Scholarly impact depends on timing and resonance more than on scholarly merit.

Evidence

Until January 1995 I was (as one critic later observed with perfect accuracy) “an obscure academic.” Although I had published scores of books and articles in the previous three decades (many of them, I immodestly believed, of greater scholarly elegance than “Bowling Alone”), none had attracted the slightest public attention. … The explanation was not late-blooming genius, but the simple fact that I had unwittingly articulated an unease that had already begun to form in the minds of many ordinary Americans. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 2640

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with the broader theme of how recognition works — akin to Merton’s Matthew Effect discussions and how ideas succeed or fail independent of intrinsic quality. — connects to: Scholarly progress is driven by inherited tools, not individual genius — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists…, 25; Media access, not scholarly merit, determines who becomes a prominent intellectual — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2681

Broader Connections

• Media access, not scholarly merit, determines who becomes a prominent intellectual #corroborates (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2681
• Scholarly progress is driven by inherited tools, not individual genius #corroborates (0.80) — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 25