Digital scholarship is becoming a contested area. The huge potential offered by the affordances of the technological possibilities has been illustrated by a range of contributors both in this issue and elsewhere. Other commentators are less convinced about the nature of the changes and the inevitability of changes to the practices of academics. Reviewing the arguments here, this article emphasises the importance of cultural communities and collaborative partnerships between disciplines, and looks to the potential of a new openness in scholarly practices for fostering and being fostered by such interdisciplinary working. The challenge for the future of digital scholarship in humanities research is to grasp the obvious possibilities of this new technological landscape to develop an approach to this work which will fulfil its potential.