ServDes 2016

1. Research in the First
Four ServDes
Conferences
Johan Blomkvist
Tim Overkamp
Stefan Holmlid

2. Service design research
MAY 25, 2016 2Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research
• What is it?
• Any field needs knowledge about:
– what knowledge is being produced
– from what perspectives
– how it builds on and relates to other fields
– how the field accumulates knowledge, progresses and
develops

3. Service design research
MAY 25, 2016 3Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research
• Why study ServDes?
• Searching for “service design”
– ”the premier research conference for exchanging knowledge
within service design and service innovation studies”
(ServDes, 2015)

4. ServDes research
MAY 25, 2016 4Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research
• the first conference was held in Oslo, Norway on the
24th – 26th of November 2009.
• “ServDes conference was born on a bridge in
Pittsburgh U.S. during the Emergence 2007 Service
Design Conference“ (ServDes, 2015)
• “Nordic” conference
• 105 papers published so far

5. ServDes research
MAY 25, 2016 5Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research
• We look mainly at the ~2499 references made during
the conference.
• Research papers only
• Two approaches:
– Scopus (483 found)
– Conference proceedings
• Transferred to .txt, edited with Sublime text 2
• Potential loss of information

6. ServDes research
MAY 25, 2016 6Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research
• Big variation

7. MAY 25, 2016 7Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research
• Scopus

8. MAY 25, 2016 8Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research

9. MAY 25, 2016 9Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research

10. ServDes research
MAY 25, 2016 10Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research
Out of the 51 references within ServDes, 14
(27%) are self-references (at least 1 author of the
referenced paper is also author of the citing paper)
divided between 8 authors.
This can be compared to the amount of self-
references in the overall material (not only
references to previous ServDes publications i.e. all
references), where 10,1% reference themselves.

11. ServDes research
MAY 25, 2016 11Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research
• about half of the papers published at ServDes have
been cited at a later ServDes ~53%

12. ServDes progression
MAY 25, 2016 12Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research
• 53%
– Self-referencingis partly behind this number since 27% are
self-references within ServDes.
– overall number of self-references:10%.
– ServDes authors reference their previous work at ServDes to
a larger extent than their work published elsewhere
• The average percentage of references to ServDes at
ServDes are 2,4% of all references.

13. MAY 25, 2016 13Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research
• Most cited ServDes papers at ServDes

14. MAY 25, 2016 14Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research

15. MAY 25, 2016 15Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research

16. ServDes influences
MAY 25, 2016 16Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research
• Interaction and participatory design strong
influences
• Referencing many different fields
• (References not an indication of content)

17. ServDes proceedings
MAY 25, 2016 17Blomkvist, Overkamp & Holmlid –ServDes research
• Meta-data
• Move to more well-known publisher?

18. www.liu.se
The End