Understanding design research: A bibliometric analysis of Design Studies (1996–2010)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the core themes of design research by analysing citations of papers in the journal Design Studies. It also aims to find out the evolution and future trends of design research.MethodologyEmploying a bibliometrics and network analysis, the paper analyses citations and co-citations from Design Studies. Instead of using the standard analysis method of aggregating author co-citations, this study conducts the analysis at the individual publication level.Research limitations/recommendationsDue to the limitation of the Scopus database, this study only managed to extract articles with full citations in Design Studies from 1996 to 2010. Further studies could also include articles from 1979 to 1995 by either using some character recognition software or manually extracting them.FindingsThe study identifies the core themes centered on design process and design cognition. In addition, it also reveals that the research method protocol analysis has become more popular in recent years among researchers.Originality/valueThe main contribution of this paper is the use of a network analysis technique to analyse 12 107 citations in the 459 articles published in Design Studies between 1996 and 2010. Unlike previous review papers which relied heavily on the qualitative observations and reflections of the authors, this paper is the first comprehensive quantitative analysis in this field.

► The purpose of this paper is to instigate the core themes of design research.
► We analyze research papers published in Design Studies between 1996 and 2010.
► Our bibliometrics and network analysis show that design process and design cognition are the two most important research themes.
► In addition, the research method protocol analysis is also very popular among researchers.