CARVing Quality vs. Characterizing Capital: The Scholarly Capital Model, a Portfolio Approach

Abstract

We thank Karlheinz Kautz for organizing this debate and the four respondent groups for their thoughtful and challenging comments. In this rejoinder, we take the opportunity to amplify and clarify some points that were perhaps unclear or misunderstood in our initial article and to respond to areas where we disagree. We also acknowledge proposed extensions of the scholarly capital model (SCM) to include the assessment of the impact on practitioners and on others outside of academia. Our main point throughout the dozen years we have pursued this project is that for the field to progress we must have an open democratic discourse in which all ideas and all comers have access to the discourse. That does not mean that “anything goes”. Rather, we advocate a disciplined metatheoretical pluralism in which we evaluate work for admission to the discourse not by conformance to “normal science” but rather by its conformance to its stated metatheoretical commitments. The marketplace of ideas then determines which of the proffered ideas has the most use. Scholars can then be evaluated based on a profile of measures assessing their impact to the field such as those produced by the SCM.