Hi Terry,

Thanks for the feedback.

When I wrote that, I was assuming online searches, lunch in the library,
even wine by the fire. I like the fire best. And right now I could use a
nice glass of wine.

But I think that remembering who published what is still important, because
it marks that the idea and who wrote it, and what she or he might write in
the future, are both something worth remembering. And on top of that , it
marks that these academic journals should be routinely considered to have
value.

Even when online was not available, reading the entire article was not
necessary in order to find out if the work related to my work or not. The
abstract and conclusion were sufficient for that purpose even then. More
important is the promise that reading the whole article won't disappoint,
because it is not just one more thing in a sea of what could become
mediocrity. And online could make finding the gems more difficult because it
encourages the abundance of publishing that concerns me.

But I think that you hit the idea perfectly when you said that part of what
an academic is paid for is creating new knowledge. Still I would argue that
creating new knowledge is not quite a commodity like teaching a class.

I have, as I'm sure you have, and others here have, designed classes based
in part on established knowledge (the expected value) combined with
questions I'm exploring (the potential value). I inform my students that
they are enrolled in a class where they can take away the value of both and
contribute to building the new knowledge. In that way, the university and
the students both get their money's worth -- and their time's worth. Still,
what I derive from that synthesis might not be ready for prime-time for a
couple of years.

If new knowledge moves from felt difficulty to a fully realized set of
propositions, or a framework, or a theory, or a hypothesis to be empirically
tested, I'd argue that an academic should specifically be paid for
contributing quality not quantity. And that is my problem with the common
assumptions about the amount of publishing in academia.

Having said that, I would cede the floor to you if we are talking about
particular kinds of research questions that can be broken up into parts with
clear boundaries within a domain that forecasts publishable moments
throughout. Then your timeline makes perfect sense to me. For example, I
want to conduct an ethnographic study concerning user centered design,
moving from what is presently taught in the classroom, what is carried away
from the classroom by the student, how the student incorporates that
knowledge into professional practice, and concluding with how the client
affects that professional's user-centered design assumptions. In that
scenario, I can envision several, somewhat predictable moments when I can
write up my results.

But if we are talking about another type of research question, one that
hides its solutions more than it reveals them, the process is not so
predictable. So, does that mean that we should only engage in the first type
of question and ignore the second? That is my fear.

I have talked to others with far more years under their belts in this
business than I have, who have told me that they have never tried to publish
what they would see as their best work, because it was too far from the
center of an ongoing conversation, and the saber-toothed tiger that is
tenure was breathing down their backs. Once their reputations were
established, their body of work, and way of working were also established.
The possibility of writing up that other work still exists, but it is not a
certainty, because they do see their obligation to the university as
producing a certain number of articles in any given year.

I would like to see an environment where taking chances on the new knowledge
produced was not seen as a potentially career ending move.

So, those are my thoughts. I really do appreciate that you would invite
them. And I liked your fireplace.

Best wishes,

Susan


On 4/3/08 11:46 AM, "Terence Love" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi Susan,
> 
> Thank you for raising the issue of the reading of journals. I hadn't thought
> of it as an important sea-change and now it seems obvious. My feeling is
> there are shifts that come with these changes in journalling.
> 
> The days of idly reading through journals sat in front of a warm fire
> sipping a glass of good wine seem mostly gone. Those were the days of
> remembering who published what, where and when - or who recommended
> something as particularly interesting. Times change.
> 
> Now memory is in the online systems rather than one's own head. (Where are
> you Walter Ong and Richard Neville?!) Online searching for work on a
> specific research topic is now commonplace and doesn't require reading
> journals whole - or at all.
> 
> On the other side of things, part of what an academic is explicitly paid for
> is creating new knowledge. It's a commodity job rather than a funded
> individualist pursuit. In this context, publishing isn't a matter of
> anxiety. Its simply work, applied skill and time. Time is usually the bit
> that is missing. 
> 
> For what it is worth, some typical times for
> producing/revising/administering papers seem to be ~40hs for a conference
> paper and ~ 60-80 hrs for a journal paper. These exclude time for getting
> research funding, data gathering or deep data analysis. Where universities
> give a day a week for research, then after all the other things that chip
> into this time, it  means that each paper is likely to take several months.
> This timescale  of snippets of time over months suggests it might not be a
> great environment for master/apprentice learning processes.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Terry
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
> research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Susan M.
> Hagan
> Sent: Thursday, 3 April 2008 11:07 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: The problem of Design Research journals
> 
> Hello,
> 
> There were two ideas that strike me as particularly relevant concerning
> publishing by Ph.D. Candidates or those who have finished. While I'm really
> sympathetic toward Terry's concerns over the practical realities of
> maintaining what have come to be common standards in research universities,
> I suppose it is the common standard that I find troubling.
> 
> The first comes from Chris.
> 
> <snip>Instead we should only publish in a journal when we have something to
> say that feels both substantial and of interest to our peers.<snip>
> 
> There seems to be so much anxiety around getting enough published, that
> there is less and less chance that our work will be found and used.
> Recently, I attended a dinner with someone with a stellar reputation in the
> humanities who said that he never reads journals anymore unless someone
> recommends a specific article. He has come to believe that most journal
> articles are only vehicles for getting tenure.
> 
> So, I like Chris's idea of what I would call work with reflection.
> 
> The second comes from Ken and Karel.
> 
> <snip>One thing that did not come up is the extraordinary suggest that Karel
> offers -- get research students involved in processes that will help them to
> learn the ropes and master the skills of publishing so that they will be
> ready to participate in the process as authors.<snip>
> 
> The master/apprentice situation is something that I think we excel at. And
> that approach doesn't water down the work.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Susan
> 
>  
> 
> :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
> Susan M. Hagan Ph.D., MDes
> Carnegie Mellon University
> Pittsburgh, PA 15213
> 
> 

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Susan M. Hagan Ph.D., MDes
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213