(This is a rough draft of a paper that is planned to be published sometime soon. If you have any comments in terms of factual accuracy or arguments they would be very much appreciated).
Synopsis:
The application of diverse forms of eResearch infrastructures to support research has a long history. During the 1970s the genesis of eResearch in the shape of Internet was driven by the needs of the research community. In this latest stage of eResearch infrastructure development, also largely driven by the needs of the research, we are witnessing large scale investments in grids, clouds, federated repositories, and high-end eScience and eResearch projects to support research across institutional, regional, and disciplinary boundaries. But as eResearch expands, there is an increasing need to address the tricky questions of governance. eResearch does not exists in a free-flowing world of ideas, rather like all infrastructures, it exists in a complex, contested, and often contradictory world of varied manifestations of governance. As we will argue, the governance of any system has rarely been brought about in a planned and orderly manner; rather it is usually brought about by a crisis in a system and a contested set of attributes that have forced the extension of governance. As existing capacities meet limits, new approaches to governance are invented and deployed in the attempt to overcome the barriers. eResearch exists in a complex array of governing bodies and without a realistic grounding of its technical vision within the limits of these structures; new infrastructural developments to support eScience or eResearch or even the Digital Humanities will be hindered by institutional divergence.
