There are increasing pressures on tertiary institutions and academics to produce research. In New Zealand the pressure to conduct research comes from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA), the Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF) and other professional accreditation bodies (such as the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants [NZICA]). While the pressure increases there appears to be little published discussion of the scholarly activity of researchers and what distinguishes the practices of ‘successful’ researchers. Previously published research available has used quantitative approaches, drawing on research output databases or surveys. This paper is a research proposal to investigate scholarly activities of ‘successful’ researchers using a qualitative approach. Qualitative data using interviews is proposed to be collected from tertiary academic researchers and analysed.