The role of academic faculty is research, teaching, and service. In an environment that requires research, there appears to be little published discussion of the scholarly activity conducted by proficient researchers. There are few researched and published papers on researcher’s activities and habits to conduct research. The lack of research on the activities of researchers leads to the practice of research viewed as mysticism. An exhaustive search of research into the factors and scholarly activities of academic business researchers is presented in this paper to understand what researchers do to generate and produce research. The review is intended to capture current ‘best research practice’, as guidance for developing researchers who are themselves seeking to become established. A framework of factors and activities impacting on the tertiary institute researcher is developed, and journal papers are reviewed. The review indicates that researchers are influenced by daily activities, personal characteristics, career stages, and institutional environments. A number of environmental factors appear to affect productivity of researchers and personal qualities of researchers are also found to be important. Career, time allocation, and performance assessment impacts are discussed.