Building a discipline: Indicators of expansion, integration and consolidation in design research across four decades

Highlights • We explored indicators of domain expansion, integration and consolidation in Design Studies. • Author disciplines have expanded into humanities, social science, and human professions. • An increased level of cross-disciplinary collaboration across time is evident. • The term ‘design’ has become increasingly central in stated university affiliations. • Across a 40 year timespan the design domain has consolidated its core foundations