Mapping the Scholarly Enterprise

If mapping is useful in the pursuit of particular research questions, it may be the case that mapping is also useful in understanding more broadly how different research fields within the academy connect. A map of the scholarly enterprise might serve various goals:

• Identify the set of things that scholars study

• Identify the set of theories that scholars employ

• Identify the set of methods that scholars employ

• Situate each insight or research program as the application of one or more theories and methods to one or more objects of study (generally the study of how one or more things influence one or more others).

• Aid interdisciplinary scholars in finding relevant insights

• Show that disciplines do indeed choose methods that support their theories, and subject matter suited to their favoured theories and methods

• Thus show when disagreements among scholars are more apparent than real because they are actually talking about different causal relationships

• When disagreements are real identify the precise causal relationships about which scholars are disagreeing

Rick Szostak has pursued this line of research in a range of publications. See:

https://sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/rick-szostak/research/mapping-scholarship