Determinants of the Citation Counts of Korean ‘Art’ and ‘Design’ Research

This study aims to analyze Korean research trends in ‘Art’ and ‘Design’. Especially, this study concentrated on identifying various factors that significantly affect the citation counts of Korean ‘Art’ and ‘Design’ articles. The entire 18,872 ‘Art’ and ‘Design’ related articles published in 40 KCI-accredited journals from 2002 to 2016 and the citing articles published from 2002 to 2021 served the context of this study. Four journal-level, three article-level and three author-level factors were examined for the potential determinants of the citation counts. In accordance with the differences in the scope and strength of research impact between ‘Art’ and ‘Design’ research, two separate regression tests based on the citations of ‘Art’ and ‘Design’ fields displayed the dissimilar results. In order to increase the research impact in ‘Art’ field, it is advantageous to publish articles in journals where maintained higher research impact and have more diverse topical scope. To exert higher research impact in ‘Design’ field, it is better to publish articles in Korean and to study popular topics. The main contribution of this study is, first, this is to expand its limited bibliometric foci to the impact in Korean ‘Art’ and ‘Design’ research. Second, this is the first attempt to estimate the influence of various determinants on research impacts of Korean ‘Art’ and ‘Design’ articles using a predictive modeling.