Talk:Design science research

This article only refers to one isolated paper on Design Science Research (DSR), while a nice debate in journals exist around DSR. I would like to majorly revise this article and therefore see it wise to have a discusion first. This page should be revisited so that it contains the following chaine of events:

In 1995 March created a paper "Design and natural science research on information technology", this lead to a waterfall of new papers, in 2004 we see some publication in high ranking journals, like Van Aken, J. E. (2004), but also by Hevner et. al (2004) in MIS Quarterly. Particular in the domain of information systems the debate continues. First one paper claiming that DSR was similar to Action Research (Järvinen 2007 in Quality & Quantity), which lead to a counter paper explaining the subtle differences (Iivari & Venable 2009 in Association for Information Systems) and now eventually an attempt to merge the two into Action Design Research (Sein et. all 2011 in MIS Quarterly).

I've got several issues with the current description of the wiki page. The page only give Van Aken 2004 view, while it has been a stead reference in all the papers it is not the general view nor the founder of DSR. If there would be one it is more likely March et.al, but basically this has been an implicit principle for a longer time, I would not put so much emphasis on who founded it but on the existing debate and the general description that all the authors agree on. Thus the current wikipage does not reflect what the current norm on DSR is in the academic literature. This page would also be an opportunity to link related information like action research to agile development and living labs, which is clearly laking in both academic research papers as wikipedia. Thus a major revision is needed, basically we should start with a blank page and try to integrate part of the current content without getting into details of Van Aken's personal position.

I would start this article by referring how DSR is an emerging and ongoing attempt to build a methodology for dealing with information regulation. Particular software development and information system engineering, but it has extended to management and other domains. For the history I would not refer to one particular person, but illustrate how DSR has a long standing history for information regulation. It should start with systems & cybernetics and their attempt to dealing with information regulation, how it got much more practical applied with software development (FOSS) and how it is now particular an innovation management method, which extend the information regulation to Business Modeling.

Give me some feedback and I'll create a first draft of the revision.

MixelKiemen (talk) 11:54, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

I added a link to the term 'pragmatic validity' as a little clarification. Donald.ropes 09:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)Don Ropes

Design Science research is based on the work of Professor Joan Ernst van Aken?
I think there is something wrong with giving Professor Joan Ernst van Aken credit for the invention of modern Design Science Research, and seeing as how the Bibliography consists solely of his work I'm very much doubting the un-bias nature of this information. A quick google scholar search on Hevner and his work "Design science in information systems research" turns up 2,800 references, searching for van Aken's earliest work (De Bedrijfskunde als Ontwerpwetenschap, 1994) turn up 40 references, even his latest work (a english in case one argues that his previous work was not heavily cited because it was not english) "Management research based on the paradigm of the design sciences" has only 400 citations. His influence on DSR at least in the public domain seems very limited, while the article does not even mention the likes of Hevner, March and Smith or Nunamaker. Anyway if anyone was to be given credit for DSR it should rather be someone like Herbert Simon and his work on the Science of Design or the work of Bruce Archer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.132.38.27 (talk) 16:31, 22 March 2012 (UTC)