Scholarship is not defined by its format
Audio reveals dimensions of knowledge that text obscures—hesitation, emphasis, the way experts navigate uncertainty in real time. If scholarship involves rigorous investigation and contribution to knowledge, then the form matters less than the quality of thinking it embodies.
The PDF is the dominant format for scholarly communication. We write articles, format them for print, and distribute them as static documents—even when the work they describe is dynamic, evolving, and deeply human. But scholarship has always been more than text on a page. Before the journal article, there were letters, lectures, salons, and conversations. Knowledge has always moved through voice.
What if we took this seriously? What would it mean to recognise audio scholarship—podcasts, recorded dialogues, oral histories—as legitimate scholarly output?
The case for audio scholarship
Research councils and funding bodies have begun recognising creative outputs as scholarly work. The logic is sound: if scholarship involves rigorous investigation, critical analysis, and contribution to knowledge, then the form of the output matters less than the quality of the thinking it embodies. A well-crafted documentary, a thoughtfully designed exhibition, or a carefully produced podcast can demonstrate scholarly rigour just as much as a journal article.
This recognition opens space for formats that have been historically marginalised. Audio scholarship—podcasts, recorded lectures, oral histories, sound-based research—deserves consideration as part of this broader rethinking of what counts.
There are good reasons to take audio seriously as a scholarly medium:
- Access: Audio enables scholars to contribute who, for legitimate reasons, may not write traditional academic papers. Some ideas are better spoken than written. Some voices are excluded by the conventions of academic prose.
- Diversity: Audio can be produced in any language, preserving the cadence, idiom, and cultural texture that translation often loses. It can include voices that academic writing typically filters out.
- Conversation as knowledge creation: Dialogue generates ideas that neither participant would have reached alone. The best scholarly conversations are genuinely generative—new understanding emerges from the interaction itself.
- Reach: Well-produced audio can engage audiences far beyond those who read academic papers. This matters if we believe scholarship should contribute to public understanding.
- Presence: Voice carries meaning that text cannot. Hesitation, emphasis, humour, doubt—the paralinguistic dimensions of speech communicate something about how knowledge is held, not just what is claimed.
What do we mean by scholarship?
Most people equate scholarly work with the research article. But the article is a format, not a definition. To publish in this format requires mastering specific conventions: academic writing style, the IMRAD structure, journal selection strategies, the rituals of peer review. These conventions serve purposes, but they also create barriers and constrain what can be expressed.
What if we started with what scholarship actually is, rather than what format it typically takes?
The scholarly method involves making claims as valid and trustworthy as possible, and sharing them with a community that can evaluate them. Scholarship can be documented, can be replicated or elaborated, and is subject to peer scrutiny. Nothing in this definition requires a PDF.
Boyer’s (1990) model offers a useful framework. Scholarship takes four forms:
- Discovery: advancing knowledge through original investigation.
- Integration: synthesising isolated findings, considering them in context, asking what they mean.
- Application: using knowledge to address problems that matter.
- Teaching: examining how knowledge can be shared and how sharing transforms understanding.
Each of these can be realised through audio:
- Discovery: Conversation can advance knowledge. Something genuinely new can emerge from dialogue that neither participant anticipated. How different is a scholarly podcast from a focus group discussion, where interaction between participants is the point?
- Integration: A podcast can bring together perspectives from different disciplines, synthesising knowledge across domains. Editing and production can layer additional context, critique, and connection.
- Application: Audio can translate scholarly knowledge into forms that practitioners, policymakers, and publics can engage with. It can explore how ideas might be applied before formal testing.
- Teaching: The best scholarly podcasts are pedagogical. They model intellectual engagement, demonstrate how experts think, and invite listeners into ongoing conversations.
Audio in an age of AI
The landscape has shifted dramatically. AI can now generate podcast-style discussions from documents, complete with synthetic voices that sound remarkably human. Services can transcribe and summarise audio instantly. The technical barriers to producing and consuming audio scholarship have largely dissolved.
This creates both opportunities and risks. On one hand, the tools for creating audio scholarship are more accessible than ever. Scholars can record, edit, publish, and distribute without expensive equipment or specialised skills. AI can assist with transcription, translation, and discoverability.
On the other hand, the ease of production raises questions about quality. If anyone can generate a podcast in minutes, what distinguishes scholarly audio from content? The answer lies where it always has: in the rigour of the thinking, the depth of engagement, and the accountability to a scholarly community.
AI-generated audio that summarises existing papers is useful but not itself scholarship. Genuine audio scholarship involves original thought, critical engagement, and contribution to knowledge—regardless of what tools were used to produce it.
The form shapes the knowledge
The emergent scholarship principle of “meaning through medium” applies directly here. The format of expression is not neutral. It shapes what can be said and how it is understood.
Audio reveals dimensions of knowledge that text obscures. A recorded conversation shows how experts navigate uncertainty, change their minds, and build on each other’s ideas in real time. It preserves the tentativeness that written prose often edits out. It demonstrates that knowledge is produced by people thinking together, not delivered fully-formed from authoritative sources.
This matters pedagogically. Students and early-career researchers often encounter scholarship only as polished, finished products. Audio can show them the process—the false starts, the productive disagreements, the moments where understanding shifts.
It also matters epistemologically. If we believe that knowledge is socially constructed through interaction and exchange—as emergent scholarship suggests—then formats that preserve interaction have something to offer that monologic formats cannot.
Accreditation without centralisation
A practical question remains: how might audio scholarship be formally recognised within existing systems?
Journals currently serve two functions: accreditation (signalling quality through peer review) and distribution (making work discoverable). These functions can be separated. A journal could accredit audio hosted elsewhere, applying peer review without controlling distribution.
A workflow might look like this:
- Scholars create and publish an audio work (podcast episode, recorded dialogue, oral history) on any platform.
- They submit the work to a journal, along with contextual documentation: description of the topic, participants, process, conclusions, and references.
- The journal coordinates peer review, with reviewers evaluating the scholarly contribution.
- The journal publishes the reviews alongside an embedded version of the audio, adding a layer of scholarly validation without claiming ownership of the work.
This model respects the distributed nature of audio publishing while providing the quality signals that institutions currently require. It could extend to other formats too—video essays, interactive visualisations, annotated datasets.
The point is not to force new formats into old structures but to find ways of recognising quality across formats. Peer review adapted for audio might look different from peer review for articles—perhaps more dialogic, perhaps involving response episodes rather than written comments. The principle remains: scholarly work is work that can be evaluated by a community of peers.
Conclusion
What does scholarship sound like? It sounds like experts thinking together. It sounds like uncertainty navigated in real time. It sounds like knowledge in the making rather than knowledge already made.
The question is whether we can create systems that recognise this, that value the rigour of audio scholarship while respecting its distinctive qualities. The tools exist. The conceptual frameworks exist. What remains is institutional will—the decision to take seriously the idea that scholarship is not defined by its format but by the quality of its contribution to knowledge.
References
- Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Provenance
This post is based on an earlier article, “What does scholarship sound like?”, originally published on 02 April 2019. It has been refined and updated to reflect changes in AI development.