Scholarship explored: Motivations, practices and perceptions in the research process

Scholarly research is shaped not only by its outputs but also by the lived experiences, identities and practices of the scholars who conduct it. While much of the Science of Science (SoS) literature examines research dynamics through quantitative indicators, far less is known about how scholars themselves describe their academic identities, research processes, engagement with information and publication decisions. This qualitative study addresses this gap by exploring scholars’ perceptions across four disciplinary fields. Through semi-structured interviews with 32 researchers, we examine how they understand their role as scholars, how research ideas emerge and evolve, how they seek and work with information and data and how they evaluate publication venues. The analysis identifies four themes that together illuminate the complex and multidimensional nature of scholarly work, revealing how academic identity, research processes, information engagement and publication choices mutually shape one another. By centring scholars’ voices, this study provides contextualised insights that complement existing quantitative SoS approaches and deepen understanding of the interpersonal, cognitive and institutional factors that shape academic life.