Dear Rosan,
As a footnote to your reply to Derek Miller, you'll find a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the last fifteen years of articles in Design Studies in the current issue.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2011.06.004
Understanding design research: A bibliometric analysis of Design Studies (1996-2010)
Kah-Hin Chai and Xin Xiao
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the core themes of design research by analysing citations of papers in the journal Design Studies. It also aims to find out the evolution and future trends of design research. Employing a bibliometrics and network analysis, the paper analyses citations and co-citations from Design Studies. Instead of using the standard analysis method of aggregating author co-citations, this study conducts the analysis at the individual publication level.
Due to the limitation of the Scopus database, this study only managed to extract articles with full citations in Design Studies from 1996 to 2010. Further studies could also include articles from 1979 to 1995 by either using some character recognition software or manually extracting them.
The study identifies the core themes centered on design process and design cognition. In addition, it also reveals that the research method protocol analysis has become more popular in recent years among researchers. The main contribution of this paper is the use of a network analysis technique to analyse 12 107 citations in the 459 articles published in Design Studies between 1996 and 2010. Unlike previous review papers which relied heavily on the qualitative observations and reflections of the authors, this paper is the first comprehensive quantitative analysis in this field.
Best regards,
Ken
Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61 3 9214 6078 | Faculty www.swinburne.edu.au/design
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