Dear Ken and all,
I suggest the situation is far more nuanced than it appears at first sight.
A story:
Many years ago I did some design research as an undergraduate with the late Emeritus Professor Michael French as my supervisor.
The topic was 'Preliminary design investigation into the viability of water-skirted hovercraft'
The topic was suggested by Michael as interesting in terms of both design methods and commercial viability. It involves creating a hovercraft using a thin curtain of water instead of the usual more solid skirt that is then inflated and this pressure raises the hovercraft off the surface. The viability of the waterskirt depends on flow rate, thickness, surface tension, angle inwards that it is directed, height of hovercraft, pressure and a host of other factors.
As I was tackling the maths, Michael suggested an interesting paper in Nature about bath taps and the bubble that sometimes happens in the flow from old brass taps and its mathematical analysis proved immediately useful.
I created small prototype models that were tested and filmed and from them was able to calibrate the calculations to be able to predict behaviour of the skirt for full sized hovercraft.
The second part of the story was to predict the relative worth of water skirted hovercraft compared to other means of transport - particularly for heavy goods. How do you compare the comparative viability in real terms of (say) small and large trucks, trains, ships, bicycles, walking, horse transport, aeroplanes, cars , motorcycles in terms of their environmental criteria, costs and potential commercial benefits? It’s a difficult environmental evaluation challenge: usually not tackled by designers personally , and even now only partly addressed in design software. This project was 40 years ago.
Michael suggested a non-dimensional mathematical approach developed by Alex Moulton to support analysis of the design of small wheel bicycles. Moulton's approach enabled mapping the characteristics of water skirted hovercraft in a comparative graph, or infographic as it would now be called, of different modes of transport. This revealed and illustrated that water skirted hovercraft had many advantages over other more conventional modes of transport - particularly for heavy goods transport.
The target transport routes for these water-skirted hovercraft were the canals of England using a guide rail system to enable potential top speeds of over 200kmph carrying large volumes of heavy goods in a fast, low energy, environmentally sound manner. It became quickly clear, however, that Sunday tow path walkers, heritage enthusiasts and others would not be happy to have canals return to industrial use.
That project was never published and is still potentially of interest. The challenge in terms of tribute and supervisor signatures is to identify whether if it is published now, Michael (who died two years ago) should be first author, second author or included at all.
I welcome your thoughts.
Best wishes,
Terence
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Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, PMACM, MISI
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
[log in to unmask]
www.loveservices.com.au
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-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Tuesday, 1 December 2015 2:48 AM
To: PhD-Design <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [SPAM] Tribute Signatures
Dear Friends,
The issue of forced publishing combined with the issue of tribute signatures has brought me more off-list mail than I usually receive.
These are important stories — sorrowful stories, and they should be told.
People are nervous and fearful about telling their own stories, and they are reluctant to disclose what they know. I’ve been writing back suggesting that it is possible to tell the story without naming nations, universities, or people.
A few minutes ago, I received an email that truly horrified me. Someone wrote that he has had many account from PhD students in design informing him that their supervisors have delayed graduation so that they can keep these students at work doing research projects that they can sign. This is a serious researcher and designer at a top UK university who does many workshops around the world. While I can’t account for the details, I have always found this person to be reliable.
There is no way for me to know how prevalent this is in the design field, or in design research. I can say that I have heard most of the tribute signature stories in three nations, but I don’t know whether these represent a specific national problem or whether I simply have not heard stories elsewhere.
This is a serious enough issue. It warrants serious consideration and research in the field. We can — and should — address this issue within the research societies for the design field, among the journals of our field, and we should encourage universities and design schools with PhD programs to adopt policies on research ethics specifically at the school level. I recognise that many universities have policies on these issues — and I also know from credible first hand experience that some of these problems occur within design schools at universities with well formed policies.
When I posted a few days ago on the topic "Design Journals as Publishing Venues,” I was aware that this also involved the problem of tribute signatures. What I was not aware of is just how many people seem to have stories to tell.
Everyone who writes to me tells me that they can’t tell their story. I disagree. I think we can and should discuss the issues without disclosing confidential details.
These policies have begun to emerge at the university level and at journals and journal publishers because people have begun to recognise the problem. I suspect that the problem is shrinking — but like many problems, it is also becoming more visible through greater attention and better reporting. I do not know how widespread this problem is in the design field, but I think it deserves our attention.
Everyone who writes to me on a confidential basis deserves my respect. I am not passing the stories along. But I urge members of this list to consider whether there is some reasonable way to discuss this problem in public. Until we do, the situation will not change.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
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