Apparel Design Scholarship Practices: Analysis of ITAA Professionals’ Design Abstract Proceedings From 1999 to 2017

Abstract

We explored the topical trends of the International Textile and Apparel Association professionals’ Design Abstract Proceedings (DAP) and how apparel design scholarship has been cited in the discipline for the past two decades. Using a content analysis, three research objectives were as follows: to examine (a) designer-identified keywords trends of the DAP, (b) to examine DAP directly cited in scholarly works, and (c) to examine DAP not directly cited but related to designers’ scholarship. Six overarching themes (inspirational references, apparel design, technology, sustainability practices, textiles, and nonapparel) were identified through the keywords analysis and used for further analyses. We found that design scholars were not used to cite other relevant scholarly works or their own works in their scholarly design work. The study findings provide an awareness for the strong need to establish citation practices for design scholars, which will add to the body of knowledge in clothing and textiles and increase the impact of design scholarship beyond the discipline.

Keywords

design scholarship ITAA design abstract retrievability content analysis

Clothing and textiles involve various disciplines such as design, product development, textiles, consumer behavior, history, merchandising, marketing, and retailing (Ha-Brookshire & Hawley, 2013). Due to this multidisciplinary nature, academic institutions apply various approaches to evaluate faculty members’ scholarship for retention, promotion, and tenure. In particular, a faculty member whose expertise is in creative design often contributes to the body of knowledge through disseminating his or her design works at juried or invited exhibitions. By definition, to be called “design scholarship” (Kotsiopulos, 2000), it must contribute to the body of knowledge, go through a rigorous peer review process, and be retrievable. However, design scholarship in clothing and textiles does not receive much recognition from administrators and decision makers of promotion and tenure in academic institutions (Adams & Meyer, 2011).

Among several factors that lead to this situation, one critical issue is related to the lack of in-depth discussion on assessing how design scholarship has contributed to the body of knowledge in the field of apparel design. Bye (2010) addressed the need for developing a standard to review design scholarship. In terms of peer-reviewed journal publications, various metrics exist to assess the academic contribution of each journal publication. The number of citations a scholar receives has been considered a valid indicator of the significance of one’s scholarly works (Waltman, 2016) because it quantifies the amount of discussions and follow-up works stemming from one’s publications that positively correlates to its impacts.

Such a metric does not apply to apparel design scholarship, for instance, due to its relatively limited outlets. Instead, the acceptance rate has been utilized as a valid indicator for the rigor of design scholarship (Morris & Parsons, 2016), which is calculated by dividing the number of accepted design entries by the total number of design entries. Very few juried exhibition organizers, however, disclose the acceptance rate of their exhibitions. Efforts to assess design scholarship are needed since meaningful scholarly work should contribute to the ongoing intellectual conversation and provide a novel perspective in the discipline (Adams & Meyer, 2011).

Considering the current state of design scholarship in clothing and textiles and beyond the discipline, it is crucial to revisit the scholarly design practices of past apparel design professionals and explore their impact on other scholarly works. The International Textile and Apparel Association (ITAA) publishes conference proceedings every year, including abstracts of oral and poster presentations, and designs. For this study, we mainly focused on Design Abstract Proceedings (hereafter DAP) in the ITAA annual conference to address our research purpose because ITAA is recognized as the premier outlet for design scholars to showcase their scholarship in clothing and textiles. Fogarty et al. (2002) state that abstracts of proceedings could be a useful source to acquire information for systematic reviews.

Furthermore, there has been no attempt to explore the topical trends of ITAA professionals’ DAP for the last two decades using keywords, which cover the comprehensive contents of a scholarly work (Eassom, 2017). Uddin and Khan (2016) state that “author-selected keyword lists represent the subject matter of articles” (p. 1167) and act as a proxy for the topic. Search engines, journals, and various indexing services use these keywords to categorize the topic and direct the research toward the relevant audience, which in turn can ensure good visibility of research outcomes (Falagas et al., 2008). Thus, keywords need to concisely communicate substantial information about the core concepts of scholarly works. In this respect, it is critical to explore how design scholars use keywords in their DAP. We aimed to explore keywords from ITAA professionals’ DAP over the period of 1999–2017, which would provide a valuable means to understand the past and current practices of DAP keyword usages and a guide to increase the retrievability of their work through various routes in the future.

The overall purpose of this study was 2-fold: to explore the topical trends of ITAA professionals’ DAP and to explore how apparel design scholarship has been cited in the discipline for the past two decades. The three specific research objectives were to analyze (a) keywords of DAP at the professional level, (b) DAP directly cited in scholarly works such as journal publications and other design abstracts, and (c) DAP that were not directly cited but related to designers’ other scholarly works. By addressing these three research objectives, we explored the topical patterns of design scholarship in clothing and textiles for the past two decades and suggested a guideline for citation practices, which would help future design scholars to contribute to the body of knowledge through citing their own or others’ design works. The body of knowledge is one critical component of our profession, and design scholarship also needs to contribute to the body of knowledge through dissemination and retrieval (Kotsiopulos, 2000). Therefore, this study is a useful tool to assess past and current topical trends and citation practices of design scholarship and provide an awareness of the need to establish citation practices for design scholars.

Literature Review

Definitions of Design Scholarship and Its Practice Across Disciplines

Creative activity refers to the innovative activities used in fine arts, performance, and applied art (Kotsiopulos, 2000), whereas scholarship includes new knowledge and techniques being developed in creation and research (Bowen & Roberts, 1993). Thus, creative scholarship reflects “the creativity inherent in the discipline and recognizes that the outcomes of creativity can make a significant contribution to their discipline” (Guerin & Birdsong, 1995, p. 45). The term creative scholarship was adopted by interior design educators in 1989 (Guerin & Birdsong, 1995) and has involved various design-related disciplines (e.g., apparel design, interior design, architecture) since then. Design scholars often refer to creative scholarship as design scholarship (Henriksen, 2019) and use these two terms interchangeably.

The concept of design or creative scholarship has also been explored by several scholars in clothing and textiles. According to Ha-Brookshire and Hawley (2013), design scholarship investigates a systematic body of evidence through empirical theories regarding design elements and human perception of themselves as well as others. Adams and Meyer (2011) conducted a survey with the ITAA members to develop a definition of creative scholarship within the discipline and proposed the following definition:

Creative scholarship is applied research that involves the design process in a way that demonstrates a proficiency of combining creative and technical skills that provide a clear understanding of the inspiration or theoretical foundation, which was peer-reviewed or invited and may or may not be retrievable. (p. 228)

This definition was derived from the results of an ITAA member survey, which reflected the current status of creative scholarship at that time. For our study, we focused on design scholarship that contributes to the body of knowledge in the field; thus, retrievability is one important element for it. By reflecting the definitions of various researchers (Adams & Meyer, 2011; Ha-Brookshire & Hawley, 2013), design scholarship is grounded in theoretical foundation and/or creative inspiration and contributes to the body of knowledge through various forms of scholarly works.

Efforts have been made to explore the citation practice of design scholarship, especially in the fields of interior design, architecture, and apparel design. Kotsiopulos (2000) reviewed various methods of documenting design scholarship and suggested using a consistent and comprehensive format for documenting and citing design scholarship to establish its importance to interior design. In conjunction with this effort, in the field of interior design, Clemons and Eckman (2004) also proposed a categorization for systematizing dissemination and retrieval of scholarly works to demonstrate a common language within the shared body of knowledge in the field. In the field of architecture, Dunin-Woyseth and Nielsen (2003) conducted a case study of one doctoral program to provide a framework regarding how knowledge is made and advancement of scholarship is processed, which finally are directed back to design practice. Morris and Parsons (2016) surveyed 70 ITAA members to understand their perception on design scholarship and their publication/citation practices in clothing and textiles. They concluded that publishing design scholarship in peer-reviewed publications would allow design scholars to provide substantial contributions to the field.

Although there are dynamic discussions regarding design scholarship in various fields, there is no empirical study to examine how design scholarship has been retrieved in the field. Such an effort would provide practical citation guidance for design scholars to follow. To this end, we addressed the dearth of literature and provided valuable understanding of the citation practice in the field of apparel design.

The ITAA Design Abstracts Proceedings

The ITAA design exhibition was first held in 1989 at the Association of College Professors of Textiles and Clothing, the prior name of ITAA. Since then, the design exhibition has been held annually at the ITAA annual conference. The design scholarship presentation has continuously evolved in terms of designs submitted, format (mounted exhibition vs. live gallery), review process, and awards given, with changes in the rubrics over the last 30 years.

The ITAA design exhibition is a manifestation of creative approaches with the goal of cultivating audiences and helping them to understand not only the individual pieces but also the greater role of design scholarship (Campbell, 2006). Efforts have been made to engage more designers to disseminate their design ideas and to provide accessibility of design works. Examples of these efforts include, but are not limited to, providing design awards by connecting the academic community with industry sponsors (e.g., Gerber, ATEXINC, Optitex) and disseminating design exhibition catalogs and off-line and online proceedings. There were also efforts to increase exposure of the design scholarship showcased at the ITAA design exhibition through excellence in design articles, which were the expanded versions of DAP, published in the Clothing and Textiles Research Journal (CTRJ). These were approximately three- to six-page articles specifying the design inspiration, explaining the design processes and methods, adding more design images, and citing references.

Design scholarship presence has continuously increased in size during recent years as more design entries have been submitted, and acceptance of those entries to the exhibition has become more competitive. To demonstrate, the numbers of submitted design entries and acceptance rate of the ITAA design exhibition were retrieved from triangulated sources including design catalogs, official design acceptance emails from ITAA, and several design scholars’ curriculum vitae. Between 1999 and 2018, the total number of submitted design entries as a whole and at the professional level increased by 49.1% from 224 to 334 and 43.5% from 85 to 122, respectively.

The average acceptance rate of professional entries has been consistently lower than 51% since 2001 (M = 42%; range = 33%–51%). One item to note is that while there was a push for ITAA to provide acceptance rates in the early years, they were inconsistent; occasionally, the acceptance was provided separately for a mounted exhibition versus live gallery. Since 2015, only the mounted exhibition has been held at the conference, and its acceptance rate at the professional level ranged from 38% to 51%: 41.7% acceptance with 115 submissions in 2015, 45% acceptance with 111 submissions in 2016, 38% acceptance with 134 submissions in 2017, 49% acceptance with 122 submissions in 2018, and 51% acceptance with 106 submissions in 2019.

The acceptance rate of professional entries is comparable to that of CTRJ, the official publication of ITAA that aims to strengthen the research base in the discipline (M = 27.04%; range = 8.5%–61%), from 1998 to 2016 (Pedersen, 2018). The average acceptance rate of journals listed by the American Psychological Association (APA), the principal professional organization in charge of the language used and understood in academia, was about 30% (range = 4%–66%) in 2017 (APA, 2018). As the acceptance rate of professional design entries was within the range of those journals’ acceptance rates, it appears that exhibiting a design work in the ITAA venue is as rigorous in terms of acceptance rate as those journals.

In general, the peer review process of research journals involves professionals in the discipline who evaluate the quality and suitability of submitted manuscripts for publication (Sugimoto et al., 2013). Similarly, designs submitted to the ITAA design exhibition go through a juried review process with design professionals in clothing and textiles. Campbell (2006) stated that the jury process is complex and rigorous, and accepted entries should be regarded highly. The ITAA Design Review Committee recruits reviewers from ITAA professional members and external professionals. The recruited professionals in clothing and textiles serve as a triple- or double-blind jury for submitted entries and assign scores based on the established evaluation criteria. Acceptance or rejection is decided by committees based on the reviewers’ scores in relation to the space available within a conference venue (ITAA, 2020).

In the initial years of ITAA, the format for DAP was different than it is these days. For example, the length of DAP was a total of one page, and keywords were not required.

Although there were criteria to evaluate both a designed artifact and written statement in the initial years of ITAA, the review process and requirements of DAP have become more rigorous over the years. The weighted design evaluation criteria for the design exhibition in 2019 consisted of the following six categories: (a) contextual review and concept (20 points); (b) aesthetic properties and visual impact (15 points); (c) process, technique, and execution (25 points); (d) cohesion (10 points); and (e) design contribution and innovation (30 points; ITAA, 2019). These criteria are different from those of the initial years, which included problem statement, inspiration, description, and construction technique. For review, the designers are also required to submit four images of their design including front, back, and side views, along with interesting design or construction details/close-up views. The number of DAP pages also varied over the time frame, ranging from one to four pages. Besides the four design images, recent criteria allow for two pages of text that may include up to three design process images and one page for references. This enables designers to further elaborate their design practices, which contribute to the body of knowledge.

Compared to the previous evaluation criteria, notably, more emphasis is given to contextual review and concept, as well as design contribution and innovation. For example, since 2016, the phrase “design challenge or research question” was added to the criteria. This addition is intended to encourage designers to achieve innovations and emphasizes research approaches from the beginning of the design process by constructing concepts based on scientific research methods (ITAA, 2016a). Also, the criteria are now weighted and emphasize both the contextual review, which indicates that designers must cite others’ works, and the design contribution or what is known about its value to the field.

Citations and Impact of Keywords on Scholarly Work Dissemination

Sugimoto et al. (2013) examined more than 5,000 journals in various fields and found that, in the cases of the journals cited, as the impact factor increased, people were more likely to submit their works, which led to a reduction of the journals’ acceptance rates. The journal impact factor reflects the number of citations and the number of substantive articles and reviews published (Garfield, 2006). There is no impact factor currently existing for DAP. If artists, designers, and researchers actively practice citing DAP more often, this may enable positive cycles of DAP to gain higher visibility and recognition with qualified designs in the discipline, which could eventually lead to establishing the impact factor.

Uddin and Khan (2016) have reported the impact of keyword selection on research citation retrievability. Keywords are mostly research domain-specific and represent authors’ understandings of their work within the thematic context of their research area (Uddin & Khan, 2016). Search engines, journals, and various indexing services use these keywords to categorize the topic and direct the research toward the relevant audience, which in turn can ensure good visibility of research outcomes (Falagas et al., 2008). Thus, the inclusion of an appropriate keyword list ensures its dissemination to interested groups and, ultimately, increases the likelihood of its being cited by other scholars. Keywords specified by authors also play an important role in understanding the dynamics of knowledge development (Lee & Su, 2010), as well as forecasting and identifying future opportunities (Yoon & Park, 2004). In this respect, it is critical to explore how design scholars in our profession use keywords in their DAP. Thus, in this study, we explored the topical trends of design scholarship presented at DAP using keywords and investigated the way apparel design scholarship has been cited in the discipline for the past two decades.

Method

We used the research question–driven approach to conduct a secondary analysis of existing data (Cheng & Phillips, 2014), which can be especially useful for studies to evaluate patterns of utilization. Figure 1 presents the multifaceted approaches we used to achieve the overarching research purpose.

Figure 1.

Overall research design: Multifaceted approaches to achieve the overarching research purpose.

Source of the Data

Using purposive sampling to maximize our data relative to the context, DAP from 1999 to 2017 were used as the primary data source for this study. This time period was chosen due to the online accessibility of the source. The year 1999 was the first year that DAP was available online, and 2017 was the most recent year that the entire DAP was available online. The proceedings were electronically retrievable through the Iowa State University Library Digital Collections. Each year’s proceedings consisted of the designs accepted at the professional, graduate, and undergraduate levels. For this study, we limited the data to DAP accepted at the professional level because professionals often establish the culture related to design scholarship, as well as lead and mentor undergraduate and graduate students. For the designs accepted at the graduate level, if their work was coauthored with professionals, they were included in the sampling pool.

An initial “grand tour” (Kozinets, 2002) of all DAP from 1999 to 2017 was completed and then narrowed down to a systematic analysis of professional DAP by year. To check the accuracy for the total number of professional category entries, we triangulated their names, affiliations, positions, content of their designs and writings with the ITAA design exhibition catalogs, proceedings, annual conference programs, and ITAA official newsletters.

Data Collection and Analysis Procedure

Data were collected to analyze the following three research objectives: (a) designer-identified keywords of accepted DAP (Objective 1), (b) DAP directly cited in journal publications and other design abstracts (Objective 2), and (c) DAP not directly cited but related to designers’ other scholarly works (Objective 3).

Objective 1: Analysis of designer-identified keywords of DAP

To visualize topical trends in design scholarship, we conducted a content analysis of the designer-identified keywords available from DAP during 1999 through 2017. At this stage in the research, the data were limited to keywords selected by designers and did not include any textual or photographic data contained in DAP. In 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2006, DAP did not include keywords, and therefore the proceedings from these years were omitted from the analysis. In the 2016 ITAA design submission, designers were asked to use the top three most relevant words among eight keywords identified by ITAA, which were not designer-identified keywords. This was an outlier year and might influence the overall topical trend analysis using keywords; thus, we omitted this year from the analysis. A total of 2,199 keywords were used for the analysis.

Content analysis, using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, was conducted by two researchers who independently completed open coding to develop an initial coding guide through an inductive, data-grounded process (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). The researchers then refined the coding guide throughout the data analysis process. Once all keywords were totaled, the researchers reviewed all subthemes and then categorized the subthemes into overarching themes. The researchers also reviewed the theme descriptions to check the clarity of wordings. Intercoder reliability greater than 93% was achieved when the revised coding guide was applied to the entire body of data (Creswell, 2013; Lombard et al., 2002). Themes identified for Objective 1 were also used when analyzing the data for Objectives 2 and 3, enabling the holistic interpretation of our study findings.

Objective 2: Analysis of directly cited DAP

Among the total of 888 DAP accepted at the professional level from 1999 to 2017, we identified a total of 21 DAP that were directly cited in other DAP and/or journal publications. Using Google Scholar, a web search engine of academic journals and other scholarly literature, designers’ names and the titles of 888 DAP were searched from June to August 2018 to explore how one single DAP was directly cited or retrieved in other scholarly works. If an article included a design that was exhibited at ITAA, but the author did not cite the exhibition, it was not included in our data. Each DAP was thoroughly reviewed by two researchers to address the following components: (a) explore disseminating outlets and publication year of cited DAP and (b) categorize DAP into the themes identified in Objective 1. The content analysis was conducted through the same procedure as Objective 1 and intercoder reliability greater than 94% was achieved.

Objective 3: Analysis of DAP not directly cited but related to designers’ other scholarly works

We further searched each designer’s related works that used DAP but were not directly cited in their works, using Google Scholar, their curriculum vitae retrievable from websites, and other related cross-reference sources such as magazines and design exhibition catalogs from June to August 2018. The title of each DAP, title of the designed artifact if different from the title of the DAP, and designers’ names were used to retrieve additional related works. For example, if one design scholar had multiple scholarly works on one theme such as sustainability, all related scholarly works were counted for the data.

Of 888 DAP, a total of 402 DAP from 147 designers—that were not directly cited but related to their other scholarly works in the aspects of inspirations, materials, techniques, and design processes—were identified. These identified DAP were examined focusing on the types of scholarly works and their major topical areas to understand how the related works were expanded from or to DAP. The following components were addressed in the analysis process: (a) explore disseminating outlets of DAP that weren’t directly cited and (b) categorize DAP into the themes identified in Objective 1. The content analysis was conducted through the same procedure of Objectives 1 and 2 and intercoder reliability greater than 90% was achieved.

Results and Discussion

Objective 1: Topical Trends of DAP Using Designer-Identified Keywords

The following six overarching themes were derived from Objective 1, including: (a) inspirational references (inspirations from various social, natural, and cultural phenomena), (b) textiles (processes related with fiber, yarn, or textile development, including dying and textile surface modification), (c) technology (innovative approaches used in the textiles and apparel design and development process), (d) apparel design (design fundamentals to be considered in the design process, including, but not limited to, garment type, garment design process, and functional–aesthetic–expressive aspect), (e) sustainable practices (sustainable activities including textiles and apparel design process), and (f) nonapparel (various items that are not classified as apparel). Table 1 includes these six themes in addition to 20 subthemes, a description of each subtheme, and sample keywords to aid in the coding of data. Table 2 presents the quantification of the data by year, number of acceptances, total keywords, theme, and subtheme.

Table 1.

Keywords From the Professionals’ DAP by Themes and Subthemes.

Themes	f	Description	Sample of Keywords
Inspirational references (n = 601)
Historical	101	Reference to a time, period, or person in history.	Contemporary, Future, Surrealism, Medieval, Victorian, Franz Kline, Chanel
Cultural	99	Reference to a continent, country, or city including garments from that area.	East, West, Indian, Gafsa, Korea, African, Hawaii, Egypt, Bulgarian, Hanbok, Pojaggi
Color	18	Words that present a color, color theme, or changes and variations in color.	Black, white, red, purple, earth tone, gradient, gradation, contrast
General inspiration	383	Various words that convey the inspirational influence of the artists, which may be artwork, architecture, animals, environments, events, feelings, and so on	Butterflies, magnolia, architecture, loop, triangle, theatre, oyster, hearts, healing, seascape, tribute, art, tattoo, spiral
Textiles (n = 563)
Textile properties	64	Reference to the qualities or traits of a textile	Sheer, tactile, stretch, reflective, performance, luminous, luster, delicate, wrinkle
Fabric type	210	Reference to a fabric, fabric name, fiber, or fabric construction technique	Woven, knit, cotton, wool, denim, leather, organza, chiffon, silk, dupioni, batik
Textile surface design	248	Any type of embellishment, pattern, illustration, and so on, that is, applied to the textile surface and that enhances its visual appearance, not including digital printing	Surface design, painting, quilting, embroidery, felting, shibori, beading, tambour, origami
Dye techniques	41	Reference to a dyeing technique or process.	Dye, resist, indigo, discharge
Technology (n = 156)
Emerging technologies	61	Reference to new technologies being used in the textile and apparel industry	Digital, CAD (computer aided design), LED, laser cutting, etc.
Wearable technology	7	Reference to technology that is worn on the body and/or integrated into the garment	Smart garment, wearable technology, intelligent clothing
Textile innovation	74	Reference to innovative changes to a textile including digital printing	Textile innovation, biomimicry, digital print, engineered print, printing
3D printing	14	Reference to 3D printing process	3D printing, 3D printed
Apparel design (n = 690)
Garment techniques	100	Reference to garment construction technique including couture techniques	Couture techniques, piping, welt pockets, bound buttonholes
Garment type	177	Words that describe the type of garment or a portion of the garment	Apparel, dress, gown, lingerie, jacket, sportswear, shirt, jeans, cowl
Garment design process	314	Reference to the garment design process	Patternmaking, draping, drafting, apparel design, collaborative, conceptual, experimental
Functional design	22	Reference to a type of functional garment	Functional design, functional clothing, protective garments
Target market	44	Reference to the consumer group or target market	Children, women, men, plus-size, military, wedding
Body/design aesthetics	34	Reference to the body or design aesthetics that affect the way a garment is viewed	Asymmetrical, imperfect, elegant, modest, sizing, style lines
Sustainable practices (n = 174)
Sustainability	174	Reference to various sustainability processes	Sustainability, recycle, up cycle, zero-waste design, natural dyeing
Nonapparel (n = 15)
Accessory or nonapparel	15	Various items which would be classified as nonapparel or an accessory	Hat, shoes, belts, jewelry, lamp, rug, chair, wallcovering

Note. DAP refers to the International Textile and Apparel Association Design Abstract Proceedings.

Table 2.

Content Analysis of Keyword Trends of DAP at the Professional Level.

			Inspirational References				Textiles				Technology				Apparel Design						Sustainable Practices	Nonapparel
Publication Year	# Of Acceptances	Total Keywords	Historical	Cultural	Color	General Inspiration	Textile Properties	Fabric Type	Textile Surface Design	Dye Techniques	Emerging Technologies	Wearable Technology	Textile Innovation	3D Printing	Garment Techniques	Garment Type	Garment Design Process	Functional Design	Target Market	Body–Design Aesthetics	Sustainability	Accessory or Nonapparel
2003	49	117	5	11	0	17	4	3	10	3	4	1	2	0	10	18	15	2	5	2	4	1
2004	28	81	3	9	2	5	6	8	11	2	2	0	4	0	4	11	9	0	2	1	2	0
2005	92	272	17	13	2	40	8	34	33	1	4	3	7	0	23	38	28	2	4	8	4	3
2007	21	75	4	3	5	17	3	11	5	0	1	0	1	0	7	6	5	1	5	0	1	0
2008	84	268	16	18	5	53	12	27	33	3	7	0	7	0	17	20	23	0	7	6	9	5
2009	54	170	6	8	0	42	4	17	30	4	3	0	1	4	10	7	13	2	2	1	16	0
2010	37	125	3	2	0	23	2	15	16	2	4	0	4	0	3	14	23	1	2	1	10	0
2011	28	95	1	1	0	16	4	10	13	8	2	0	0	0	2	8	12	1	4	1	12	0
2012	58	194	12	14	2	39	4	9	21	2	3	1	6	1	3	11	41	2	3	2	15	3
2013	57	192	10	5	2	26	3	15	19	3	9	0	7	0	8	11	44	1	5	1	23	0
2014	73	250	9	7	0	47	3	36	17	5	7	0	15	3	3	13	51	5	4	0	23	2
2015	53	170	6	3	0	33	1	15	20	5	9	10	9	3	2	10	25	2	0	5	21	0
2017	53	190	9	5	0	25	10	10	20	3	6	1	11	3	7	10	25	3	1	6	34	1
Subtheme		2,199	101	99	18	383	64	210	248	41	61	7	74	14	100	177	314	22	44	34	174	15
Theme		2,199	601				563				156				690						174	15

Note. DAP refers to the International Textile and Apparel Association (ITAA) Design Abstract Proceedings. No keywords were included for the accepted DAP for the years of 1999 (n = 55), 2000 (n = 29), 2001 (n = 6), 2002 (n = 18), and 2006 (n = 39); therefore, these years were not included in the table. The keywords of 2016 DAP were not included in this analysis because designers were asked to use the top three most relevant words among eight keywords identified by ITAA for the design submission, which may consider as an outlier.

For the past two decades, among the total of 2,199 keywords coded, apparel design was the most frequently reported main theme, accounting for 31.4% of the data, followed by inspirational references (27.3%), textiles (25.6%), sustainable practices (7.9%), technology (7.1%), and nonapparel (0.7%). Among 2,199 keywords as a whole, a review of the keywords of 20 subthemes revealed that general inspiration was the most frequently reported subtheme (17.4%), followed by garment design process (14.3%), textile surface design (11.3%), fabric type (9.6%), garment type (8.1%), sustainability (7.9%), historical influence (4.6%), garment technique (4.5%), cultural influence (4.5%), textile innovation (3.4%), and the remaining subthemes. Apparel design was the most frequent main theme, but general inspiration—the subtheme of inspirational references—was the most frequent among 20 subthemes. This may be due to the fact that apparel design contained the most diverse subthemes among the six themes.

We also analyzed the years by themes and subthemes to determine whether any topical trends of design scholarship have occurred from time to time (see Table 2). Sustainability increased in 2009 to be the fourth most reported subtheme (9.4%) and has continued since then to be either the fourth or fifth most reported subtheme. Sustainability was the number one reported subtheme in 2017 (17.9%). It was also noted that textile innovation is a possible future trend in design scholarship because it has been the fourth or fifth most reported subtheme for the past few years.

According to the analysis of subthemes in each main theme, general inspiration was typically the predominant subtheme under inspirational references. Within textiles, both surface design and fabric type were the most frequently reported subthemes. The technology theme did not have any outstanding subtheme until 2014 when textile innovation had 15 occurrences; it continued to be the highest reported subtheme in the following years. The apparel design theme had two frequently reported subthemes, garment design process and garment type. Garment techniques including couture technique was the third most reported subtheme in apparel design.

Objective 2: DAP Directly Cited in Other Scholarly Works

Analysis of directly cited DAP

Among 888 DAP, 21 DAP by 25 designers were directly cited in other design scholarship such as journal publications and/or DAP. As shown in Table 3, the number of citations reached its peak in 2015. Although there are other external factors influencing the increasing number of citations, this finding may be a result of design scholars’ ongoing efforts in ITAA for enhancing their design scholarship. For instance, in 2016, there was a change in the design evaluation criteria to include “contextual review and concept,” which was 20% (20 points of 100) of the total score. Designers would have to respond to the change in the rubric or risk a lower score and rejection of submission. Therefore, this addition appears to greatly encourage designers to cite relevant works in their DAP.

Table 3.

The Directly Cited DAP Organized by Year From 1999 to 2017.

DAP No. ^a	DAP Published Year	Scholarly Work Source That Directly Cited the DAP ^b	DAP Direct Citation Year	Years Taken from Publication to Citation	Self- Citation
DAP 1	1999	Article A in Clothing and Textiles Research Journal	2004	5	Yes
DAP 2	2000	Article A in Clothing and Textiles Research Journal	2004	4	Yes
DAP 3	2000	Article B in Clothing and Textiles Research Journal	2005	5	Yes
DAP 4	2004	Article C in International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology, and Education	2011	7	Yes
DAP 5	2009	DAP A	2015	6	Yes
DAP 5	2009	DAP B	2017	8	Yes
DAP 6	2012	DAP A	2015	3	Yes
DAP 6	2012	DAP B	2017	5	Yes
DAP 7	2014	DAP C	2017	3	No
DAP 8	2015	DAP D	2016	1	No
DAP 8	2015	DAP E	2017	2	No
DAP 9	2015	ITAA Abstract Proceeding A	2017	2	No
DAP 9	2015	DAP F	2017	2	No
DAP 10	2015	DAP G	2017	2	No
DAP 10	2015	DAP H	2017	2	No
DAP 11	2015	DAP D	2016	1	No
DAP 11	2015	DAP E	2017	2	No
DAP 12	2015	DAP I	2016	1	No
DAP 13	2015	DAP B	2017	2	No
DAP 14	2015	DAP J	2017	2	No
DAP 15	2015	DAP D	2016	1	No
DAP 16	2015	DAP D	2016	1	No
DAP 17	2015	DAP G	2017	2	No
DAP 17	2015	DAP H	2017	2	No
DAP 18	2016	DAP K	2017	1	No
DAP 19	2016	DAP L	2017	1	Yes
DAP 20	2016	DAP M	2017	1	Yes
DAP 21	2016	DAP N	2017	1	Yes

Note. n = 21. DAP refers to the International Textile and Apparel Association’s Design Abstract Proceedings.

^a Total of 21 among the entire data of 888 DAP were directly cited in other design scholarship.

^b To identify which work cites DAP, alphabetical letters were assigned next to each scholarly work source that cited DAP (e.g., Both DAP 1 and DAP 2 were cited in Article A in Clothing and Textiles Research Journal; DAP 5 was cited in both DAP A and DAP B).

In addition, there have been a series of special topic sessions/workshops to discuss concepts and cultures of design practice/design research among design scholars at the ITAA annual conferences, and they concluded that design research should be retrievable, be contextualized, and make contribution to knowledge in the field (ITAA, 2009; ITAA, 2014, p. 77; ITAA, 2015, p. 52; ITAA, 2016b, p. 84; ITAA, 2017, p. 75). The discussion is still ongoing (Sanders, 2018), and design scholars have strived to contribute to the body of knowledge through design scholarship. For this study, we limited our data to the DAP published from 1999 to 2017, which means that there was insufficient time for DAP published in 2016 and 2017 to be cited. Thus, it is expected that DAP will receive more citations in the future.

We examined the keywords of the directly cited 21 DAP associated with the themes and subthemes derived from Objective 1. Among 21 DAP, four did not indicate keywords, so they were excluded from the analysis. Among the four, three were published in either 1999 or 2000, the year that keywords were not required for DAP. Among the 17 DAP, sustainable practices (58.8%) was the most prevailing theme, followed by technology (29.4%) and inspirational references (11.8%). Within the subthemes, sustainability was the most prevailing, followed by textile innovation and general inspiration.

Analysis of other scholarly works that directly cite DAP

Only 21 of 888 DAP were directly cited in other design scholarly works: three design-focused journal articles, 14 other DAP, and one abstract proceeding (see Table 3). The authors either cited their past work (i.e., self-citations) or others’ design scholarship. Four DAP were cited in the three journal articles; among those, two were published in CTRJ (Krenzer et al., 2005; Sparks, 2004), while one was published in the International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education (Haar, 2011). All three journal articles were authored by the same designer who wrote the cited DAP. These three articles demonstrated innovative apparel design techniques, and the DAP were cited as examples of the design techniques used. It took an average of 5.25 years (Min = 4, Max = 7, SD = 1.09) to publish their works from the year of their ITAA design exhibitions.

As shown in Table 3, among the 21 DAP, nine were self-cited (DAP no. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 19, 20, and 21). Although the authors of other DAP used similar techniques in their subsequent work, they neglected to cite their previous works from which these were derived. Several factors could be detrimentally contributing to this phenomenon. The blind review process of the ITAA design exhibition might provide negative incentive for authors to self-cite their own work. Citing one’s own work in DAP presents the risk of revealing one’s identity to the reviewers. Design scholars also may not be attuned to the culture of citing scholarly works in their DAP, especially before the discussion regarding retrievability of design scholarship at the ITAA conference; thus, they often did not cite others’ works in their DAP, which contributed to this phenomenon.

Considering that the abovementioned factors might reflect the current citation status of the discipline, it would be critical to explore DAP that were not directly cited but related to the designers’ scholarship, as these have a great potential to be cited in their scholarly works. Therefore, Objective 3 was to explore designers’ DAP not directly cited but related to their scholarly works to provide guidance to further increase citation of DAP in the discipline.

Objective 3: DAP Not Directly Cited but Related to Designers’ Scholarly Works

Among 888 DAP, a total of 402 DAP by 147 designers showed relations to their other scholarly works in terms of inspirations, materials, and design processes but lacked direct self-citation. For example, if a designer had published a series of DAP and journal publications with a theme of sustainability but not directly cited previous relevant works, we included these as the relevant works for Objective 3. The related scholarly works of DAP consisted of journal articles (56%), design exhibitions (42.3%), published books (1%), and other works (0.7%) such as magazine articles and patents. Journal articles and design exhibitions were the most dominant formats of disseminating their design scholarship. Designers often explored innovative inspirations and techniques and presented them at ITAA design exhibitions. After developing several designs with the same or similar concept, they expanded these design practices to their other related works such as journal articles.

In the results of our study, we found that the CTRJ excellence in design articles provided designers a great opportunity to self-cite their DAP-originated article. However, only one article by Krenzer et al. (2005) self-cited their DAP, which was a core work of the article. This might be derived from the lack of self-citation practices in the discipline and/or a designer might regard that it is not essential to cite the original DAP, as it is its extended version and a duplicate of the stated information.

We also examined the keywords of 402 DAP associated with the themes and subthemes derived from Objective 1. Among 402 DAP, inspirational references (30.42%) was the most dominant theme. The most frequent subthemes in related scholarly works of the main themes were cultural influence (52.5%) in inspirational references, textile surface (52.5%) in textiles, textile innovations (55.6%) in technology, garment technique (44.3%) in apparel design, and versatile design (36.9%) in sustainable practices. These subthemes represent areas of expertise where designers frequently did not self-cite their previous works in the subsequent DAP. There is great potential to improve upon the scarcity of self-citation in these areas with adequate guidance to designers with related expertise.

Conclusion

In this study, we explored the topical trends of ITAA professionals’ DAP and citation practices of apparel design scholarship from 1999 to 2017. The topical trend analysis of designer-identified keywords for DAP showed the continuous use of keywords related to the themes of inspirational references and apparel design. We also found the continuous increase of sustainable practices and textile innovation compared with other subthemes since 2009. During our analysis of the keywords, despite the requirement of including keywords in DAP, numerous abstracts were found in which keywords were not provided, which may hinder the dissemination of designers’ work (i.e., retrievability). In addition, the key terms often indicated a specific design technique or inspiration (e.g., African, oyster, graduation), which does not capture broader scopes or purposes of their designs.

It is crucial for design scholars to understand the implications of the keywords they choose. They need to include keywords that holistically capture their design intention when preparing and submitting their DAP to ITAA. They also need to carefully choose keywords that are more encompassing of broader research trends to connect design scholarship to larger streams of clothing and textiles research (i.e., pop up in searches along with publications and DAP as citable research). This practice will eventually lead other scholars to easily retrieve the previous works and thus increase the exposure of design scholarship.

Design scholars need to continuously strive to cite DAP in their scholarly works in order to grant more recognition of design scholarship in the discipline; good examples of this include the works done by Krenzer et al. (2005) and Sparks (2004). In this study, we presented the failing citation practices of authors in various occasions (e.g., missing information of conference name and its location under references). We recommend providing DAP citation practice workshops with design scholars to discuss current citation practices and ways to nurture the culture of citing scholarly works in design.

It is crucial to encourage designers to develop a cohesive body of scholarship from one design to others and then publish their work as an article that includes the broader research questions. There are periodicals focusing on design scholarship (e.g., Fashion Practice: The Journal of Design, Creative Process & the Fashion Industry; International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education; International Journal of Design). While not all of these are narrowly apparel/textile design journals, they do offer outlets for design practices to apparel design scholars. The encouraging fact is that the number of DAP citations has continued to grow for the past few years, although the number is still small compared to the total number of DAP. In addition, since 2013, the ITAA Annual Conference Proceedings started to offer exact guidance on how to cite work for scholars. If proper citation practice is established and the citation number grows, recognition of design scholarship will eventually increase.

In addition to the efforts of individual design scholars and organizations, we urge clothing and textiles institutes and societies to culturally support systemic infrastructure. For example, in our digital era, each published journal article is assigned a digital object identifier (DOI), which assists in disseminating authors’ work around the globe. Having a DOI helps a scholar’s work populate through various citation tools (e.g., Google Scholar Citations, Web of Sciences Citations, ResearchGate, Crossref), which helps to measure scholars’ research impact. Since 2019, DOIs have been assigned to ITAA abstract proceedings including DAP, which could enhance their retrievability in the future. In addition, designers can track the number of times their DAP has been viewed, downloaded, and cited through Iowa State Digital Press since 2013. This is another valid measure of how their DAP has been accessed by other scholars, and such an effort will help DAP to receive due recognition. Additional efforts should be made for art-wear exhibitions to be easily retrievable through various search engines, if desiring to achieve ongoing dissemination of scholarly design work.

In this study, we explored topical evolutions in design scholarship for the past 20 years, which can serve as a good starting point to advance future design scholarship. We also provided good guidance to scholars in different design fields who would like to explore the citation practices in their fields. We suggest the importance of establishing infrastructure to encourage citation practices in the discipline through mentoring emerging design scholars, and we hope this study provides an awareness of the strong need to establish citation practices for design scholars to further spark their interest for future study of design scholarship.

Limitations and Suggestions for Future Study

Caution should be given when generalizing the findings of this study. First, the content analysis of designer-identified keywords might limit the holistic understanding for the topical trends of apparel design scholarship. Further research is needed to examine the content and photographic images of DAP. We analyzed the keywords based on phenomena occurring now; however, there was change over time. For example, a technology that was new 10 years ago may be more commonly used now. As the keyword data can be changed over time, caution needs to be given when other researchers reflect our findings in their studies.

Second, interviews with the design-related committees in ITAA would be beneficial to expand understanding of the topical trends and current challenges of citation practices in apparel design scholarship. The interviews would also be useful for understanding the historical changes of DAP and their impact on the citation practice. For example, designers were required to submit their works under categories of target market and fiber art several years ago, which may, by default, have had an impact on language used in DAP.

The changes made over the past 20 years of the design exhibition—such as designs submitted, jury process and evaluation rubrics, types of objects displayed, and type of awards given for design—might have affected the results of this study. Future researchers could investigate changes in design exhibitions and identify factors that most affect apparel design practices. Finally, the topical trends and citation status may be different for other design exhibition outlets (e.g., Costume Society of America, American Association of Family Consumer Sciences, and Surface Design Association) and other countries (e.g., UK); thus, the findings are limited to the context of the ITAA design exhibition. However, the findings can be used as a reference for exploring future topical trend research in other design exhibition outlets and their citation practices.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Young-A Lee

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