For further information on preparing your manuscript, please visit The Design Society website.
Article Categories
Design Science publishes primarily research articles that describe new fundamental contributions to knowledge. Design Science papers address a broad audience and tend to have longer introductory sections with explanations of terminology and well-articulated development of the knowledge gap they aim to address. To assist authors in framing their submissions, a guide for research papers appropriate for Design Science is provided here. LaTeX files provided here.
Other types of papers are review papers and position papers. Review papers should be more than a simple enumeration of published work and provide new insights into the relevant body of knowledge. Position papers are well-argued opinions by the authors about a design topic. While a research paper presents facts, claims or hypotheses and provides objective proof that they are true (or, occasionally, false), a position paper aims to convince the reader that the expressed opinion is valid and worthwhile. Position papers in Design Science serve to stimulate discussion in the design community on current or emerging topics. The opinion or “position” that is put forth must be supported by evidence from objective sources, such as published papers, data or documented discussions, but it not required to be validated in the normal way of research papers, and therefore, it is ultimately a subjective statement. Both review and position papers are highly valued if executed well.
The design practice brief is another paper category that is aims to include insightful work that is not research per se. A Design Practice Brief is a short article reporting a design experience of significant and archival value to the design community. Design Practice Briefs address directly the embedding of artifacts in our physical, virtual, psychological, economic, and social environment. Briefs may address a range of experiences, including how a successful design came to exist, design process implementations, successes or failures of design theories, industry and studio practices, early results from a practical implementation of research studies, or insights gained from actual design practice. Design Practice Briefs are not short research articles, applied research articles or theoretical position papers. They must clearly address the element of “practice” and they must exhibit sustained value for current and future readers. The recommended length is 3000-6000 words.
All paper categories undergo full peer review.
Preparing your manuscript
All articles must be written in English following the structure outlined below. Papers should be written in a concise manner; though there is no strict page limit, each paper will be judged on its own merits, and those deemed excessive in length will be rejected or will require significant revision. Citations to references should be given in the Harvard style (e.g., Smith et al., 2014). The submission of supplementary material is encouraged. Design Science accepts production files via Microsoft Word or LaTeX format. Authors should initially submit for review only a single PDF file. Upon acceptance, authors will be required to submit final production files, consisting of any figures (preferably in EPS or high-resolution TIFF format) and supplementary material files (pdf, doc/docx, xls/xlsx, ppt/pptx, jpeg, tiff, png, and zip) along with final Microsoft Word or LaTeX source files. Each figure should be accompanied by a single caption, to appear beneath, and must be cited in the text. Figures should appear in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text and figure files must be named accordingly (‘Figure 1.eps’, ‘Figure 2a.tiff’, etc.) to assist the production process (and numbering of figures should continue through any appendices). Similarly, each table should be accompanied by a single caption, to appear above the table, must be numbered and mentioned in the text. Following acceptance, proofs will be issued in due course by Cambridge University Press and authors are advised to check those proofs carefully, as it will not be possible to make corrections to an article once it has been published online.
Research Article (typical) structure
Submission of the typical research article to the journal should normally follow a template covering the material in the following headings. This template is meant to assist authors in providing appropriate structure fitting the particular goals of Design Science. The section headings need not have the same exact titles but the overall manuscript should contain the relevant material.
Title
The Title should be informative, specific and be an attractor to the content of the paper.
Abstract
Each paper should contain an abstract of not more than 250 words. The Abstract should tell the reader about the content of the paper and should be standalone text without any references, to allow it to be listed independently of the paper. The Abstract is not the place for the argument, explanation or editorializing. The Abstract should be added to the ScholarOne submission system in the freetext box provided. The Abstract should also be included in the main PDF of the submitted article.
Introduction (Background and Motivation)
Since the Journal aims to attract authors and readers from the multiple disciplines that carry out design science research, this section should contain sufficient material for a design researcher, who is not an expert in the specific topic of the paper, to gain an understanding of the issues being researched. It should address the relevant background literature through the analysis of the literature’s content and provide the motivation for the research by identifying gaps in the available knowledge. Given the heterogeneity of the readers, more references that cover the background should be provided.
Aim(s)
The overarching goal(s) of the research should be succinctly stated here.
For papers reporting the results of computational or empirical experiments, after stating the aims, the hypotheses that are being tested need to be stated (and referred to later in the paper). For theory papers, after stating the aims, the issue being addressed should be presented.
Significance
If the aims are achieved, what will be the original contribution of the work: i.e., what will be known or be possible which was previously not known or possible.
Method
This is the place to describe the why, what, how, who and when of the research in a form such that it can be repeated by another cognate researcher. Describe the nature of the independent/input data and the measured/output data.
Results
Describe the results in a form that matches the independent/input and measured/output data described in the Method section. If you are presenting statistical models please ensure that the correct method has been used. Tables and figures provide basic structure to results that make it easier for a reader to grasp what is presented.
Analysis/Discussion
The measured/output data generally needs to be analyzed by structuring it (often statistically) and possibly turning it into a form where it can be used to test the hypotheses listed in the Aims section of the paper. Where appropriate the structured results can be compared with results in previous publications. What else can be gleaned from the results?
Conclusions
This is the place to present whether the results provide support for the hypotheses? If so – how? If not – how not? What does this mean for the hypotheses?
Do the results lead to other work?
What other claims can be made based on the results?
Acknowledgements
You may acknowledge individuals or organizations that provided advice or support (non-financial). Formal financial support and funding should be listed in the following section.
Financial support (Note: This section is important for Open Access Publication)
Please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers. Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma and space, and where research was funded by more than one agency, the different agencies should be separated by a semi-colon, with "and" before the final funder. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the authors initials; for example, "This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (A.B., grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (C.D., grant number ZZZZ); the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (E.F., grant number FFFF); and the National Institutes of Health (A.B., grant number GGGG)". Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: "This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors."
References
All references mentioned in the text need to listed. Ensure the references are complete so that a reader can find them.
Appendices
This is the place for additional detailed information about experimental setup, charts, pseudo code, and more detailed results, if needed.
Obtaining Help
Technical support for the ScholarOne online submission system is available by clicking on the ‘Get Help Now’ link at the top-right corner of each page of the submission site. Any other questions relating to the submission or publication process should be directed to the Design Science Editorial Office via email to [email protected].
Author affiliations
Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.
For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.
Author Hub
You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.
Authorship and contributorship
All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.
Competing Interests
All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their main manuscript file. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.
Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.
If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors.
Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.
English language editing services
Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.
In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.
Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.
ORCID
We require all corresponding authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:
- Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
- Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
- Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.
See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
If you don’t already have an iD, you will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne, or alternatively via https://ORCID.org/register.
If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting your manuscript, either by linking it to your ScholarOne account, or by supplying it during submission using the "Associate your existing ORCID iD" button.
ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
Policy on prior publication
When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.
Supplementary materials
Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.
Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.
Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.