Hypernym of academia, researchers and topic enthusiasts

Could academics or acads be used to describe the university faculty as well as researchers? What is a better hypernym of academia, researchers and topic enthusiasts?

Solution 1:

In common usage, academics are those in academia or the academe, essentially, institutions of higher education and research. I would argue that it is inappropriate to apply the term to independent researchers or those in non-academic institutions.

Scholars would encompass those who apply scholarly discipline to their research; I might call an economist working for a public policy think tank a scholar but not an academic. More generically, experts are those with extensive knowledge of a subject regardless of approach, credentials or institutional affiliation. Authorities are those to whom people defer regarding knowledge of a subject.

An aficionado, connoisseur, or devotee is one who has cultivated a fine appreciation, although it is more common to apply these terms to enthusiasts of tangible items (e.g. an eye for historical artwork) as opposed to a discipline or field of study (e.g. a mind for the history of art).

Particular fields or areas of interest may have their own specific terminology as well. A Star Trek buff, for example, is a Trekkie.

Solution 2:

The word academia fits:

academia, noun : the environment or community concerned with the pursuit of research, education, and scholarship

Academia encompasses faculty and researchers (who are often one and the same). In bygone days, academia may have included dedicated amateurs (in observational astronomy, for example), but it's less likely in these hyper-specialized times.

Given that a hypernym is a word that is more generic (as opposed to a hyponym, which is more specific) WordNet's suggestions for hypernyms for academia include:

• world: The world of motion-capture animation encompasses applications as diverse as Smeagol and EA MVP Baseball.
• domain: The seemingly abstruse domain of psychohistory has room for both giants like Hari Seldon and accidental tourists like Arkady Darell.

Also consider this statement from Columbia University's Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics:

Our community includes faculty, researchers, and students in Astrophysics and Astronomy at Columbia, Barnard College, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and the American Museum of Natural History pursuing a wide range of theoretical, observational, and experimental research.