You need to have focused on and studied a specific discipline for starters. Academic qualitifcations at the graduate level are usually a necessary concomitant.

“Scholar” is not an official term or title.
Any barely educated hack can call himself a “scholar”.

A Ph.d for starters. And as a poster above has stated, it generally requires specialization in a particular field of expertise, Political Science or Literature for example. Tenure at a college or university is helpful and even then a lot of research and writing is necessary. The old “publish or perish” syndrome.

@ragingloli You can call yourself whatever you want, the trick is to get others to regard you as such.