Submission Plan for the Bulletin of JSSD: Parallel Diagnoses of the Validity of Design as a Discipline

This is a preparatory note written on the assumption of a submission to the Bulletin of JSSD (Dezaingaku Kenkyu), the journal of the Japanese Society for the Science of Design (JSSD). The reading of the source texts is in Was the 'Absence of a Science of Design' Asserted Three Times? Rereading the Observations of 1978, 2008, and 2023 in Their Sources, and the institutional genealogy is in The Genealogy of Design Research in Japan: Three Origins, and the University That Passed the Presidency Around. The internal ledger with source tracking is source/review/design-discipline-absence/papers.md.

Submission Requirements (Confirmed in Primary Documents)

We obtained and checked the JSSD submission rules, the writing guidelines, and the PDF describing the submission procedure.

• Eligibility: regular members, student members, and honorary members of JSSD. For co-authored papers, authors other than the first author are not bound by this rule. Membership is required to submit as the first author.
• Categories: three categories, “Original Articles”, “Research Report”, and “Review Articles”
  • Original Articles: papers in which a design issue is discussed theoretically or empirically, which show originality, state the purpose, method, means, and conclusions, and contain findings or conclusions of academic value
  • Research Report: reports of research on historical materials, surveys, measurements, statistics, or experiments, and reports of practice
  • Review Articles: original and comprehensive analyses and discussions on a specific historical, cultural, technical, or other theme, reflecting the author’s own perspective, ideas, and methods regarding the author’s research
• Length: an even number of printed pages, with an upper limit of 10 pages
• Format: a complete camera-ready manuscript in Japanese, in two columns of 28 characters by 44 lines each (1,232 characters per column), which gives 2,464 characters per page. The body text on the first sheet starts at line 16 of the right column. Corrections after plate-making are not allowed in principle.
• Review: review by two or more reviewers selected by the paper review committee
• Submission system: Editorial Manager (http://www.editorialmanager.com/jssdj/)
• Publication fee: the author pays the sum of the basic publication fee and the article publication fee

The present concept is closest to a Review Article, because it is a comprehensive analysis of a historical theme and does not rely mainly on empirical data. However, if quantitative analysis of citations were adopted as the main method, the paper would be an Original Article.

How the Concept Changed

The initial idea was the question “Why is the question of the ‘absence of a science of design’ not carried forward in the Japanese-language sphere?” The survey showed that this premise does not hold. Three facts overturned it.

First, the question had been carried forward. In 2025, Yaegashi and Miyoshi published “An examination of the potential of autoethnography in design research”, which explicitly cites the 2023 paper. In its conclusion, the 2025 paper states that autoethnography “can become an important methodological medium for bridging practice and theory, the subjective and the objective, and experience and meaning” (our translation). This is not a bibliographic reference but a continuation of the question. Although it is a self-citation with overlapping co-authors, the premise that there is no continuation cannot be used.

Second, integration across societies had already been realized as an institution. The Encyclopedia of Design Science (Dezain Kagaku Jiten) was published by Maruzen Publishing in 2019. Its editorial committee consisted of 31 members from 6 societies, 103 authors contributed, and 16 academic societies and associations supported it, including the Geijutsu Kogakkai, the Ishogakkai, the Kiso Dezain Gakkai, the Dogu Gakkai, and the Japan Society of Kansei Engineering. Its stated purpose is “to aim at elucidating the regularities of design activity and systematizing the knowledge used in design activity, by integrating knowledge about design activity”. In addition, since fiscal year 2016, 5 societies, namely JSSD, the Ishogakkai, the Geijutsu Kogakkai, the Kiso Dezain Gakkai, and the Dogu Gakkai, have held a joint symposium every year.

Third, the same question had been asked independently elsewhere. In 2024, Minoru Matsui published “Invitation to The Book Club for The Critical Design Studies” in the journal of the Geijutsu Kogakkai (Geijutsu Kogakkai Shi). It opens as follows.

デザイン論には疑似科学的アプローチが多く見受けられる。たとえば進化理論を我流で応用した『進化思考』は科学的に妥当とはいえず、我々による批判をうけ改訂された。現状、デザイン学がなにかの役に立つとすれば、このような粗悪なデザイン論を批判的観点から吟味し、誤りを避けられる点にある。

(Our translation: “Pseudoscientific approaches are common in design theory. For example, Shinka Shiko (Evolutionary Thinking), which applied evolutionary theory in an idiosyncratic way, cannot be said to be scientifically valid, and it was revised after our criticism. At present, if design studies is useful for anything, it is in examining such poor design theories from a critical perspective and avoiding errors.”)

The book club was planned and accepted as a special committee of the Geijutsu Kogakkai for fiscal year 2023. The paper does not cite Yaegashi and colleagues.

The Rebuilt Concept

When the three facts are placed side by side, a structure different from the initial one becomes visible.

Yaegashi and Matsui are saying opposite things. One argues that scientization is impossible and that another path should therefore be sought. The other argues that many design theories are not scientifically valid and that the field should therefore become more rigorous. Both appeared between 2023 and 2024 in different venues, a university bulletin and a society journal, and Matsui, who published later, does not cite Yaegashi and colleagues.

The question therefore becomes the following.

Why do diagnoses of the academic validity of design as a discipline not connect with each other, although institutional frameworks for collaboration across societies (the 2019 encyclopedia and the joint symposium held since fiscal year 2016) exist?

The situation is not that the field is “not integrated”. As an institution, it is integrated. Although it is integrated, the intellectual diagnoses do not engage with each other. Explaining this divergence is the task of the paper.

Theoretical Framework

Richard Whitley’s fragmented adhocracy is placed at the center. This framework classifies the degree of integration of a discipline along two axes: task uncertainty (low agreement on which questions and methods are correct) and mutual dependence (the degree to which researchers depend on the results of other researchers). Whitley placed management studies in this type.

When applied to design research, institutional collaboration (the encyclopedia and the symposium) is a relationship between organizations, and it does not raise mutual dependence. If each school can continue its research without depending on the results of the others, the diagnoses do not connect even when the schools gather institutionally. This is the core of the explanation.

The following are used as supporting frameworks.

• Gieryn’s boundary-work: rereads the separation of societies not as a failure of demarcation but as active boundary-drawing driven by professional interests
• Galison’s trading zone: positions the joint symposium and the encyclopedia as sites of local coordination that fall short of complete integration. In No. 58 (1987) of the Bulletin of JSSD, Inatsugi wrote about the art research liaison committee of the Science Council of Japan. In that committee, JSSD and the Ishogakkai were regarded as the same research area, and the two societies together held a quota of one liaison member. This situation can also be read through this framework.

Methodological Precedent

Vakkari (2024), “What characterizes LIS as a fragmenting discipline?” (Journal of Documentation 80(7)), is decisive. Vakkari applies Whitley (1984) and Fuchs (1993) to library and information science and characterizes the process in which a field fragments through the analysis of historical materials and concepts.

The structure of what this plan intends to do is the same, and only the object changes to design research (and to the Japanese-language sphere). For this reason, reviewers are less likely to say that “the method is not established”.

On the design research side, there are also bibliometric precedents of self-diagnosis. Chai and Xiao (2012) analyzed 459 papers and 12,107 citations in Design Studies, and Trindade Perry and Soares Pereira (2023) analyzed the countries of the institutional affiliations of authors in 14 design journals.

Gap in Prior Work

Within the scope of this survey, none of the following was found.

• Research that explains the mechanism by which diagnoses of the validity of design as a discipline do not connect, through the separation of societies and the mutual non-citation of schools
• Bibliometric analysis of the field structure of design research in Japan
• Research that applies Whitley’s framework to design research (Vakkari 2024 is an application to library and information science)

However, the search was limited to major databases and web searches, and it did not reach the back issues of Dezain Riron (Design Theory), society newsletters, or study group materials. The survey is not exhaustive. Before submission, at least the tables of contents of the Bulletin of JSSD and Dezain Riron need to be checked throughout.

Feasibility of the Method

Adopting citation network analysis as the main method is risky. We examined the data constraints of J-STAGE and CiNii in practice, with the following results.

• Bibliographic data can be retrieved automatically. The J-STAGE search API returns the bibliographic records of the Bulletin of JSSD (190 records since 2020). However, the response does not include references.
• Extracting references from PDFs is not usable. Because of the two-column layout and embedded fonts, Japanese text becomes garbled and its order is disrupted. We confirmed this by trying it.
• The reference list on each article page is loaded dynamically with JavaScript. A static request returns only the counts, while rendering the page in a browser shows the complete list. Bulk retrieval therefore requires a headless browser.
• NII itself does not guarantee the completeness of the references and citing works in CiNii Research. J-STAGE citation links are limited to recent papers with registered DOIs and do not reach back to books from 1978 or society journals from the 1980s.

Therefore, the main method will be content analysis. We will trace the re-raising of the same question through Abe (1978), Mukai, Yaegashi and colleagues (2023), Matsui (2024), Cross (2025), and Cash and colleagues (2025), and read directly from the texts what each cites and does not cite. Citation data will play a supporting role.

As far as we checked with one sample, citations across societies do exist (a paper in the Bulletin of JSSD cited Kiso Zokei (Basic Design), the journal of the Nihon Kiso Zokei Gakkai, twice). The problem therefore becomes one of measuring “to what degree and in which direction” the societies cite each other, not whether they “never cite” each other.

Novelty Assessment

The criterion of a score of 3 or higher on two axes is met. However, the PD score of 4 is conditional on “no prior work exists”, and because the survey is not exhaustive, its certainty is lower. These scores are the author’s own assessment. A later audit in the paper-writing process (August to November 2026) scored PD at 2 to 3 and Mat at 2, and stopped the paper because circular reasoning and the attribution of premises not found in the original sources remained.

Next Steps

1. Confirm JSSD membership eligibility. Submitting as the first author requires regular, student, or honorary membership.
2. Check the tables of contents of the Bulletin of JSSD and Dezain Riron throughout, to strengthen the claim about the gap in prior work.
3. Obtain the source texts of Shutaro Mukai’s Sei to Dezain: Katachi no Shigaku I (2008) and Kimimasa Abe’s Dezain Shiko (1978). They are currently cited secondhand through Yaegashi and colleagues, and the source texts are needed to cite them in a paper.
4. Reread Inatsugi’s 1987 statement in the original. We confirmed that it appears on p. 5 of No. 58 of the Bulletin of JSSD (the statement of purpose for the 7th spring conference), but the character recognition of the scan is broken, and we have not been able to quote it verbatim.
5. Check whether the records of the “Design-Related Societies Symposium” have been published, to use them as evidence of institutional collaboration.
6. Check the continuation of Matsui’s (2024) abstract (the second page) and the subsequent activities of the study group, including what the fiscal year 2023 special committee read and what it concluded.

Unverified Items

• Whether Yaegashi and colleagues (2023) have been cited other than by self-citations of the co-authors [unverified: full text not reached; most later issues of Research on Design Science have not been examined in full text]
• The publication status of the records of the “Design-Related Societies Symposium”. We confirmed through the announcement by the Dogu Gakkai that it has been held every year since fiscal year 2016 [unverified: not attempted; the record pages of each society have not been checked]
• How Trindade Perry and Soares Pereira (2023) describe the proportion of authors from East Asia [unverified: full text not reached; abstract only]
• Whether the Bulletin of JSSD and Dezain Riron are indexed in Scopus or Web of Science [unverified: not attempted; the lists of indexed journals have not been checked]
• Whether Shutaro Mukai (2008) cites Kimimasa Abe (1978) [unverified: not obtainable; the source book has not been obtained]
• Whether the “systematization of knowledge” in the Encyclopedia of Design Science (2019) refers to the same problem as the “lack of its own ontology and epistemology” identified by Yaegashi and colleagues, or to a problem at a different level [unverified: not obtainable; the encyclopedia itself has not been obtained]

References

Submission Requirements

1. 日本デザイン学会 (2022)「論文集『デザイン学研究』投稿規定」. [Japanese Society for the Science of Design. “Submission rules for the Bulletin of JSSD”] https://jssd.jp/ja/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/J_rules_1_20220212.pdf
2. 日本デザイン学会 (2017)「論文集『デザイン学研究』執筆要領」. [Japanese Society for the Science of Design. “Writing guidelines for the Bulletin of JSSD”] https://jssd.jp/ja/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/J_rules_2_20170101.pdf
3. 日本デザイン学会 (2016)「研究論文投稿から掲載までの手順」. [Japanese Society for the Science of Design. “Procedure from submission to publication of research papers”] https://jssd.jp/ja/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/J_rules_3_20160727.pdf

Diagnoses and Institutions Concerning the Validity of Design as a Discipline

4. 阿部公正 (1978)『デザイン思考』美術出版社. [Abe, K. Dezain Shiko (Design Thinking), Bijutsu Shuppan-sha] Bibliographic details established from the reference list of Yaegashi et al. (2023). Source text not obtained
5. 向井周太郎 (2008)『生とデザイン かたちの詩学 I』中公文庫. [Mukai, S. Sei to Dezain: Katachi no Shigaku I (Life and Design: A Poetics of Form I), Chuko Bunko] Bibliographic details established from the reference list of Yaegashi et al. (2023). Source text not obtained
6. 稲次敏郎 (1987)「デザイン学の今日的課題（昭和61年度日本デザイン学会第7回春季大会）」『デザイン学研究』No.58, p.5. [Inatsugi, T. “Contemporary issues of the science of design (the 7th JSSD spring conference, fiscal year 1986),” Bulletin of JSSD] https://doi.org/10.11247/jssdj.1987.5_1
7. 日本デザイン学会ほか編 (2019)『デザイン科学事典』丸善出版. [Japanese Society for the Science of Design et al., eds. Dezain Kagaku Jiten (Encyclopedia of Design Science), Maruzen Publishing] http://jssd.jp/papers-and-works/papers-and-books/encyclopedia-of-design-science
8. 八重樫文・磯邉美香・三好春陽 (2023)「デザイン研究における今日的課題の検討」『デザイン科学研究』(立命館大学) Vol.2, pp.51-68. [Yaegashi, K., Isobe, M. & Miyoshi, H. “An examination of contemporary issues in design research,” Research on Design Science (Ritsumeikan University)] https://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/research/rcds/file/2023/6_rcds_2_yaegashi_isobe_miyoshi.pdf
9. 松井実 (2024)「ブッククラブ『批判的デザイン学研究会』への招待：デザイン学の不協和音に耳を澄ます」『芸術工学会誌』No.89, pp.30-31. [Matsui, M. “Invitation to The Book Club for The Critical Design Studies: Listening to The Discord in Design Studies,” Geijutsu Kogakkai Shi] https://doi.org/10.24520/designresearch.89.0_30
10. 八重樫文・三好春陽 (2025)「デザイン研究におけるオートエスノグラフィの可能性の検討」『デザイン科学研究』(立命館大学) Vol.5 No.1, pp.51-66. [Yaegashi, K. & Miyoshi, H. “An examination of the potential of autoethnography in design research,” Research on Design Science (Ritsumeikan University)] https://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/research/rcds/file/2025/3_rcds_5.pdf
11. 道具学会 (2025)「2025年度 デザイン関連学会シンポジウム（10月18日開催）」. [Dogu Gakkai. “Design-Related Societies Symposium, fiscal year 2025 (held on October 18)”] https://douguology.jp/dnetdesign251018/
12. Cash, P., Daalhuizen, J. & Cross, N. (2025) “Designing: A new era for design research,” Designing 1(1), 12-17. https://doi.org/10.1177/30497671251392170
13. Cross, N. (2025) “Making Design Research Visible,” Visible Language 59(1), 1-4. https://doi.org/10.34314/rgn7xe38

Theoretical Framework and Methodological Precedent

14. Whitley, R. (1984) “The Fragmented State of Management Studies: Reasons and Consequences,” Journal of Management Studies 21(3), 331-348. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.1984.tb00415.x
15. Gieryn, T. F. (1983) “Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists,” American Sociological Review 48(6), 781-795. https://doi.org/10.2307/2095325
16. Galison, P. (1997) Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226279176
17. Vakkari, P. (2024) “What characterizes LIS as a fragmenting discipline?” Journal of Documentation 80(7), 60-77. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-10-2023-0207
18. Chai, K. H. & Xiao, X. (2012) “Understanding design research: A bibliometric analysis of Design Studies (1996–2010),” Design Studies 33(1), 24-43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2011.06.004
19. Trindade Perry, G. & Soares Pereira, L. (2023) “Global diversity in design research: A bibliometric investigation of design journals,” Design Studies 88, 101217. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2023.101217