Independent scholar: Encyclopedia II - Independent scholar - Acceptance of independent scholarship

Independent scholar - Acceptance of independent scholarship

Criteria on someone's source of income or academic standing have no prima facie application to how scholarly work should be evaluated. New ideas from outside the academic establishment do however often encounter resistance. If independent scholars publish their work in non-traditional places (anywhere outside learned journals, that is) they are open to attack for lack of peer review. This applies in particular to books. In the humanities, books generally carry more weight than papers; in the sciences the opposite is true. But in both cases there is an assumption that peer-reviewed work attracts greater respect, and is the actual foundation of what books in the subject contain.

An independent scholar must often become a memetic engineer, or propagandist in order to advance his or her contribution. Some are better at this than others. Good ideas can go unrecognised.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Acceptance of independent scholarship", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki