Tips for Design Scholars Looking to Publish in a Design Research Journal

“Ask the Expert” is a series looking at various considerations and practices related to design research, scholarship, publication, and other academic topics.

We invited Design and Culture’s Principal Reviews Editor, Maggie Taft, to respond to questions about different aspects of journal publishing. This is the first of a series from Taft, an independent scholar and Director of Writing Space, a community-based writing center for artists and designers.

Question: What is your top tip for scholars and designers interested in publishing in a design research journal?

Answer: Read.

We often think of reading as a parallel activity to writing. (Consider the elementary school trifecta “reading, writing and arithmetic,” which seems to position reading and writing as separate enterprises.) Yet when it comes to academic writing, reading is essential in so many ways.

The most familiar way to connect reading with academic writing is in the form of research. You read existing scholarship on your topic so that you can reference and draw upon previous findings and build a bibliography that demonstrates your knowledge of the field. Reading for research is essential.

But reading supports academic writing in at least three other crucial ways–

  • Reading will strengthen your methodology.

The more you read, the more you’ll learn about different ways to structure an academic argument and mobilize evidence in support of that argument. You’ll encounter some authors who highlight their subjectivity as a researcher and others who minimize it. You’ll find some authors who interpret case studies and others who analyze data sets. By reading widely and keeping track of the texts you find most compelling, you can identify the kinds of arguments you want to make and get ideas about how to use your research to make them.

My colleague Liat Berdugo recommends prospective article authors identify “sample journal articles”. These need not be articles that address the same topic as yours, but rather articles that make the types of arguments and interventions you hope to make. Having a good example of the kind of writing you wish to do will make it easier to figure out how to put together your article.

  • Reading will help you to identify how your work fits into the conversations that are happening in your field.

Academic arguments offer new ways of understanding, new paths of inquiry, and/or new recommendations for practice. These interventions are meaningful insofar as they respond to existing conventions. What is your work responding to? What is it seeking to change or rethink? To do meaningful work, you need to know what other people in your field are paying attention to and talking about so that you can explain to them the connection between their concerns and yours. Keeping up with ongoing scholarship in your field by reading will allow you insight into the kinds of work people are doing right now and what they’re paying attention to. This will, in turn, allow you to connect your specific area of research to broader patterns in the field, whether your ambition is to shift or refocus these conversations or to develop them in new directions or through new approaches.

  • Reading will help you identify the journals that are the best fit for your article.

There are many international journals that publish design scholarship but that doesn’t mean every one of them will be a good fit for your design research article. Every journal has a different historical focus, thematic emphasis, and methodological bent. Familiarize yourself with different journals’ respective missions (available on journal websites) and read the scholarship they’ve been publishing recently so that you can evaluate which is most likely to publish your work.

During my five years as the Managing Editor of Design and Culture, I think we rejected 50% of the articles we received not because they were bad scholarship but because they simply did a different kind of work than that which the journal sought to highlight. Some submissions deployed a scientific approach whereas the journal favored a humanistic one. Others focused on architecture, which at that time fell outside of the journal’s purview. Read the journals in your field so that you can both target your article submission to the ones most likely to publish your work AND target your article to that journal’s constituents. For instance, if you’re publishing research on graphic design education in a design history journal (like The Journal of Design History) you might frame your argument a bit differently than if you were to publish the research in a design education journal (like International Journal of Designs for Learning).

Ultimately, it is easy to think of reading as extraneous to the publishing process. You’re busy. There are so many urgent personal and professional matters vying for your attention. It can be difficult and even feel indulgent to dedicate time to reading, a task that typically rewards slowness. But for all the reasons described above, reading is not extraneous to writing for journals (and to writing more broadly). It is fundamental to it.

Maggie Taft, PhD
Founding Director
Writing Space

Liat Berdugo, author of The Weaponized Camera in the Middle East, joins the 2021 Design Incubation Fellowship

Please join us in welcoming Liat Berdugo in her role as a fellowship facilitator for the 2021 Design Incubation Fellowship. As a Design Incubation Fellow in 2018, Liat worked on a proposal for her recently published book The Weaponized Camera in the Middle East (Bloomsbury/I.B.Tauris, 2021). Liat brings experience as both a public and academic scholar and has published widely in journals, magazines and other venues. During the 2021 Fellowship, Liat will work with participants who are working on writing and publishing articles.

Liat Berdugo is an assistant professor of Art + Architecture at the University of San Francisco where she investigates embodiment, labor, and militarization in relation to capitalism, technological utopianism, and the Middle East. Her writing appears in Rhizome, Temporary Art Review, Real Life, Places, and The Institute for Network Cultures, among others. Bergudo’s latest book is The Weaponized Camera in the Middle East (Bloomsbury/I.B.Tauris, 2021). She is one half of the art collective, Anxious to Make, and is the co-founder of the Living Room Light Exchange, a monthly new media art series.

More on The Weaponized Camera in the Middle East

Drawing on unprecedented access to the video archives of B’Tselem, an Israeli NGO that distributes cameras to Palestinians living in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, Liat Berdugo lays out an argument for a visual studies approach to videographic evidence in Israel/Palestine. Using video stills as core material, it discusses the politics of videographic evidence in Israel/Palestine by demonstrating that the conflict is one that has produced an inequality of visual rights. The book highlights visual surveillance and counter-surveillance at the citizen level, how Palestinians originally filmed to “shoot back” at Israelis, who were armed with shooting power via weapons as the occupying force. It also traces how Israeli private citizens began filming back at Palestinians with their own cameras, including personal cell phone cameras, thus creating a simultaneous, echoing counter-surveillance.

Complicating the notion that visual evidence alone can secure justice, the Weaponized Camera in The Middle East asks how what is seen, but also who is seeing, affects how conflicts are visually recorded. Drawing on over 5,000 hours of footage, only a fraction of which is easily accessible to the public domain, this book offers a unique perspective on the strategies and battlegrounds of the Israel/Palestine conflict. More information about Berdugo’s work can be found at www.liatberdugo.com

Design Incubation Fellowship 2018: Call for Applications

Design Incubation is currently accepting applications for the January 2018 Fellowship and Workshop Sessions. The application deadline is September 1, 2017.

Application Process

Design Incubation welcomes online applications for the January 2018 Fellowship and Workshop Session. Applications are being accepted June 1, 2017–September 1, 2017.

The upcoming 2018 Design Incubation Fellowship will be held January 11–13, 2018 at the Manhattan campus of St. John’s University, 51 Astor Place, New York, NY 10003.

Applicants are required to provide contact information, title/current rank, institutional affiliation, a CV, and a 200-word biography. Candidates also need to indicate for which of the 2 tracks they are applying. (see Fellowship Program Format.)

Preference will be given to full-time faculty currently employed by accredited colleges or universities. Adjuncts and independent scholars are also encouraged to apply.

There is no fee to apply for the Design Incubation Fellowship. However upon acceptance there is a $200 fee for the 3-day workshop and all Fellows must be available to participate in person at the Design Incubation Fellowship workshops. A formal letter of acceptance will be provided so attendees can apply for travel funds from their home institutions and pay the workshop fee to reserve their place.

FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM FORMAT

Design Incubation Fellows commit to working on a research project for six months. The Fellowship begins with a three-day workshop (see below) where participants learn about different modes of publishing and writing strategies. During the six months following the Workshop, Fellows pledge to continue to work on their projects during which time they receive feedback and group checkin’s. The 2018 Design Incubation Fellowship Workshop will take place at St. John’s University’s Manhattan Campus on January 11-13, 2018. All Fellows are required to participate in the Fellowship Workshop.

Design Incubation Fellowship 2018

January 11–13, 2018. New York City. A three-day workshop facilitating academic writing and publishing for designers.

The mission of Design Incubation is to support and facilitate the development of research in the field of communication design. The organization works with academics and practitioners to create scholarly discourse and publications focused on creative projects, critical analysis, historical perspectives, technological advances and other topics relevant to design studies.

Visit the Fellowship Program Format page for details on the fellowship and program format.

Applications accepted: June 1, 2017 – September 1, 2017. Visit the Fellowship Application page for details to apply.

2017 Design Incubation Fellowship
January 11 –13, 2018
St. John’s University’s Manhattan campus

PROGRAM AGENDA 

The 2018 Design Incubation Fellowship Workshop will include sessions with Maggie Taft, Managing Editor of the journal Design and Culture as well as guest appearances by a number of authors and publishers. Aaris Sherin is director of the Design Incubation Fellowship program. Sherin is a Professor of Graphic Design at St. John’s University in New York and author of a number of books including her most recent titles Elaine Lustig Cohen: Modernism Reimagined and Sustainable Thinking: Ethical Approaches to Design and Design Management. (See below for schedule.)

Day 1

Thursday, January 11th

Introductions with Hosts
9:00am–12:30pm

Dan Wong, Co-founder of Design Incubation
Liz Deluna, Co-chair Design Incubation
Robin Landa, Co-Chair Design Incubation

Structuring Scholarship

Aaris Sherin
Director of Fellowships at Design Incubation

Lunch break (see recommendations)
12:30pm–1:30pm
Writing for Journals: Workshop Session
1:30pm–5:30pm

Maggie Taft
Managing Editor, Design and Culture

Day 2

Friday January 12th

Book Publishing with Bloomsbury Publishing
9:15am–10:00am

Louise Baird-Smith
Commissioning Editor – Design and Photography Bloomsbury Visual Arts

Break Out Session / Working Groups
10:00am–12:30pm

Facilitated by Maggie Taft, Robin Landa, Aaris Sherin, and Elizabeth Guffey. Participants will work on drafts of their writing in small groups.

Lunch break
12:30pm–1:30pm (see recommendations)
Writing Process and Feedback
1:30pm –2:30pm

Andrew Shea
Author of Design for Social Change
Principal of design studio, MANY

Break Out Session / Working Groups
2:30pm –5:30pm

Facilitated by Maggie Taft, Robin Landa, Aaris Sherin and Elizabeth Guffey

Day 3

Saturday January 13th

Break Out Session / Working Groups
9:00am–12:30pm

Facilitated by Maggie Taft, Robin Landa, Aaris Sherin, and Elizabeth Guffey

Lunch break
12:30pm–1:30pm (see recommendations)
Presentations
1:30pm–2:30pm

Robin Landa
Distinguished Professor Kean University
Author over twenty books including
Nimble: Creative Thinking in the Digital Age

Elizabeth Guffey
Professor State University of New York
(SUNY) at Purchase
Author of Posters: A Global Perspective, and Retro: The Culture of Revival Founding Editor of Design and Culture

Sharing Session / Wrap Up
3:00pm–5:00pm
Group Dinner (Optional)
6:00pm–8:00pm

Please note: This schedule is tentative and is subject to change.

2018 Senior Fellow

Maria Rogal
Professor
School of Art + Art History
Graphic Design Program & Affiliate Faculty
Center for Latin American Studies
University of Florida

2018 Fellows

Camila Afanador-Llach
Assistant Professor
Department of Visual Arts and Art History
Florida Atlantic University

Denise Anderson
Assistant Professor
Robert Busch School of Design
Michael Graves College
Kean University

Liat Berdugo
Assistant Professor
University of San Francisco

Anne Berry
Assistant Professor
Cleveland State University

David Hardy
Assistant Professor
James Madison University

Jessica Jacobs
Assistant Professor
Columbia College Chicago

Cynthia Lawson
Associate Professor
Integrated Design
The New School

Christine Lhowe
Instructor
Seton Hall University

Courtney Marchese
Assistant Professor
Quinnipiac University

Daniel McCafferty
Assistant Professor
University of Manitoba

Grace Moon
Adjunct Professor
CUNY Queens College

Sarah Rutherford
Assistant Professor
Cleveland State University

Misty Thomas-Trout
Assistant Professor
University of Dayton

Karen Zimmermann
Professor
University of Arizona

Local Lunch and Coffee Spots

Starbucks
13-25 Astor Pl, New York, NY 10003

Pret A Manger
1 Astor Pl, New York, NY 10003

Le Petite Parisien – Sandwiches / Baguettes
32 E 7th St
New York, NY 10003

Mamoun’s Falafel – Middle Eastern
30 St Marks Pl
New York, NY 10003

V-Spot – Vegan / with Gluten Free options
12 Saint Marks Pl
New York, NY 10003

Bluestone Lane (coffee shop)
51 Astor Pl, New York, NY 10003
(just downstairs in the same building as SJU)

Chopt Creative Salad Co.
51 Astor Pl, New York, NY 10003
(just downstairs in the same building as SJU)

Many tasty Ramen and Sushi places on St. Marks between 2nd and 3rd Ave.

PublishMe!

Stephen Eskilson
Professor of Art History
Eastern Illinois University

Author of Graphic Design: A New History (Yale University Press) and editor of reviews for Design and Culture (Bloomsbury) talks about different publishing experiences including books, journal articles, book reviews as well as digital and self-publishing.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 1.4: St. John’s University Manhattan Campus on Thursday, February 12, 2015.