(Er, for those who don't know, my academic training is in historical linguistics, and phonology was my specialty.)

I agree with Dorothea's breakdown of eResearch (as it's spelt in Australia) into three broad categories: research data management, online collaboration for researchers, and high-performance computing for analysis and modelling.

But I'd use the terminology differently.

One: In my vocabulary, there are no "e-researchers". There are researchers who use eResearch techniques, but they're still researchers; and there are eResearch support people who help them. Over time, most or all research will be based on eResearch approaches, and the term eResearch may well wither away.

Two: To encourage the culture change process, I think it's a mistake to ask the question "What is eResearch?"

Instead, let's avoid doubt, be affirmative, and give a clear, simple definition so that we support people and the researchers can move on to doing not talking :-)

In that spirit ... we do have a definition:

eResearch is the application of advanced information and communications technologies to the practice of research.

By repeating this definition confidently, we can make it so.

I could, however, be wrong about that.

There is definitely a lot of cultural processing happening in academia around computers, in teaching as well as in research. Speaking for myself only, I'm not sure that framing eResearch as something you do rather than something you are will encourage rather than retard that process. My sense is that until it's okay to call oneself an eResearcher, one's practices may meet with inordinate scrutiny and even disdain.

We'll see how it plays out, I guess...

Besides, archaeology can absolutely be aided by computers. I'll post sometime about the Olynthos project some of my colleagues at MPOW are doing... it's pretty neat.

Why, that's the Sciblings! Welcome home Dorothy.

Yes. But it's bound to happen sooner or later and it's good for traffic so might as well start early.

When I started in 1979 design was done on paper, and the way we tested a design was by building it, identifying the problems, changing the design on paper, generating change orders, and then changing the actual hardware. I think some low level circuit designs were probably checked on computers at this time.

Gradually all this was moved to computers. I was simulating 486 microprocessors in 1994.

We keep coming up with new tasks to do.

The big thing we are working on now is "How do we know we have checked everything?"
An older one is "how do we know the different level of designs are equivalent?" A big enough design will still break equivalent checking software, from what I understand.

Additionally, I would like to hear your opinion on copyright problems in e-research. Personally, I am sickened by our Copyright laws, and they have conflicted with my informal research so often that I torrent many science journals if I absolutely need them, and simply don't have access.

Personally, I believe that information cannot be owned, and thus should be free to access/non-copyrightable.

I can definitely talk about copyright in this context, and I will. You might be interested in Corynne McSherry's book Who Owns Academic Work?, and also James Boyle's The Public Domain.