Dear Colleagues,

You have probably seen Gavin Melles's requests to this list for input on journals in design research. I've posted similar requests elsewhere. We've been getting many helpful responses. I've also had a couple of interesting questions asking why we are doing it and raising valid methdological questions.

The reason for our survey is simple.

We received a list of journals from the Australian Research Council setting forth journal rankings for the field of design research. Few design research journals appear on the list, and the few that do have low rankings.

The rankings for all journals across all fields should represent, for each field, journals that can be described as A* journals in top 5%, A journals in the next 15%, B journals for the next 20%, and C journals for all the rest.

The political and financial importance of the ranking system is clear: the research points allocated to design faculties or design schools in Australian universities -- and the income that may attend these points -- is based on the number of points allocated to each article. That, in turn, depends on the ranking of the journal in which an article appears.

Unfortunately, the research journal rankings for design journals seem to have been established by scholars in art and architecture departments with little input from anyone who works specifically in design or design research. I saw the ranking list for the first time a couple weeks back. As a new dean, I had no input into the original planning, but I do have the right to respond, proposing a better ranking system.

Our project is part of an emergency response to prevent a disaster for our field. It's not perfect, but we had two or three weeks to respond to a system that has nearly no A* or A journals in design.

The current ranking proposal of the Australian Research Council shows Design Studies and Design Research Quarterly as B journals, and places nearly all the rest in C. This is a disaster because designers will always be disadvantaged on publishing parameters against artists or architects who published in the high ranked journals designated for their fields. Art and architecture programs can earn high number of points when staff members publishing reflections on projects or even projects themselves in the journals designated as A* and A journals. In contrast, a designer or design research scholar who does significant empirical research leading to an article in Design Studies will only get credit for a B publication. Design research will, by definition, always be worse than art research or architecture research, and a massive study to gather data for an article in the International Journal of Design will amount to less than a painting and reflections in an A or A* journal for artists. Some respected journals such as The Design Journal or Artifact are not listed at all. 

We're not interested in debating the quality or nature of research in art and architecture. We are doing this study simply to demonstrate that design research has A* journals in a top 5% and A journals in the next 15%, and to show that these differ from journals in art or architecture. We seek to contradict the impression that there is no top 20% in design research -- but rather that we start with B journals and work our way down.

Our method is not perfect. It is admittedly quick and dirty. The way we're doing this is by collecting the names of journals, and then ranking them in a loose by by determing which titles occur most often.

When I started this project together with Dr. Jeremy Yuille at RMIT, we had a longer time horizon leading to a different kind of article. The current survey need came up recently. Dr. Gavin Melles and Dr. Deirdre Barron from Swinburne have joined us, together with Ms. Tania Ivanka from RMIT and Ms. Silvana Ferlazzo at Swinburne. When we return to that project, we'll be giving deeper and better consideration to methodological issues. Right now, we are dealing with an emergency situation.

We started with a short reply time. Now we have an extra week or so. Nevertheless, we're operating too swiftly. We'll do better the next time we do the survey because we'll have the time we need.

One colleague raised the point that journal rankings may not be useful or valid. This is possible, but we do not have a choice on whether journal rankings are useful. Australia is moving from the former Research Quality Framework to a system based in great part on metrics. One metric that the government is using involves journal rankings. Design faculties don't set government policy. What we do have is the right to respond to the proposed journal ranking scheme.

Right now, we need to show what the field of design research sees as its own leading journals. This is different to rankings established by scholars in fields that do not publish in such journals as Design Studies, International Journal of Design, Design Issues, Artifact, The Design Journal, or other design research venues.

The best way to do this is to show that an international field believes that we have some A* and A journals in our field as well, and list our B and C journals along with them.

Please help. The more replies, the more traction we'll get.

If you have not yet answered, please do at

http://opinio.online.swin.edu.au/s?s=4465

Thank you

Ken Friedman
Professor

Dean, Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia


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