With good help from our users who submit proposals for new material, we make a serious effort to ensure that the bibliography gradually becomes more and more complete and up to date.
Completeness is not sought at the expense of quality and focus, however. We reserve the right to include or exclude material according to our best editorial judgement.
In making that judgement, we try to be reasonably broad-minded as to what counts as philosophy of design, since we acknowledge that no generally accepted and clear-cut definition exists. (In particular, we do not limit ourselves to any particular philosophical method or tradition.) Yet to help us decide consistently, we employ the following editorial guidelines.
To be eligible for inclusion, a publication must meet Conditions 1 and 2, and be satisfactory with respect to quality (Criterion 1) and focus (Criteria 2 and 3). Trade-offs can be made among the criteria.
- Condition 1: It conforms to minimal standards of scholarship.
- Condition 2: It conveys insights about designing through philosophical means. (It need not be dedicated to this subject, but should contain at least one passage addressing the subject in more than a superficial way.)
- Criterion 1: The degree to which it exhibits more than minimal academic quality. For instance, with respect to originality, depth of thought, implications of contribution, and clarity.
- Criterion 2: The degree to which it deals with problems of genuine philosophical interest.
- Criterion 3: The degree to which it deals with a prototypical conception of designing: as an act of devising or documenting a course of action that aims at production of an artefact. Artefacts may be material as well as immaterial.
Reviews of publications already included, may be included as well.
