I wrote a proposal for a survey to be conducted at a conference in the field of requirements engineering. I decided that all attendants at the conference, both the ones coming from industry and ones coming from academia, will be a good target population. I don't remember which word I used in the proposal, "RE experts" or "RE professionals" or both, because for me, both words apply to anybody who attends a conference in the field and are practically synonyms in this context.
In one of the reviews, the reviewer seems to make a distinction:
For example, the RQ’s talk about the RE community and RE experts rather than professionals (e.g., what about researchers who may be experts but not professionals)
So my questions are
- what is the actual distinction between an expert and a professional in such a setting?
- Why would an academic researcher not be considered a professional?
This is maybe clear to native English speakers, but not to me, and I will probably have to use the terms frequently in my thesis, so I need the clarification.
Best Answer
A professor of medicine has usually gained considerable expertise in his field (e.g. not every cardiologist becomes a Professor of Cardiology). In addition, most professors of medicine still do medicine in a limited manner, usually in a teaching setting.
The same with surgery: there are those who do it for their living, and those who, after having done it, choose to go into academics and become professors.
In medicine, an "expert" is someone who sub-specializes in one field (or, rarely, two), because the field of medicine is too broad to b an expert in the whole. There are general surgeons, and while they may be expert, in this context, it means very skilled. Among sub-specialties in surgery are thoracic surgery, neurosurgery or heart surgery. They need not be professors (in fact, practitioners usually make far more money than Professors.) Some, though, place knowledge above practice, and become Professors/researchers at leading medical institutions (Johns Hopkins or Harvard).
I don't see that this helps you. I'd say, though, that professors are academics while both are experts in their fields.
I am a practitioner in a general field. I do not consider myself an expert, although it took me an additional 4 years of studying after becoming a doctor to become board certified in my field. The sub-specialists usually put in seven years or more.