Scholarly method — or as it is more commonly called, scholarship — is the body of principles and practices used by scholars to make their claims about the world as valid and trustworthy as possible, and to make them known to the scholarly public. In its broadest sense, scholarship can be taken to include the scientific method, which is the body of scholarly practice that governs the sciences.

This article focuses on scholarship in the narrower sense, covering rational inquiry in areas that are mostly too complex to yet be treated by science. These include history as well as the creations of the human mind in the form of art, music, literature, religion, philosophy, and cultural beliefs.

Scholars

At present, scholarship is largely the domain of professional specialists, most of whom work as academics in universities, research institutes, and museums; see Academia. However, there are also scholars who support themselves by writing nonfiction books or other publishable material; for example, the historian Barbara Tuchman was such a scholar, as is Dava Sobel. The military historian John Keegan worked for many years as an academic but is now an independent scholar.

Lastly, there are scholars who work at the highest level but are amateurs, supporting themselves with an independent fortune, with day jobs, or by the generosity of others. Such scholars played a far more important role prior to the twentieth century; examples are Charles Darwin, Heinrich Schliemann, and Karl Marx. For more on amateur scholarship, see independent scholar.

Scholarship often attracts special personalities, particularly in those societies where it is not highly valued by the vernacular culture. Often, scholars are thought of as being cut off from their colloquial culture and intensely absorbed by their topic of study. Nevertheless, the impulse to become a scholar seems to be widespread. Those who teach in universities find that some of their students get "bitten by the bug" of scholarship and feel impelled to pursue the scholarly impulse despite the dubious prospects for job security that a scholarly career affords.

Data gathering

Scholars value data that is directly connected to observation, for example, data taken from examining a composer's or author's manuscript, the proceedings of parliamentary debates, or diary entries. Such data are called primary sources. Sources that synthesize and interpret information from primary sources are secondary sources, and works that depend on secondary sources are called tertiary sources. Tertiary sources are not without value--sometimes a work of tertiary scholarship is acclaimed for its insight--but scholars trust facts better when they come from lower-level sources.

One "source" of data that scholars generally consider unreliable is a scholar's own memory. This form of data storage often transforms facts into pseudo-facts, which are perhaps more vivid and entertaining, or which fit better with the scholar's own world view; see Urban legend. The process of gradual transformation that occurs when material is stored in human memory, particularly when it is also transmitted by word of mouth, has been documented by scholars in folklore and cultural anthropology.