International Virtual Research Organizations (IVRO) for collaborative research provide infrastructure support for a complex system of organizing, planning, and decision making for scientific research. This study investigates similarities and differences among structural components of three different types of consortiums of large scientific collaborations: Joint Lab for Extreme Scale Computing (JLESC), Big Data and Extreme Scale Computing 2 (BDEC2), and Chinese American German E-Science and Cyberinfrastructure initiative (CHANGES). The overarching objective of these IVROs, which span multiple institutions, cultures, and scientific and engineering specialties, is to generate complex projects. However, these initiatives are different in nature, scope, and specific objective. JLESC represents a case of dynamic collaboration and scientific networking among investigators, projects, and supporting organizations that has generated a significant number of valuable products and team science projects without a high level of structure or specified processes. BDEC 2 represents a strategic coalition for international cooperation in the design and development of new generation software infrastructures for extreme scale science. CHANGES represents a collaboration among three partners: The National Center for Supercomputing Applications from the USA, the Jülich Supercomputing Centre from Germany, and the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences from China; and was developed to enhance collaboration between these centers through a series of workshops. There are some notable similarities among them. All these organizations are multinational, multidisciplinary, and include diverse participants including scientists, technologists, postdocs, graduate students, and management personnel. The three IVROs differ in terms of membership composition, management and coordination, funding structure, communication, participation levels, and activities and outputs. Based on the objective of an IVRO, membership could be relatively open or closed. BDEC2 is an example of a relatively open community, where JLESC and CHANGES are relatively closed. Where open community infrastructures such as BDEC2 are developed around broad and inclusive principles, JLESC and CHANGES were created with a very structured memorandum of understanding (MoU). JLESC has multiple management groups and multiple workgroups. Coordination is centralized and responsibilities are clearly documented. BDEC2 on the other hand is an example of simple management and coordination with central leadership and peripheral workgroups. All IVROs under investigation were developed based on a shared funding model. All IVROs have online presence. Interestingly, our observation concludes that IVROs, although initially idealized as cyberinfrastructures, utilize co-located rather than a virtual model of communication and participation. Participation in activities and workgroups varies across IVROs, ranging from limited selected participants (CHANGES) to extended participation (JLESC) to open opportunities of participation (BDEC2). This analysis provides an insight into team science and organizational evolution processes within IVROs.