The Nature of Scholarship: What It Is, What It Is Not

Scholarship has been defined as “Generation of new ideas, and the acceptance and wide dissemination of these ideas through peer‐reviewed and other peer‐accepted mechanisms” (Schweitzer, 2000). In the biomedical field, “scholarly activity” has meant basic science and clinical research, largely because both have outcome measures that seem straightforward. However, that traditional view has placed greater value on the scholarship of discovery (basic science and clinical research) than the scholarships of integration, application, and teaching (Boyer, 1990). The latter 3 types of scholarship also apply to clinical service, administration, and teaching. A challenge is to elevate the value of and review criteria for the scholarships of integration, application, and teaching. But to raise their value means that scholars of integration, application, and teaching have to provide evidence that their scholarly activity has been made public for peer review and critique according to accepted standards. Without being made public, activity is invisible (Glassick, 2000). Examples of peer‐accepted presentation are case reports, textbooks or chapters, electronic media, syllabus material, educational or administrative reports or studies. An obligatory step for faculty undergoing retention, promotion, and tenure review is documenting scholarship because a key question during the review process is “Where is the evidence?”. The evidence is citations of publications that have undergone peer‐reviewed and other peer‐accepted mechanisms of critique. Thus, scholarship is intellectual pursuit that is made public. Scholarship is not ideas and thoughts that are not made public.