How is scholarly intellectual property made?
All specialized knowledge of the sort scholars call "intellectual property" is created by a professional community populated by specially trained researchers who share both abstract (non-tangible) and concrete (tangible) things. Learning to use these discipline-specific tools usually takes about a decade in the modern college and university system, but even first year students need to know what these "fields" or "disciplines" look like. For the example below, I have used the field of Economics and Management to illustrate the abstract and concrete elements that we might call the "tools" by which intellectual property is made. Note that, at larger colleges and universities, Economics is considered a discipline separate from Management, though both share enough common tools that economists can talk to and influence management scholars, and managements scholars can talk to and influence economists.
Abstract Tools for Creating Knowledge
theories of knowledge to explain data
a set of agreed-upon, “legal” research methods to produce data
product review construction
whole corporate sites vs. documents as “sources”
terms of art for describing concepts essential to the field
"costing," "pricing," "price-point" and "customer profile"
Concrete Social and Historical Tools for Publicizing and Evaluating Knowledge
books, journals, other media where discipline-authorized knowledge is shared & debated
Harvard Business Review, American Demographics; Marketing Theory
university presses, selective professional publishers, and professional web sites which produce and make available those texts
Harvard University Press, Basic Books (Note that HUP is "inside" the scholarly culture in a way that BB is not--how does that affect what they publish and how their books are received by the discipline?)
academic departments & professional organizations who teach & test the members of the discipline
Goucher’s Economics and Management Dep’t., AMA (Note that the American Marketing Association is composed of regional "chapters" rather than centralized like the Modern Language Association. What does that suggest about how Marketing views itself as a profession? Note also that there are chapters dedicated to marketing to specific national and ethnic groups.)
networks of peer-reviewers who test and guarantee the quality of discipline-authorized articles, books, and web-based materials
Jack Carter, and the other members of the Economics and Management Department