Hello,
One issue I've felt concerned about in supervising and examining Design PhDs
is the amount the field necessarily must depend on grey literature relating
to design and design research in addition to , the amount of knowledge in
widespread use outside the universities in black literature and what I've
taken to calling 'blue' literature that is available only at a cost. Many
papers and books that I know exist are not easily accessible. How much
valuable literature is out there and in what forms?
My own color coding of scholarly literature on design research is something
like:
Gold literature - open access on web available anywhere in world.
White literature - open access on web in only some parts of the world.
Grey literature - has been created and is potentially available but outside
the current commercial print and open web (you can't find it on web, amazon
or publishers lists). This includes books out of print, company and
government research reports (things you could get possibly a photocopy of if
you knew where to ask)
Black literature - has been created but is not publicly available by any
means (e.g. confidential R&D reports)
Blue literature - available if you pay for it
It seems useful to surface these differences between the different
literatures because many significant design research publications are in
the grey or black literatures. This can happen relatively innocuously when
design research fields go temporarily out of fashion or funding arrangements
change. For example, the once very substantial design research literature on
community consultation in urban design in the 1970s and 1980s is now almost
impossible to access as the publications were not put on the web and are now
out of print. Similarly, the proceedings and papers of many design research
conferences and seminars have become difficult to access, even some
sponsored by the Design Research Society and similar institutions. For
competitive and other reasons, much of the best R&D on design research,
however,
To date, the scale of the above issues has been difficult to assess. There
are peta-bytes of information added to human written production yearly and
it is tempting to think of the number of scholarly publications being
effectively infinite and all easily accessible.
Now reliable numbers are starting to come in and they are much smaller than
some might expect.
Lee Giles from Penn State College of Information Science and Technology*
(and creator of CiteSeer) using robust quantitative methods estimates:
1. Current numbers of scholarly papers on the web is around 114
million
2. Around 1 in 4 papers are open access
This firstly shows the number of scholarly documents on the web is still a
relatively small. Secondly, the proportion of open access scholarly
publications is significant. Third, this shows that any serious literature
search is going to need to depend on paid sources and also must include
documents that are print only.
It also shows the scale and significance of Ken and Heico's creation of a
repository of design PhDs. The number of Design PhDs involved will be a
significant contribution to those 114 million scholarly items on the web.
*
http://news.psu.edu/story/329490/2014/10/09/research/how-many-scholarly-pape
rs-are-web-least-114-million-professor-finds
Best wishes,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
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