The 'conversation' has moved somewhat away from Ken's first post on this topic, into concerns about PhD studies in design more generally.
My comments here are essentially from the viewpoint of being a research journal editor. We receive a huge number of inadequate submissions, often from PhD students. The problem (to me) seems to be lack of adequate research training and adequately supervised research work.
Apart from those that are simply outside the journal scope, there are so many that are clearly ‘work in progress’, especially PhD work that has maybe got as far as a literature review and perhaps a pilot study. Literature reviews are usually pretty thin, poorly structured and inadequate in basic citation skills; pilot studies are exactly that, or not even that - just one-off examples of a small research project. Research questions are undefined, methods are not discussed and applied rigorously, papers are badly written. It seems that many PhD supervisors either cannot do the job, or do not pay attention to what their students are submitting (even with the supervisors as “co–authors”). Some people seem to think that Masters level work is likely to be appropriate as a research contribution.
Of course, a lot of good work is submitted and published, but there is a very long tail of inadequate work.
Nigel Cross
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