高质量的设计学刊物

武夷山

Design Studies杂志2012年第1期发表荷兰代尔夫特理工大学工业设计工程系Gerda Gemser博士与另外三位学者（分别来自荷兰和澳大利亚）合写的文章，Quality perceptions of design journals: The design scholar’s perspective（对设计学刊物的质量感知：设计学学者的视角）。他们请设计学同行每人挑出自己最熟悉的5种最佳刊物，结果，排在第一位的是Design Studies（被SCI收录），排在第二位的是Design Issues（被A&HCI收录）。

本所图书馆刚好收藏了这两种刊物，它们我每期必浏览的两种刊物。我有很多博文都是介绍发表在这两本刊物上的文章的观点，如：

“设计师的表象能力：技术创新的催化剂”（http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1557-345347.html）；

  “设计扶贫应该提上议事日程”（http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1557-395261.html）；

“库恩的学科矩阵”（http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1557-581602.html）；

“通过产品设计引致良好行为”（http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1557-684701.html）；

“面向穷人的设计又一例”（http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1557-609394.html），等等。

不知道当初本所图书馆采访人员是根据什么信息做出了订购这两刊的决定，反正是订对了！

下面是Art and Education网对这篇论文的简介：

 The first rigorous study ranking the quality of design journals is now available. Published in Design Studies 33 (2012), the study is a collaborative effort between the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, and Faculty of Design, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. Lead author is Dr. Gerda Gemser, co-authors include Professor Cees de Bont, Professor Paul Hekkert, and Professor Ken Friedman.

The first academic journals reporting on research in the field of industrial design appeared in the late 1970s and 1980s. The primary objectives of this study were to identify a set of core journals relevant to industrial design research and to establish quality rankings of those design journals.

“The design field has developed into a solid scientific discipline,” says Dr. Gemser. “This discipline now has a core set of highly-valued journals. These journals have initiated a virtuous circle in which design academics want to publish their best work, a situation which enhances the scientific quality of these design journals even further.”

Based on an online survey, design journals were assessed in terms of two quality metrics: popularity and indexed average rank position. The results of the study offer a guide to both evaluators and those evaluated when judging or selecting research outlets.

‘Quality Perceptions of Design Journals’ follows an initial study to identify a list of design-orientated journals. Conducted at Swinburne University of Technology in 2008 (Friedman et al.) the study measured popularity on rank order without a measure for overall quality. The 2008 study covered both academic and professional journals.

Since promotion and tenure for university faculty generally depends on publishing, ambitious design researchers may prefer to publish in journals with high impact—a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published. As a result, design researchers may be tempted to send their best work to journals outside the design field. National research funding programs often encourage this trend because many research funding schemes favour researchers and institutions that have an established publication track record when allocating research funds.

“For the first time, a study identifies the top journals in design,” says Professor Friedman “Our goal was to encourage authors to send their best research to the best journals in our field. This study emphasizes the shift to empirical research in the design field. Delft and Swinburne collaborate on empirical research in the design field with peer-reviewed publication as the outcome. This study examines an aspect of our common focus.”

Understanding journal quality is vital because research quality is a primary criterion on which universities and other research funding bodies evaluate faculty research performance.