The introduction to this excellent, enlightening, highly theoretical paper is a clear statement of the paper’s general motivation: to look at scientific data collections (SDCs) as an instantiation of distributed collective practices (DCPs), instead of considering them to be solely scientific research infrastructure. Sections 2 and 3 subsequently provide a more detailed definition, and examples of SDCs and common distributed collective practices. Section 4 provides an in-depth case study of the NeuroAnatomical Cell Repository (NACR).

The case study discussed by the authors is one that was created by combining two other projects: the Information and Discovery in Neuroscience project, done in 2004, and an examination of the use of scientific data repositories in daily research, done in 2005. The study included 13 interviewees, and produced approximately 150 publicly available datasets. The NACR case “serves as an example of an SDC that is in transition.” This means that the organizing attributes are not yet totally clear. This methodology for the case is clearly defined, and the authors clearly realize that they still have to answer more questions before they can truly say that SDCs are instantiations of DCPs.

It is unclear why the authors separated out the implications for scientific work, policy, and DCP research, instead of including this information in sections 2 and 3. The authors’ use of abbreviations makes the paper a little difficult to read; in many cases, the abbreviation’s meaning appeared several pages earlier. Overall, the paper supports the important and thought-provoking idea that scientific data collections are “worthy of study both for their long-term importance to scientific research and as a form of data collection practices.”