Dear All,

This morning's breakfast reading was another useful note from Chris 
Rust on conferences and journals. Let me follow Chris's note with a 
few more thoughts on making our research visible. This comment is a 
bit long. In part, it is a comment on the policy issues that require 
us to present and publish research in the context of university 
research appointments - and now at art and design schools. It is in 
part a comment on how these issues affect us as individuals, with a 
few personal notes.

The rich variety of answers to Mike's question shows both that there 
are many ways to go and that each path fulfills some valuable needs 
while missing others. My first comment in the thread was tightly 
focused on Mike's question. Mike question involved the kind of 
internal debate most of us face within our schools.

These issues and the debates they engender stem from the fact that 
our schools do not exist as independent, Platonic institutions with 
perpetual endowments to support our salaries and project costs. To 
pay our salaries and project costs, universities and university-level 
art and design schools require funding. These funds are public and 
private resources, and they come with conditions. The conditions are 
stated wither in the terms of public education policy or in terms of 
specific funding agreements.

While many of these terms involve such issues as teaching, public 
service, knowledge transfer, accessibility or many other important 
factors, some involve the research and research productivity of 
individual faculty members. On the one hand, custom and - in some 
places, law - afford us academic freedom in terms of our research 
interests and method. On the other, some form of documented research 
productivity is required as the guarantee that we are using our 
freedom responsibly. In another sense, some measurable form of 
research productivity demonstrates that even though we have great 
freedom in terms of research, we are indeed doing the research we are 
paid to do.

Let me place this in context by using the Norwegian School of 
Management as an example.

At the Norwegian School of Management, we have long emphasized our 
role as a research institution with an emphasis on research-based 
teaching and learning. Ads it is in many schools, the way we 
interpreted this was quite different two decades ago to what it is 
today. One of the important changes was an increased emphasis on 
presentation and publishing to demonstrate that others are using our 
work.

As we made the transition, our school emphasized journal articles. 
Other things counted, but they counted for little. Journal articles 
were the central focus. This has traditionally been true for many 
European and North American management schools. This has had much to 
do with the kinds of research evaluation that lead a school to 
prominence in the research rankings. Our administration created a 
strong internal incentive system emphasizing peer-reviewed journal 
articles, and faculty members responded by focusing on these. It 
worked. We improved our research ranking over the past decade from a 
relatively ordinary European business school to a high ranking in the 
league tables. In the Financial Times index of European business 
schools, for example, we stand 46 overall and 23 as a research school.

Many argue that these rankings tend to measure the wrong things and 
focus on the wrong issues. I agree. Even so, students look for these 
indicators, as do other schools seeking alliances. Even more 
important, funding agencies look to these indicators. As one of the 
few private university-level schools in Scandinavia and the only one 
in Norway, this is crucial to us in two ways. (To be "private" does 
not mean we are a for-profit business firm. It means we are an 
independent, not-for-profit foundation such as Stanford University or 
MIT, in contrast to schools funded directly on public sector budgets 
and governed by a politically appointed board such as University of 
California or Michigan State University.)

Unlike state schools, we MUST attract students to survive. In Norway, 
at least, it is inconceivable that a state-funded school would be 
allowed to close. Several years of discussion always precede any 
change of status - even that of a government-mandated merger between 
schools. In contrast, a private school struggles for every step 
forward in a world where public funding is seen as the norm.

Even though we have done well on all criteria in comparison to 
state-funded schools, we have suffered from a general prejudice 
against private higher education. Only when we were able to equal and 
then pass the state-funded schools as a visible research center did 
we begin to earn respect and gain even a reasonable though still tiny 
percentage of state funding. Things really changed for us when we 
passed the state-funded Norwegian School of Economics and Business 
Administration in the league tables.

Now that we have been recognized as a significant actor in higher 
education, the results have been interesting. First, we get much more 
funding than we did, including some access to the basic funding that 
is predicated on research productivity. Changes to the public 
research evaluation system also affect us now in interesting ways. 
The position that books hold in our incentive system is a case in 
point.

For years, some of us argued that books and monographs are important 
research outlets. The faculty senate and the rectorate did not agree. 
The internal incentive system rewarded journal articles and nothing 
else. Just as we were once again preparing a renewed version of the 
case, the new national research evaluation system was announced. In 
this system, a book or monograph is significantly more valuable than 
a journal article and a chapter in an edited book is roughly equal to 
most journal articles. (The system is based on points. All journals 
and book publishers are assigned to a large first level for almost 
every serious or respectable outlet, and a second level for a highly 
visible elite. Articles in level 1 journals are worth 1 point. In 
level 2 journals, they are worth 3 points. Books published by level 1 
publishers are worth 5 points. Books by level 2 publishers are worth 
8 points. Book chapters are worth .7, and 1 point respectively.)

With the advent of the new system, our school immediately amended the 
internal incentive system to bring it in line with the national 
system. Interestingly, we had long offered a selective list of 
excellent book publishing firms, arguing that books from these firms 
were at least as valuable to the school as high-ranked journal 
articles. Every one of these firms stands on the level 2 list, 
meaning that a monograph with a good press shifted overnight in its 
internal evaluation from 0 points to 8 points.

Much of what we do comes from the fact that universities and 
university-level schools are integrated into larger social and 
political systems. These contexts determine some of our actions. 
There has been much debate, for example, about whether Design 
Research Society conferences should be peer-reviewed. Many argue that 
this is a counterproductive policy - and many of the arguments are 
good. What these arguments overlook is the fact that funding systems 
in many schools and national policies in some nations require peer 
review as a criterion of support for any faculty member or researcher 
who requests conference fees and travel support.

These kinds of issues differ among schools and even among 
disciplines. In his first note, for example, Chris wrote that the 
important role of conferences in art and design has to do both with 
traditions and the fact that we have a relatively small group of 
journals compared to other fields. The figures he quoted cover the 
full sector, of course, but this has changed dramatically in design. 
Twenty years ago, we had three well-known journals - Design Studies, 
Design Issues, and Visible Language. Today, we have well over a 
dozen. This fall alone has seen the launch of two significant new 
journals, the International Journal of Design and - just this week, 
DRS's own hybrid journal-newsletter, Design Research Quarterly, as 
well as the move of the Journal of Design Research to a new publisher 
and an exciting re-launch.

I found myself agreeing with most of the posts after my reply to 
Mike. Punya said some things I wished I'd said, so I was glad he did. 
And Ranulph added an important dimension of existential value and 
personal satisfaction.

I agree with Ranulph in many ways, but I want to add something most 
people don't consider. If you do not fit within normative standards, 
at least to some reasonable degree, you cannot earn a living in any 
system governed by norms. For many years, I paid a price for being 
interested in research in art and design. When I earned my PhD in 
1976, a PhD was not considered an acceptable degree for a position in 
an art and design school or most university-level art and design 
departments UNLESS you also had an MFA. The one exception was 
administrative posts. Despite many applications, I was never 
considered for an ordinary teaching job in the field. I was often 
considered for department chairs and even a deanship or two - but 
lacking the experience of an ordinary faculty post, I never managed 
to get one of those jobs, either. The first situation was ridiculous, 
but the second made sense. Unfortunately, the first kind of job was a 
predicate for the second. At the same time, no one else knew what to 
do with someone who pursued art and design as a research field.

The result for me was a quarter century of different jobs, and an 
awfully long time in the wilderness, along with lots of visiting 
professor posts and wide travels. A series of what you can either 
call "flukes" or "well earned chances" brought me to an academic post 
at the age of 45. By then, I was living in Norway. One fluke was the 
fact that the president of a design school who wanted me to help him 
develop a then-nonexistent research program in strategic design could 
not get his three professors to agree even to meet all at one time to 
discuss the possibility. After refusing to meet me for over a year, 
the professor of industrial design finally agreed to a meeting. At 
the start of that meeting, he announced that I had no place in a 
design school. Next, he stated that I belonged in a business school. 
Then he stood up and walked out of the room.

When I realized that I had no future in Norwegian art and design 
education as it then was, I took a step I had note considered. I went 
to Oslo Business School to propose a course, and I created 
Scandinavia's first course in strategic design. When OBS merged with 
the Norwegian School of Management, the course vanished and I was out 
of a job, but NSM was in a period of development, and a year or two 
later, I was hired by another division of the school to work with 
strategic design. Through an odd series of developments, we never did 
manage to develop the design area. Nevertheless, my dean believed in 
the importance of design as a management discipline and a strategic 
resource. He supported my work in design research even though we had 
no design courses and no design program. And here I am.

While life outside academia was interesting, it was a difficult 
struggle. What saved me was an ability to tolerate uncertainty, 
enough friends to stay alive, and a little bit of luck at the worst 
moments. (I also had the great good fortune to live near a restaurant 
whose owner allowed me to eat on credit and pay the bill when I sold 
a project. One dry spell lasted nearly a year. We were both delighted 
when I paid that tab.)

In reflecting on the changes we have seen in our field, I'll point 
out that it was not that long ago that holding a PhD apparently 
disqualified you for a job in an art and design school.

So I'll agree with Ranulph that you ought to pursue research that you 
truly love. I did, even though it kept me out of academic life. I 
always pursued the work that interested me. It often meant traveling 
with a suitcase full of books and some scrappy manuscripts while I 
did other things.

At the same time, if you can balance the risks of research that you 
love by finding ways to gear the work toward normative evaluation, 
you can probably live a better life than I did. Most of my old 
projects are finally bearing fruit, but I suspect that I'd have been 
able to do these if I had held a position that paid me to teach and 
do research. Instead, I did my research on the side of two and a half 
decades of travel, consulting, and entrepreneurship. It may well be 
that I did better in the long run. It's hard to say. Those years gave 
me depth and perspective that I would not otherwise have. And I'm 
told that adversity builds character.

The fact remains that I could not have lived as I did if I had had a 
family - or even a dog. (One of the best things about being a tenured 
professor who lives in one place is the fact that I enjoy the company 
of a dog who knows where his next meal is coming from.) Up to 1994, I 
subsidized my art and design research and my business earnings paid 
for my projects while I supported myself (or tried to).

Must we choose between doing the research we love and publishing? Not 
really. The way forward is to pursue research that delights us while 
finding ways to develop and present it.

Since the art and design field now rewards research rather than 
punishing those of us who do it, this is possible.

Ranulph's warning applies to all systems based on extrinsic rewards. 
People behave in cynical and manipulative ways in all fields and 
forms of professional activity. This includes people who pursue 
research that they love. This is a question of values and behavior.

The point of this thread is not to do work you dislike for careerist 
motives. The point is to do work you love while finding the best way 
to make it visible.

Those of us who have the good fortune to hold research appointments 
have a responsibility to the development and future of the schools 
and institutes where we work.

Most of us have questions about the different kinds of research 
evaluation schemes now shaping up around the world. I believe many of 
the research evaluation schemes create as many problems as they 
solve. While they increase overall general quality in some 
dimensions, the do so at a price that involves problems for research 
education and pro0blems for the development of nearly every research 
field. Nevertheless, these are government decisions and we do not 
solve these problems from the level of individual research and 
teaching posts. If we accept the salaries and benefits of research 
appointments, we must expect to live with the policies that govern 
the institutions that employ us.

We do not have to accept these policies forever. We can influence 
government education and research policies by speaking up as experts. 
We can also influence them by acting, speaking, and voting as 
citizens. The former president of the Norwegian School of Management 
was elected to the Norwegian Parliament after he finished his 
presidential work. So was the former president of the University of 
Oslo. (He is now president of the Lagting, one of the two tings of 
the Storting.) Each of the former presidents has influenced education 
policy where it is made.

For those of us who work as research scholars rather than as 
lawmakers, we must live with the consequences of these policies. It 
is neither cynical nor manipulative to make the most of our work to 
the benefit of our schools, our students, our colleagues, and our 
field.

None of this involves easy choices or simple answers. In one of his 
subtle but occasionally grim jokes, Jorge Luis Borges once wrote of 
an ancestor who lived - "as all men do" - in difficult times.

In my youth, I suffered the problems of a researcher in a field that 
had no use for me. As a middle-aged man, I suffered the problems of a 
scholar fresh back in my long-postponed academic life following a 
quarter century on the road. As a fellow whose remaining hairs are 
incressingly gray, I suffer the problems of one who prefers to think 
and walk the dog while working in an education system that measures 
my thoughts in research evaluation metrics. The difference between my 
former life and my present life is that I am able to think what I 
wish while presenting my thoughts as others wish to read them. While 
this does not ease the struggle of writing, but I have the privilege 
of writing up the thoughts I want to think. In this, I have what I 
see as an advantage over contract researchers, corporate researchers, 
and consultants who work specifically on contract that require them 
to satisfy immediate client needs.

We are agreeing that you should work on what interests you. Good 
research involves finding a topic that is interesting enough to 
justify all the steps in the research and publishing process. It 
starts with the joy of finding a fresh idea, it moves through the 
boredom of working with details and the pain of writing, and it ends 
with the thrill of getting it off the desk and out into the world.

If you are one of the lucky few that are paid to do research with the 
privilege of academic freedom, publishing is part of the job.

Samuel Johnson once wrote, "No one but a blockhead ever wrote, except 
for money." I sometimes think that I am the blockhead in Samuel 
Johnson's definition. So are we all, since writing and publishing 
what we write is part of what we do to support the schools that pay 
us.

And now I am going to get back to a long-overdue manuscript. Like 
most writers, I'll do nearly anything to avoid writing what I must - 
and that includes writing a note to my colleagues on PhD-Design.

Yours,

Ken

-- 

Ken Friedman
Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Institute for Communication, Culture, and Language
Norwegian School of Management
Oslo

Center for Design Research
Denmark's Design School
Copenhagen

+47 46.41.06.76    Tlf NSM
+47 33.40.10.95    Tlf Privat

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