November 6-10, 2026, in Bangkok.