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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 — ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------